The Second Funeral of Napoleon

By Thackeray, William Makepeace

Book Id: WPLBN0000676352
Format Type: PDF eBook
File Size: 174.56 KB.
Reproduction Date: 2005

Title:	The Second Funeral of Napoleon
Author:	Thackeray, William Makepeace
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Fiction, Literature, Literature & drama
Collections:	Penn State University's Electronic Classics Series Collection
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	Penn State University's Electronic Classics


Citation APA MLA Chicago Thackeray, W. M. (n.d.). The Second Funeral of Napoleon. Retrieved from http://www.self.gutenberg.org/

Excerpt
Excerpt: It is no easy task in this world to distinguish between what is great in it, and what is mean; and many and many is the puzzle that I have had in reading History (or the works of fiction which go by that name), to know whether I should laud up to the skies, and endeavor, to the best of my small capabilities, to imitate the remarkable character about whom I was reading, or whether I should fling aside the book and the hero of it, as things altogether base, unworthy, laughable, and get a novel, or a game of billiards, or a pipe of tobacco, or the report of the last debate in the House, or any other employment which would leave the mind in a state of easy vacuity, rather than pester it with a vain set of dates relating to actions which are in themselves not worth a fig, or with a parcel of names of people whom it can do one no earthly good to remember.