Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author [collected in Characteristics]

London

John Morphew

1710, 1714

"For company is an extreme provocative to fancy and, like a hotbed in gardening, is apt to make our imaginations sprout too fast."

'Are we to go therefore to the stage for edification? Must we learn our catechism from the poets and, like the players, speak aloud what we debate at any time with ourselves alone?' Not absolutely so, perhaps, thought where the harm would be of spending some discourse and bestowing a little breath and clear voice purely upon ourselves, I cannot see. We might peradventure be less noisy and more profitable in company if at convenient times we discharged some of our articulate sound and spoke to ourselves vivâ voce when alone. For company is an extreme provocative to fancy and, like a hotbed in gardening, is apt to make our imaginations sprout too fast. But, by this anticipating remedy of soliloquy, we may effectually provide against the inconvenience.
(p. 72)

Plant::Hot-bed Plant::Sprout

Reading

A complicated publication history. At least 10 entries in ESTC (1710, 1711, 1714, 1733, 1744, 1751, 1757, 1758, 1773, 1790).

See Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author (London: John Morphew, 1710). <Link to ESTC><Link to Google Books>

See also "Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author" in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. In Three Volumes. (London: John Darby, 1711). <Link to ESTC>

Some text drawn from ECCO and Google Books; also from Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge: CUP, 2001). Klein's text is based on the British Library's copy of the second edition of 1714. [Texts to be collated.]

Soliloquy

11/06/2003