Handbook to the fine art collections in the International exhibition of 1862

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Page 137 - Architecture is to be regarded by us with the most serious thought. We may live without her, and worship •without- her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears ! how many pages of doubtful record might we not often spare, for a few stones left one upon another...
Page 87 - You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the same abundance as your good fortunes are: And yet, for aught I see, they are as sick, that surfeit with too much, as they that starve with nothing...
Page 16 - British Novelists and their Styles. Being a Critical Sketch of the History of British Prose Fiction. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. Life of John Milton.
Page 57 - My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of sighs: She swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange, 'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful...
Page 26 - I am well aware how much I lay myself open to the censure and ridicule of the academical professors of other nations, in preferring the humble attempts of Gainsborough to the works of those regular graduates in the great historical style. But we have the sanction of all mankind in preferring genius in a lower rank of art, to feebleness and insipidity in the highest.
Page 23 - The Art which we profess has beauty for its object : this it is our business to discover and to express ; the beauty of which we are in quest is general and intellectual ; it is an idea that subsists only in the mind ; the sight never beheld it, nor has the hand expressed it : it is an idea residing in the breast of the artist, which he is always labouring to impart, and which he dies at last without imparting...
Page 16 - I." Shakespeare and Goethe.— II. Milton's Youth. — III. The Three Devils : Luther's, Milton's, and Goethe's. — IV. Dryden, and the Literature of the Restoration. — V. Dean Swift. — VI. Chatterton : a Story of the Year 1770.— VII. Wordsworth.— VIII. Scottish Influence on British Literature. — IX. Theories of Poetry. — X. Prose and Verse : De Quincey.
Page 28 - When it was understood," said the artist, " that I intended to paint the characters as they had actually appeared on the scene, the Archbishop of York called on Reynolds, and asked his opinion ; they both came to my house to dissuade me from running so great a risk. Reynolds began a very ingenious and elegant dissertation on the state of the public taste in this country, and the danger which every innovation incurred of contempt and ridicule, and concluded by urging me earnestly to adopt the costume...
Page 35 - The name of Shakespeare is the greatest in our literature, — it is the greatest in all literature. No man ever came near to him in the creative powers of the mind ; no man had ever such strength at once, and such variety of imagination.

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