Introduction to the Literature of Europe: In the Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Volume 2

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J. Murray, 1839 - Europe

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Page 375 - Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart -wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to" bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.
Page 395 - In Shakespeare's poems the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other.
Page 307 - For proof whereof, let but most of the verses be put in prose, and then ask the meaning, and it will be found that one verse did but beget another, without ordering at the first what should be at the last; which becomes a confused mass of words, with a tinkling sound of rhyme, barely accompanied with reason.
Page 436 - The elder is named Pamela; by many men not deemed inferior to her sister: for my part, when I marked them both, methought there was (if at least such...
Page 381 - Of William Shakespeare," says one of our greatest living authors (Hallam, in his Introduction to the Literature of Europe) of our greatest dead one, "whom, through the mouths of those whom he has inspired to body forth the modifications of his immense mind, we seem to know better than any human writer, it may be truly said that we scarcely know anything.
Page 345 - Sì che insieme movea pietate e riso Ne le vezzose ninfe e ne' pastori? Né già cose scrivea degne di riso, Se ben cose facea degne di riso.
Page 332 - His command of imagery is wide, easy, and luxuriant. He threw the soul of harmony into our verse, and made it more warmly, tenderly, and magnificently descriptive, than it ever was before, or, with a few exceptions, than it has ever been since.
Page 437 - Philoclea so bashful as though her excellencies had stolen into her before she was aware, so humble that she will put all pride out of countenance, — in sum, such proceeding as will stir hope, but teach hope good manners; Pamela of high thoughts, who avoids not pride with not knowing her excellencies, but by making that one of her excellencies to be void of pride, — her mother's wisdom, greatness, nobility, but (if I can guess aright) knit with a more constant temper.
Page 376 - His David and Bethsabe is the earliest fountain of pathos and harmony that can be traced in our dramatic poetry. His fancy is rich, and his feeling tender ; and his conceptions of dramatic character have no inconsiderable mixture of solid veracity and ideal beauty. There is no such sweetness of versification and imagery to be found in our blank verse anterior to Shakespeare.
Page 330 - The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors, And poets sage ; the fir that weepeth still, The willow worn of forlorn paramours, The yew obedient to the bender's will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill...

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