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   A

   COMMONPLACE BOOK

   OF

   Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies.


[Illustration]


   A COMMONPLACE BOOK--

   OF

   Thoughts, Memories, and Fancies.

   ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.

   PART I.--ETHICS AND CHARACTER.

   PART II.--LITERATURE AND ART.

   BY MRS. JAMESON.

   "Un peu de chaque chose, et rien du tout,--a la francaise!"--MONTAIGNE.

   With Illustrations and Etchings.

   SECOND EDITION, CORRECTED.

   LONDON:
   LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS.
   1855.


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PREFACE.


I must be allowed to say a few words in explanation of the contents of
this little volume, which is truly what its name sets forth--a book of
common-places, and nothing more. If I have never, in any work I have
ventured to place before the public, aspired to _teach_, (being myself a
_learner_ in all things,) at least I have hitherto done my best to
deserve the indulgence I have met with; and it would pain me if it could
be supposed that such indulgence had rendered me presumptuous or
careless.

For many years I have been accustomed to make a memorandum of any
thought which might come across me--(if pen and paper were at hand), and
to mark (and _remark_) any passage in a book which excited either a
sympathetic or an antagonistic feeling. This collection of notes
accumulated insensibly from day to day. The volumes on Shakspeare's
Women, on Sacred and Legendary Art, and various other productions,
sprung from seed thus lightly and casually sown, which, I hardly know
how, grew up and expanded into a regular, readable form, with a
beginning, a middle, and an end. But what was to be done with the
fragments which remained--without beginning, and without end--links of a
hidden or a