Anecdotes
There are a number of stories associated with George Dyer particularly regarding his myopia and his notable eccentricities. These stories were famously told by two of his well known friends Leigh Hunt and Charles Lamb. Lamb in his Elia essay Amicus Redivivus relates an incident in which Dyer, after a visit to the Lamb household in Islington, walked the wrong way on the pathway and went right into the New River, nearly drowning himself in the process. Leigh Hunt tells a similarly story regarding Dyer, in which after spending the evening at the Hunt's for dinner, he inadvertently left with only one shoe. Apparently Dyer's missing shoe went unnoticed by him until he arrived home and he returned to the Hunt household after midnight, awakening everyone, to retrieve his missing shoe which was finally located under a table.
Another incident relating to Dyer concerns a preface which he wrote for his Poems published in 1802, and is described in detail by E. V. Lucas in his Life of Charles Lamb. It seems that on rereading one of the first prints of his book, Dyer claimed that there was a significant error in reasoning contained on the first page of the preface. Dyer rushed to the printer and at no small expense to himself had a number of prints redone. These stories can be found particularly in Hunt's Autobiography, the Essays of Elia, the Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, and The Life of Charles Lamb by E.V. Lucas.
Read more about this topic: George Dyer (poet)
Famous quotes containing the word anecdotes:
“They soon became like brothers from community of wrongs;
They wrote each other little odes and sang each other songs;
They told each other anecdotes disparaging their wives;
On several occasions, too, they saved each other’s lives.”
—Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)
“Yet, hermit and stoic as he was, he was really fond of sympathy, and threw himself heartily and childlike into the company of young people whom he loved, and whom he delighted to entertain, as he only could, with the varied and endless anecdotes of his experiences by field and river: and he was always ready to lead a huckleberry-party or a search for chestnuts and grapes.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“How the imagination is piqued by anecdotes of some great man passing incognito, as a king in gray clothes.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)