Essays in Criticism: Second series, Volume 1 |
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Page 9
... classic is a mist as dangerous to the future of a literature as it is intolerable for the purposes of history . ' ' It hinders , ' he goes on , ' it hinders us from seeing more than one single point , the culminating and exceptional ...
... classic is a mist as dangerous to the future of a literature as it is intolerable for the purposes of history . ' ' It hinders , ' he goes on , ' it hinders us from seeing more than one single point , the culminating and exceptional ...
Page 10
... classic character . If he is a dubious classic , let us sift him ; if he is a false classic , let us explode him . But if he is a real classic , if his work belongs to the class of the very best ( for this is the true and right meaning ...
... classic character . If he is a dubious classic , let us sift him ; if he is a false classic , let us explode him . But if he is a real classic , if his work belongs to the class of the very best ( for this is the true and right meaning ...
Page 11
... classic , to acquaint oneself with his time and his life and his historical relationships , is mere literary dilet- tantism unless it has that clear sense and deeper enjoyment for its end . It may be said that the more we know about a ...
... classic , to acquaint oneself with his time and his life and his historical relationships , is mere literary dilet- tantism unless it has that clear sense and deeper enjoyment for its end . It may be said that the more we know about a ...
Page 12
... classic all the better for his investigations ; he often is distracted from the enjoyment of the best , and with the less good he overbusies himself , and is prone to over - rate it in proportion to the trouble which it has cost him ...
... classic all the better for his investigations ; he often is distracted from the enjoyment of the best , and with the less good he overbusies himself , and is prone to over - rate it in proportion to the trouble which it has cost him ...
Page 13
... classic in poetry , that we do well , I say , to set it fixedly before our minds as our object in studying poets and poetry , and to make the desire of at- taining it the one principle to which , as the Imitation says , whatever we may ...
... classic in poetry , that we do well , I say , to set it fixedly before our minds as our object in studying poets and poetry , and to make the desire of at- taining it the one principle to which , as the Imitation says , whatever we may ...
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Common terms and phrases
admirers Amiel Amiel's Journal Anna Karénine beauty Burns Byron called century character charm Chaucer classic Count Tolstoi criticism diction Dryden English poetry English poets excellence Fanny Brawne faults feel France French genius gift give glory Godwin Goethe Gray Gray's happiness Harriet Harriet Westbrook Hogg honour Jesus Johnny Keats judgment Keats kind Kitty language Leopardi letters Levine Levine's literary literature living Lord Byron Lord Macaulay Madame Bovary manner Mary matter Milton mind Molière moral ideas nation nature never novel passage passion Paul Bourget Pembroke Hall perhaps poems poet poet's poetic truth praise produced Professor Dowden prose real estimate recognise religion Sainte-Beuve Scherer Scotch sense seriousness Shakespeare Shelley Shelley's sincerity sort soul speak spirit Stiva superiority tells things thought tion true verse virtue Voltaire volume whole words Wordsworth Wordsworth's poetry Wordsworthian writes Wronsky wrote
Popular passages
Page 47 - Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang, To step aside is human : One point must still be greatly dark, The moving Why they do it ; And just as lamely can ye mark, How far perhaps they rue it. Who made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us, He knows each chord its various tone, Each spring its various bias : Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it ; What's done we partly may compute, But know not what's resisted.
Page 65 - Memory and her siren daughters ; but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases.
Page 200 - Were with his heart, and that was far away ; He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize ; But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother, — he, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday.
Page 49 - Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met, or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
Page 38 - I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem...
Page 191 - What, in ill thoughts again ? Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither : Ripeness is all : Come on.
Page 19 - Led on the eternal Spring. Not that fair field Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers, Herself a fairer flower by gloomy Dis Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world...
Page 1 - The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay.
Page 18 - Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge, And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them With deaf 'ning clamour in the slippery clouds, That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Page 156 - To hoarse or mute, though fall'n on evil days, On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues...