The Principles of Criticism: An Introduction to the Study of Literature

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George Allen, 1897 - Criticism - 284 pages
 

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Page 222 - I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
Page 195 - I have seen A curious Child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped Shell ; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely ; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy ; for murmurings from within Were heard, — sonorous cadences ! whereby, To his belief, the Monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native Sea.
Page 58 - The use of this FEIGNED HISTORY hath been to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things doth deny it...
Page 201 - Calm soul of all things! make it mine To feel, amid the city's jar, That there abides a peace of thine, Man did not make, and cannot mar. The will to neither strive nor cry, The power to feel with others give! Calm, calm me more! nor let me die Before I have begun to live.
Page 193 - Farewell ! a long farewell, to all my greatness ! This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him . The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And, — when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, — nips his root, And then he falls, as I do.
Page 98 - It is this sense which furnishes the imagination with its ideas ; so that by ' the pleasures of the imagination,' or ' fancy' (which I shall use promiscuously), I here mean such as arise from visible objects, either when we have them actually in our view, or when we call up their ideas into our minds by paintings, statues, descriptions, or any the like occasion.
Page 116 - Illi agmine certo Laocoonta petunt, et primum parva duorum Corpora natorum serpens amplexus uterque Implicat, et miseros morsu depascitur artus. Post ipsum, auxilio subeuntem ac tela ferentem, Corripiunt, spirisque ligant ingentibus: et jam Bis medium amplexi, bis collo squamea circum Terga dati, superant capite et cervicibus altis.
Page 175 - Or we find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them, in a poetry where the contents may be what they will, but where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude ourselves in either case ; and the best cure for our delusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word life, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards life.
Page 196 - ye stars, ye waters, On my heart your mighty charm renew ; Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you, Feel my soul becoming vast like you! " From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, Over the lit sea's unquiet way, In the rustling night-air came the answer: " Wouldst thou be as these are ? Live as they.
Page 178 - The grand power of poetry is its interpretative power ; by which I mean, not a power of drawing out in black and white an explanation of the mystery of the universe, but the power of so dealing with things as to awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, and of our relations with them.

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