Writings, Volumen11

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Ticknor, 1864

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Página 35 - Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread But as the marigold at the sun's eye, And in themselves their pride lies buried, For at a frown they in their glory die. The painful warrior famoused for fight, After a thousand victories once foil'd, Is from the book of honour razed quite, And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd : Then happy I, that love and am beloved Where I may not remove nor be removed.
Página 95 - ... it. In fact, under the rude yet also artificial character of newspaper style, each separate monster period is a vast arch, which, not receiving its keystone, not being locked into self-supporting cohesion, until you nearly reach its close, imposes of necessity upon the unhappy reader all the onus of its ponderous weight through the main process of its construction.
Página 160 - ... through four-and-twenty Olympiads, each containing four solar years. He narrowly escaped being a hundred years old ; and though that did not carry him from centre to centre, yet, as each system might be supposed to protend a radius each way of twenty years, he had, in fact, a full personal cognisance (and pretty equally) of the two systems, remote as they were, which composed the total world of Grecian genius. Two circumstances have made this man interesting to all posterity ; so that people,...
Página 190 - For what reason have we insisted on this unpleasant view of a phenomenon incident to the limitation of our faculties, and apparently without remedy ? Upon another occasion it might have been useful to do so, were it only to impress upon every writer the vast importance of compression. Simply to retrench one word from each sentence, one superfluous epithet, for example, would probably increase the disposable time of the public by one twelfth part; in other words, would add another month to the year,...
Página 112 - And after it has ceased to be a badge of inspiration, metre will be retained as a badge of professional distinction ; — Pythagoras, for instance, within five centuries of Christ, Thales or Theognis, will adopt metre out of a secondary prudence ; Orpheus and the elder Sibyl, out of an original necessity. Those people are, therefore, mistaken who imagine that prose is either a natural or a possible form of composition in early states of society. It is such truth only as ascends from the earth, not...
Página 158 - Now, let us step on a hundred years forward. We are now within hail of Alexander ; and a brilliant consistory of Grecian men that is by which he is surrounded. There are now exquisite, masters of the more refined comedy ; there are, again, great philosophers, for all the great schools are represented by able successors ; and, above all others, there is the one philosopher who played with men's minds...
Página 274 - ... in vain ? He had infused into it much knowledge and much thought ; had often polished it to elegance, often dignified it with splendour, and sometimes heightened it to sublimity : he perceived in it many excellences, and did not discover that it wanted that without which all others are of small avail, the power of engaging attention and alluring curiosity.
Página 184 - Never in one word was so profound a truth conveyed. Mr. Wordsworth was thinking, doubtless, of poetry like his own : viz. that which is eminently meditative. And the truth is apparent on consideration : for, if language were merely a dress, then you could separate the two ; you could lay the thoughts on the left hand, the language on the right. But, generally speaking, you can no more deal thus with poetic thoughts than you can with soul and body. The union is too subtle, the intertexture too ineffable,...
Página 229 - Few writers have shown a more extraordinary compass of powers than Donne; for he combined - what no other man has ever done - the last sublimation of dialectical subtlety and address with the most impassioned majesty. Massy diamonds compose the very substance of his poem on the Metempsychosis, thoughts and descriptions which have the fervent and gloomy sublimity of Ezekiel or ./Eschylus, whilst a diamond dust of rhetorical brilliancies is strewed over the whole of his occasional verses and his prose.
Página 76 - It is in counterfeit passion, in the mimical situations of novels, or in poems that are efforts of ingenuity and no ebullitions of absolute unsimulated feeling, that female writers endeavour to sustain their own jaded sensibility, or to reinforce the languishing interest of their readers by extravagances of language. No woman in this world, under a movement of resentment from a false accusation, or from jealousy, or from confidence betrayed, ever was at leisure to practise vagaries of caprice in...

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