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Allan Ramsay appeared ballads beauty believe Boswell Browning Browning's century character characteristic charm classical close club contemporary criticism dead death delight doubt Edinburgh Elegy English poet English poetry epic essays fact fame famous father feeling Fergusson friends Goldsmith Grande Chartreuse Gray Gray's hand heart human Hume humor Johnson king Latin learning least less letters lish literary literature lived London lyric master Matthew Arnold Milton mind minstrel nature never night noble Obermann Oliver Goldsmith once Paracelsus passages passion perhaps period play poems poet poet's poetic poetry Pope praise prose reader religion Robert Fergusson romantic Rugby Chapel Samuel Johnson Scott seems sense Shakespeare song Sordello soul spirit Stanzas Stoops to Conquer story supreme lyric sympathy tender Tennyson things thought Thyrsis tion to-day town true truth utterance verse Vicar of Wakefield volume words Wordsworth write written wrote youth
Popular passages
Page 165 - Let him that is yet unacquainted with the powers of Shakespeare, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. When his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation. When his attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of Theobald and of Pope. Let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption;...
Page 8 - He found us when the age had bound Our souls in its benumbing round ; He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears. He laid us as we lay at birth On the cool flowery lap of earth...
Page 134 - I believe the writer not to have been conscious. Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its blaze drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known the author.
Page 6 - Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head. Physician of the iron age, Goethe has done his pilgrimage. He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear; And struck his finger on the place, And said: Thou ailest here, and here!
Page 10 - ... is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow. Ye alight in our van ! at your voice, Panic, despair, flee away. Ye move through the ranks, recall The stragglers, refresh the outworn, Praise, re-inspire the brave ! Order, courage, return. Eyes rekindling, and prayers, Follow your steps as ye go. Ye fill up the gaps in our files, Strengthen the wavering line, Stablish, continue our march, On, to the bound of the waste, On, to the City of God.
Page 13 - Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow, And faint the city gleams; Rare the lone pastoral huts — marvel not thou! The solemn peaks but to the stars are known, But to the stars, and the cold lunar beams; Alone the sun arises, and alone Spring the great streams.
Page 65 - Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.
Page 124 - 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...
Page 122 - Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home; not sleeping, or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring, in winter often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labour or to devotion; in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary, or memory have its full fraught: then, with useful and generous labours preserving the body's health and hardiness...
Page 143 - I have heard from some of his contemporaries that he was generally seen lounging at the College gate, with a circle of young students round him, whom he was entertaining with wit, and keeping from their studies, if not spiriting them up to rebellion against the College discipline, which in his maturer years he so much extolled.