Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century ...

Front Cover
Joel Elias Spingarn
Clarendon Press, 1909 - Criticism

From inside the book

Contents

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 108 - I know very well that many, who pretend to be wise by the forms of being grave, are apt to despise both poetry and music as toys and trifles too light for the use or entertainment of serious men. But whoever find themselves wholly insensible to...
Page 309 - Biblia en lengua espanola traduzida palabra por palabra de la verdad Hebrayca por muy excelentes letrados. Vista y examinada por el officio de la Inquisition.
Page 65 - Politian with some others have attributed them to Lucian: but I think he must have little skill in painting, that cannot find out this to be an original; such diversity of passions, upon such variety of actions and passages of life and government* such freedom of thought, such boldness of expression, such bounty to his friends, such scorn of his enemies, such honour of learned men, such esteem of good, such knowledge of life, such contempt of death, with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge,...
Page 323 - Poetry is of so subtile a spirit, that, in pouring out of one language into another, it will all evaporate ; and, if a new spirit be not added in the transfusion, there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum.
Page 247 - I believe if a Poet should steal a Dialogue of any length, from the Extempore Discourse of the two Wittiest Men upon Earth, he would find the Scene but coldly receiv'd by the Town.
Page 33 - could 'not end his learned treatise without a panegyric of modern learning in comparison of the ancient; and the other falls so grossly into the censure of the old poetry, and preference of the new, that I could not read either of these strains without some indignation;. which no quality among men is so apt to raise in me, as self-sufficiency.
Page 65 - I think he must have little skill in painting, that cannot find out this to be an original; such diversity of passions, upon such variety of actions and passages of life and government, such freedom of thought, such boldness of expression, such bounty to his friends, such scorn of his enemies, such honour of learned men, such esteem of good, such knowledge of life, such contempt of death, with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge, could never be represented but by him that possessed them;...
Page 316 - SMITH. Well; but how is this done by a rule, Sir? BAYES. Why, thus, Sir; nothing so easy when understood. I take a book in my hand, either at home or elsewhere, for that's all one — if there be any wit in't, as there is no book but has some, I transverse it: that is, if it be prose, put it into verse (but that takes up some time), and if it be verse, put it into prose.
Page 83 - Masters have 5 found in his Works the best and truest Principles of all their Sciences or Arts, but that the noblest Nations have derived from them the Original of their several Races, though it be hardly yet agreed, Whether his Story be True or Fiction. In short, these two immortal Poets must be...
Page 104 - Thus we come to have more originals, and more that appear what they are ; we have more humour, because every man follows his own, and takes a pleasure, perhaps a pride, to shew it.

Bibliographic information