拍品專文
Coleridge declared White's sonnet on "Night and Death" to be "the finest and moat grandly conceived sonnet in our language" (Oxford Companion to English Literature p. 883).
細節
JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE (1775-1841)
Three autograph poems in the author's hand on 2 integral leaves, 4°, the final page blank, all sonnets entitled: "Night and Death," "On hearing myself called for the first time an Old Man at the age of 50," "On My Love of Sublime Poetry," dated 1825-26, with a 9-line note, signed with initials, on the origin of the first sonnet, and another note at the end of the second sonnet reading: "Both this and the preceding sonnet have been published; the first without the author's consent; the second with his approbation, and for a charitable purpose. -- The one that follows was never published. It was written in the country where I had been reading Paradise Lost, for the third time, with particular attention, and Spenser's Faery Queen, for the first."
Three autograph poems in the author's hand on 2 integral leaves, 4°, the final page blank, all sonnets entitled: "Night and Death," "On hearing myself called for the first time an Old Man at the age of 50," "On My Love of Sublime Poetry," dated 1825-26, with a 9-line note, signed with initials, on the origin of the first sonnet, and another note at the end of the second sonnet reading: "Both this and the preceding sonnet have been published; the first without the author's consent; the second with his approbation, and for a charitable purpose. -- The one that follows was never published. It was written in the country where I had been reading Paradise Lost, for the third time, with particular attention, and Spenser's Faery Queen, for the first."