Anecdotal Evidence

A new word discovered while reading John Dryden’s translation of the Sixth Satire of the Roman poet Persius :   “He sprinkles pepper with...

Age is dreaded for the supposedly inevitable loss of memory. We lose the past and dwell in a timeless, featureless present as blank as a mov...

The closest I came to having a genuine argument with my late friend D.G. Myers , as brilliant a literary critic and scholar as I have known,...

A young reader finds himself attracted to and intimidated by the prospect of reading The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) by Robert Burton (157...

On learning of certain deaths we’re left feeling momentarily desolate. This holds even for people we have never met and know only through th...

The English poet William Cowper (1731-1800) suffered his first attack of mental illness – today we would likely call it profound depression ...

A reader asks a science-fictiony question: “Who is your idea of the Ideal Writer? Either a real writer from the past or a list of characteri...