Excerpt from Essays of Richard Steele As so many new facts in Steele's life have of recent years come to light, it may not be amiss to embody them in a brief outline of his strenuous and vigorous career. Although there are not a few features of his character which may be attributed to his Irish origin, it is remarkable that there is not a trace in his writings of what it is nowadays the fashion to call the Celtic spirit; nor indeed in those of any of the Irishmen who have taken a high place in the bead-roll of the great English writers. It would seem as if it were not to be in the land of its birth that Irish genius was to find inspiration but Ireland in the eighteenth century was by no means a place to develop the Celtic or indeed any other worthy spirit. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Reflecting on Montaigne, Virginia Woolf remarked, "The most common actions-a walk, a talk, solitude in one's own orchard-can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind." In Quotidiana, Patrick Madden illuminates these common actions and seemingly commonplace moments, making connections that revise and reconfigure the overlooked and underappreciated.