Essays in Criticism: Third Series, Volume 10

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Ball Publishing Company, 1910 - Criticism - 296 pages
 

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Page 146 - It is an honour for a man to cease from strife : but every fool will be meddling.
Page 217 - Such equivocations are always unskilful ; but here they are indecent, and at least approach to impiety, of which, however, 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 48 - Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert ; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates ; the superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden.
Page 41 - It is perfect when we have acquired that harmonious acquiescence of mind which we feel in contemplating a grand spectacle that is intelligible to us; when we have lost that impatient irritation of mind which we feel in presence of an immense, moving, confused spectacle which, while it perpetually excites our curiosity, perpetually baffles our comprehension.
Page 17 - No more from out the sunset, No more across the foam, No more across the windy hills Will Sandy Star come home. He went away to search it With a curse upon his tongue; And in his hand the staff of life, Made music as it swung. I wonder if he found it, And knows the mystery now — Our Sandy Star who went away, With the secret on his brow.
Page 157 - You had all these advantages in your ancient states ; but you chose to act as if you had never been moulded into civil society, and had everything to begin anew.
Page 205 - THEY, who to states and governors of the commonwealth direct their speech, high court of parliament! or wanting such access in a private condition, write that which they foresee may advance the public good; I suppose them, as at the beginning of no mean endeavour, not a little altered and moved inwardly in their minds...
Page 90 - The perfect woman, nobly planned To warm, to comfort, and command; And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of an angel light.
Page 196 - Some time in March I finished the ' Lives of the Poets,' which I wrote in my usual way, dilatorily and hastily, unwilling to work, and working with vigour and haste.
Page 34 - That promised land it will not be ours to enter, and we shall die in the wilderness: but to have desired to enter it, to have saluted it from afar, is already, perhaps, the best distinction among contemporaries; it will certainly be the best title to esteem with posterity.

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