Love and Business by Edmund Gosse — Read

LOVE AND BUSINESS: _in a Collection of occasionary Verse and epistolary Prose not hitherto published. By Mr. George Farquhar_. En Orenge il n'y a point d'oranges. _London, printed for B. Lintott, at the Post-House, in the Middle Temple-Gate, Fleet Street_. 1702.

There are some books, like some people, of whom we form an indulgent opinion without finding it easy to justify our liking. The young man who went to the life-insurance office and reported that his father had died of no particular disease, but just of "plain death," would sympathise with the feeling I mention. Sometimes we like a book, not for any special merit, but just because it is what it is. The rare, and yet not celebrated, miscellany of which I am about to write has this character. It is not instructive, or very high-toned, or exceptionally clever, but if it were a man, all people that are not prigs would say that it was a very good sort of fellow. If it be, as it certainly is, a literary advantage for a nondescript collection of trifles, to reproduce minutely the personality of its writer, then _Love and Business_ has one definite merit.