 |
| An Alchemist. 1661, Adriaen van Ostade via The National Gallery |
SCENES BEYOND THE WESTERN BORDER (JUNE 1852)
"Only too true! Other works of genius are scarcely recognized: poetry is as dead as astrology: life is exhausted, and the mind overpowered by the accumulation of facts." --June 1852 Scenes Beyond the Western Border; and revised in Scenes and Adventures in the Army ("by the accumulation of facts" changed to "in the attempt to master a vast accumulation of facts.")
And though this state of things, united with the ever multiplying freshets of new books, seems inevitably to point to a coming time, when the mass of humanity reduced to one level of dotage, authors shall be scarce as alchymists are to-day, and the printing-press be reckoned a small invention.... --Pierre; Or, The Ambiguities
