Liber Amoris, Or, The New Pygmalion

Name: Liber Amoris, Or, The New Pygmalion
Author: William Hazlitt

by William Hazlitt

Pages: about 110
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 2 h at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 67 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

H. Oh! is it you? I had something to shew you—I have got a picture here. Do you know any one it’s like?
H. That’s because you don’t see yourself with the same eyes that others do. I don’t think it handsomer, and the expression is hardly so fine as yours sometimes is.
S. Now you flatter me. Besides, the complexion is fair, and mine is dark.
H. Thine is pale and beautiful, my love, not dark! But if your colour were a little heightened, and you wore the same dress, and your hair were let down over your shoulders, as it is here, it might be taken for a picture of you. Look here, only see how like it is. The forehead is like, with that little obstinate protrusion in the middle; the eyebrows are like, and the eyes are just like yours, when you look up and say—“No—never!”
H. I don’t know about that—I never heard you say so but once; but that was once too often for my peace. It was when you told me, “you could never be mine.” Ah! if you are never to be mine, I shall not long be myself. I cannot go on as I am. My faculties leave me: I think of nothing, I have no feeling about any thing but thee: thy sweet image has taken possession of me, haunts me, and will drive me to distraction. Yet I could almost wish to go mad for thy sake: for then I might fancy that I had thy love in return, which I cannot live without!
S. Do not, I beg, talk in that manner, but tell me what this is a picture of.
H. I hardly know; but it is a very small and delicate copy (painted in oil on a gold ground) of some fine old Italian picture, Guido’s or Raphael’s, but I think Raphael’s.

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Liber Amoris, Or, The New Pygmalion

From the opening

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