Specimens of Modern English Literary CriticismWilliam Tenney Brewster |
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Page xxv
... Chaucer's verse is wrong , and a flitting acquaintance with the life of Shakespeare , the history of the stage , or the most common motive for human endeavour , would dispose of the Lamb's paradox that Shake- speare's plays are unfit ...
... Chaucer's verse is wrong , and a flitting acquaintance with the life of Shakespeare , the history of the stage , or the most common motive for human endeavour , would dispose of the Lamb's paradox that Shake- speare's plays are unfit ...
Page 22
... Chaucer has arranged the Pilgrimage to Canterbury ! Now , let us step on a hundred years for- ward . We are now within hail of Alexander , and a brilliant consistory of Grecian men that is by which he is surrounded . There are now ...
... Chaucer has arranged the Pilgrimage to Canterbury ! Now , let us step on a hundred years for- ward . We are now within hail of Alexander , and a brilliant consistory of Grecian men that is by which he is surrounded . There are now ...
Page 84
... Chaucer's . Everything in it seems in its place . A healthy sagacious man of the world has gone through the world ; he loves it , and knows it ; he dwells on it with fond appreciation ; every object of the old life of " merry England ...
... Chaucer's . Everything in it seems in its place . A healthy sagacious man of the world has gone through the world ; he loves it , and knows it ; he dwells on it with fond appreciation ; every object of the old life of " merry England ...
Page 137
... Chaucer , the hard marital selfishness of Milton , the brutality of Luther , the boorishness of Johnson , the ripe self- love of Wordsworth , the malice of Pope , the egoism of Goethe , the murky and selfish spleen of Carlyle , the ...
... Chaucer , the hard marital selfishness of Milton , the brutality of Luther , the boorishness of Johnson , the ripe self- love of Wordsworth , the malice of Pope , the egoism of Goethe , the murky and selfish spleen of Carlyle , the ...
Page 182
... Chaucer was transfused into his body , and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease . Milton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original ; and many besides myself have heard our famous Waller own that he ...
... Chaucer was transfused into his body , and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease . Milton has acknowledged to me that Spenser was his original ; and many besides myself have heard our famous Waller own that he ...
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Common terms and phrases
admiration alliteration Arnold artistic beauty Besant better called Canterbury Tales character Chaucer classic Coleridge Cowley Dickens Dickens's distinction Dryden Edgar Poe effect English essay estimate example expression eyes fact faculty fancy feeling fiction genius George Eliot give human idea imagination impression intellectual interest John Ruskin judgment kind language less literary criticism literature living manner matter means metaphysical poets Milton mind modern moral nature never Nevermore novel object opinion Ovid passion peculiar perfect perhaps Petrarch philosophical Pickwick Papers pleasure Poe's poem poet poetic poetry principle prose question Quincey Quincey's reader reason regard Robert Montgomery Ruskin seems sense Shakespeare sort soul sound speak spirit stanza story style Suspiria Swift taste things thou thought tion true truth Ulalume Venus and Adonis verse Virgil whole words Wordsworth writing
Popular passages
Page 267 - Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!
Page 266 - Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning — little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door — Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as
Page 300 - ... reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities : of sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea, with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order...
Page 289 - 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 145 - TO HELEN. Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome.
Page 59 - To move, but doth if th' other do. And, though it in the centre sit, Yet, when the other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must Like th
Page 146 - Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow (This — all this — was in the olden Time long ago), And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away.
Page 303 - Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul Of the wide world dreaming on things to come, Can yet the lease of my true love control, Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom. The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured And the sad augurs mock their own presage; Incertainties now crown themselves assured And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Page 290 - 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 285 - 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...