The English Poets: Lessing, Rousseau: Essays |
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Page 13
... critics . One does not need to advertise the squirrels where the nut - trees are , nor could any amount of lecturing persuade them to spend their teeth on a hollow nut . On the whole , the Scottish poetry of the fifteenth century has ...
... critics . One does not need to advertise the squirrels where the nut - trees are , nor could any amount of lecturing persuade them to spend their teeth on a hollow nut . On the whole , the Scottish poetry of the fifteenth century has ...
Page 16
... critic Rivarol said of Dante ) with the bare help of the substantive and verb , is worth acres of this dead cord - wood piled stick on stick , a boundless continuity of dryness . I would rather have written that half - stanza of ...
... critic Rivarol said of Dante ) with the bare help of the substantive and verb , is worth acres of this dead cord - wood piled stick on stick , a boundless continuity of dryness . I would rather have written that half - stanza of ...
Page 17
... critics of some- thing to which our judgment will not consent , and from which our taste revolts . A collection of poets is commonly made up , nine parts in ten , of this perfunctory verse - making , and I never look at one without ...
... critics of some- thing to which our judgment will not consent , and from which our taste revolts . A collection of poets is commonly made up , nine parts in ten , of this perfunctory verse - making , and I never look at one without ...
Page 37
... criticism will find its advantage , not only in considering what he was , but what , under the given circumstances , it was possible for him to be . The fact that the great poem of Spenser was inspired by the " Orlando of Ariosto , and ...
... criticism will find its advantage , not only in considering what he was , but what , under the given circumstances , it was possible for him to be . The fact that the great poem of Spenser was inspired by the " Orlando of Ariosto , and ...
Page 43
... critic of the day , and because they are a good sample of Spenser's earlier verse : - " Thou kenst not , Percie , how the rhyme should rage ; O , if my temples were distained with wine , And girt in garlands of wild ivy - twine , How I ...
... critic of the day , and because they are a good sample of Spenser's earlier verse : - " Thou kenst not , Percie , how the rhyme should rage ; O , if my temples were distained with wine , And girt in garlands of wild ivy - twine , How I ...
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artist beauty become Ben Jonson biography blank-verse called certainly character Châteaubriand Chaucer Coleridge conscious criticism Dante delight divine doth doubt eclogue Edited England English poet Ernest Rhys exquisite eyes Faery Queen fancy feeling French genius German gives Goethe Grasmere Greek Hamlet heart Herr Stahr ideal imagination inspired instinct judgment Keats kind language Latin learned Lessing Lessing's letters literary literature living look Lord Lord Houghton Lyrical Ballads Macbeth Masson matter meaning metrist Milton mind moral nature never original Paradise Lost passage passion perhaps Petrarch phrase play poems poet poetic poetry prose rhyme Rousseau says seems sense sentiment Shakespeare sometimes soul speak Spenser style sure sweet syllable sympathy taste tells temperament thing thought tragedy translation true truth verse Voltaire volume whole William Wordsworth words Wordsworth writing written wrote
Popular passages
Page 112 - This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. BAN. This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved mansionry that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed The air is delicate.
Page 75 - To th' instruments divine respondence meet: The silver sounding instruments did meet With the base murmure of the waters fall: The waters fall with difference discreet, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call: The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.
Page 29 - Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to bide ; To lose good days that might be better spent ; To waste long nights in pensive discontent ; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow ; To feed on hope ; to pine with fear and sorrow ; To have thy Prince's grace, yet want her peer?
Page 125 - Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change : Thy pyramids built up with newer might To me are nothing novel, nothing strange : They are but dressings of a former sight. Our dates are brief, and therefore we admire What thou dost foist upon us that is old, And rather make them born to our desire, Than think that we before have heard them told. Thy registers and thee I both defy, Not...
Page 168 - Lastly, I should not choose this manner of writing, wherein knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account, but of my left hand.
Page 248 - And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority...
Page 215 - The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure.
Page 289 - In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons, Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room Throng numberless...
Page 163 - Hath scathed the forest oaks, or mountain pines, With singed top their stately growth, though bare Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared To speak ; whereat their doubled ranks they bend From wing to wing, and half inclose him round With all his peers : attention held them mute.
Page 191 - THE measure is English heroic verse without rime, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin, — rime being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre...