Collected Essays, Volume 1Macmillan, 1925 |
Common terms and phrases
admiration adventure Ancients Ariosto beauty Ben Jonson blank verse Boiardo Burns Byron Célimène character comedy Corneille criticism Dante discourse dramatic Dryden Edinburgh eighteenth century England English Essay fashion French genius George Wyndham Hazlitt Heroic Plays heroic poem Homer honour Horace Walpole Hôtel de Bourgogne House of Stuart Hyperion imagination Italian Johnson Joseph Ritson Keats King knew language learning letters literary literature living Lord lyric Macaulay Milton mind modern Molière nature never novels Ohthere opinion Paradise Lost passage poet poetical poetry politics Pope praise Preface prose quoted readers remember rhyme Ritson romance satirical Scott Scottish Shakespeare Shelley Sordello sort speak Spenser spirit stanza story style Tasso Tennyson things Thomas Warton thou thought tragedy true Unity verse W. P. Ker Walpole's Warton Waverley Waverley Novels words Wordsworth write wrote
Popular passages
Page 230 - What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? ? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Page 230 - Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but more endeared, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone...
Page 132 - Hannibal gave my young ideas such a turn, that I used to strut in raptures up and down after the recruiting drum and bag-pipe, and wish myself tall enough to be a soldier; while the story of Wallace poured a Scottish prejudice into my veins, which will boil along there, till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest.
Page 258 - The broken sheds look'd sad and strange: Unlifted was the clinking latch; Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said, ' My life is dreary, He cometh not...
Page 77 - Cervantes' serious air, Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair, Or praise the court, or magnify mankind, Or thy grieved country's copper chains unbind...
Page 78 - And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
Page 225 - The only imaginary being resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgment, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandisement, which, in the Hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest.
Page 222 - Maiden -Thought becomes gradually darkened, and at the same time, on all sides of it, many doors are set open — but all dark — all leading to dark passages — We see not the balance of good and evil — we are in a mist — we are now in that state — We feel the
Page 54 - In my style, I have professed to imitate the divine Shakespeare; which that I might perform more freely, I have disencumbered myself from rhyme. Not that I condemn my former way, but that this is more proper to my present purpose.
Page 319 - Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp, When Agrican, with all his northern powers, Besieged Albracca, as romances tell, The city...