Specimens of Modern English Literary CriticismWilliam Tenney Brewster |
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Page 18
... poet whom he treats very severely in detail in some of his critical papers ; and it is rare to meet so neat and ... poetic imagination entitling it , though a history , to rank also among his prose - phantasies . Nor does the remark ...
... poet whom he treats very severely in detail in some of his critical papers ; and it is rare to meet so neat and ... poetic imagination entitling it , though a history , to rank also among his prose - phantasies . Nor does the remark ...
Page 23
... poet of original power , we do not certainly know that we have even any wrecks . Of those which pass under his name not merely the authorship , but the era , is very questionable indeed . Plutarch and Lucian , the unlearned reader must ...
... poet of original power , we do not certainly know that we have even any wrecks . Of those which pass under his name not merely the authorship , but the era , is very questionable indeed . Plutarch and Lucian , the unlearned reader must ...
Page 45
William Tenney Brewster. III SAMUEL JOHNSON ( 1709-1784 ) THE METAPHYSICAL POETS [ From the Life of Cowley ( 1780 ) in the Lives of the Poets ] COWLEY , like other poets who have written with narrow views , and , instead of tracing ...
William Tenney Brewster. III SAMUEL JOHNSON ( 1709-1784 ) THE METAPHYSICAL POETS [ From the Life of Cowley ( 1780 ) in the Lives of the Poets ] COWLEY , like other poets who have written with narrow views , and , instead of tracing ...
Page 47
... poet , nor assume the dignity of a writer , by descriptions copied from descriptions , by imita- tions borrowed from imitations , by traditional imagery and heredi- tary similes , by readiness of rhyme and volubility of syllables . In ...
... poet , nor assume the dignity of a writer , by descriptions copied from descriptions , by imita- tions borrowed from imitations , by traditional imagery and heredi- tary similes , by readiness of rhyme and volubility of syllables . In ...
Page 54
... poet ; but , that it may not want its due honour , Cleveland has paralleled it with the sun : The moderate value of our guiltless ore Makes no man atheist , and no woman whore ; Yet why should hallow'd vestals ' sacred shrine Deserve ...
... poet ; but , that it may not want its due honour , Cleveland has paralleled it with the sun : The moderate value of our guiltless ore Makes no man atheist , and no woman whore ; Yet why should hallow'd vestals ' sacred shrine Deserve ...
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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 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 299 - ... 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 228 - O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand...
Page 304 - And peace proclaims olives of endless age. Now with the drops of this most balmy time My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes, Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes: And thou in this shalt find thy monument, When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.
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 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 280 - But enough of this : there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that I am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty.
Page 266 - Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not...
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 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...