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A series of short essays and sketches that blend whimsical satire, literary criticism, and philosophical reflection. Through witty persona pieces and imagined conversations the writer examines authorship, artistic ambition, and the quirks of taste, alternating playful takes on romance, mythic motifs, and religious and domestic imagery. Each chapter treats a distinct conceit—from wizardry and lunar moods to architecture and anchoritic diversions—using ironic humor and elegiac observation to probe why people make stories, how patterns recur across generations, and how culture recasts childhood amusements into the trappings of adulthood.
[2] The reference is to a then prevalent form of brigandage and blackmail practised by the females of the smaller American cities, by which reputable women also were permitted to "accost" and to exercise all the other street privileges of strumpets.
[3] A minor poet and essayist of the period.
[4] In the Revised Version: King James's bishops hushed up this awkward matter with a pious mistranslation.