"Wycherley used to read himself asleep o' nights either in Montaigne, Rochefoucault, Seneca, or Gracian; for these were his favourite authors. He would read one or other of them in the evening, and the next morning, perhaps, write a copy of verses on some subject similar to what he had been reading; and have all the thoughts of his author, only expressed in a different mode, and that without knowing that he was obliged to any one for a single thought in the whole poem. I have experienced this in him several times (for I visited him for a whole winter, almost every evening and morning), and look upon it as one of the strangest phenomena that I ever observed in the human mind."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Alexander Pope, as quoted in Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence, "Spence's Anecdotes", Section V. 1737...39. p. 198.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Wycherley
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
William Wycherley
William Wycherley (c. 1640 – 1 January 1716) was an English dramatist of the Restoration period.
5 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by William Wycherley →
Related Quotes
"Necessity, the mother of invention."
"And with faint praises one another damn."
"I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better."
"He lost his memory forty years before he died by a fever, and would repeat the same thought sometimes in the compass …"
""Lest that by any means When I have preached to others I myself Should be a castaway." If some one now Would take tha…"
"Daddy Neptune one day to Freedom did say, If ever I live upon dry land, The spot I should hit on wou'd be little Brit…"
"Then a very great war man, call'd Billy the Norman, Cried "D--n it, I never lik'd my land.""
"The Dons came to plunder the island; But, snug in the hive, the Queen was alive, And "buzz" was the word in the island."
"Longing while living for laurel and bays, Under this willow a poor poet 'lays'; With little to censure, and less to p…"
"Among the maggots that breed in the corruption of poetry one of the commonest is the bookworm. When Athens had decaye…"