Gally, Henry (bap. 1696, d. 1769)

A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings

London

Printed for John Hooke

1725

"He must be a Master of the Science; and be able to lead a Reader, knowingly, thro’ that Labyrinth of the Passions, which fill the Heart of Man, and make him either a noble or a despicable Creature."

A superficial Knowledge of human Nature, will never qualify a Man to be a Writer of Characters. He must be a Master of the Science; and be able to lead a Reader, knowingly, thro’ that Labyrinth of the Passions, which fill the Heart of Man, and make him either a noble or a despicable Creature. For tho’ some, who have never attempted any thing of this kind, may think it an easy Matter to write two or three Pages of Morality with Spirit, to describe an Action, a Passion, a Manner; yet had they made the Experiment, the Event wou’d not have answer’d their Expectation, and they wou’d have found, that this easy Work was more difficult than they, at first, imagin’d.
(p. 31)

Architecture::Labyrinth Container

Reading

2 entries in ESTC (1725, 1756).

See Henry Gally, "A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings", from his Translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (London: Printed for John Hooke, 1725).<Link to ESTC>

Reading printed edition from The Augustan Reprint Society (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1952).

Text from Project Gutenberg, by David Starner, Louise Hope and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team <Link to PGDP>.

09/23/2013