Lectures on the English Poets: Delivered at the Surrey Institution |
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Page 26
... writer has more or less of rhythmical adaptation , except poets , who , when deprived of the regular mechanism of verse , seem to have no principle of modulation left in their writings . An excuse might be made for rhyme in the same ...
... writer has more or less of rhythmical adaptation , except poets , who , when deprived of the regular mechanism of verse , seem to have no principle of modulation left in their writings . An excuse might be made for rhyme in the same ...
Page 28
... writer's genius , though not 66 dipped in dews of Castalie , " was baptised with the Holy Spirit and with fire ! The pictures in this book are no small part of it . If the confinement of Philoctetes in the island of Lemnos was a subject ...
... writer's genius , though not 66 dipped in dews of Castalie , " was baptised with the Holy Spirit and with fire ! The pictures in this book are no small part of it . If the confinement of Philoctetes in the island of Lemnos was a subject ...
Page 29
... want of elasticity and motion . The story does not " give an echo to the seat where love is throned . " The heart does not answer of itself like a chord in music . The fancy does not run on before the writer with ON POETRY IN GENERAL . 29.
... want of elasticity and motion . The story does not " give an echo to the seat where love is throned . " The heart does not answer of itself like a chord in music . The fancy does not run on before the writer with ON POETRY IN GENERAL . 29.
Page 30
... writer with breathless expectation , but is dragged along with an infinite number of pins and wheels , like those with which the Lilliputians dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royal palace . Sir Charles Grandison is a coxcomb . What sort ...
... writer with breathless expectation , but is dragged along with an infinite number of pins and wheels , like those with which the Lilliputians dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royal palace . Sir Charles Grandison is a coxcomb . What sort ...
Page 31
... writers , because their images , though fine in themselves , are not to the purpose , and do not carry on the argument . The French poetry wants the forms of the ima- gination . It is didactic more than dramatic . And some of our own ...
... writers , because their images , though fine in themselves , are not to the purpose , and do not carry on the argument . The French poetry wants the forms of the ima- gination . It is didactic more than dramatic . And some of our own ...
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Common terms and phrases
admirable affectation allegory appear Ballads beauty Beggar's Opera blank verse Boccaccio character Chaucer common Cutty Sark death delight describes doth equal excellence face Faery Queen fame fancy feeling finest flowers genius gives Gonne grace Gulliver's Travels happy hates hath heart heaven Herbert Croft hire Homer human idea images imagination interest kind Knight's Tale labour language less light lines living look Lord Lord Byron Lyrical Ballads manners Milton mind moral Muse nature never o'er objects painted passion pathos persons pleasure poem poet poetical poetry Pope praise prose racter reader rhyme satire scene sense sentiment Shakspeare Shanter shew song soul sound Spenser spirit spring style sweet ther thing thou thought tion Titian tree truth verse Whan wings wolde words Wordsworth writer wyllowe-tree youth
Popular passages
Page 145 - Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
Page 321 - The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order...
Page 71 - 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 113 - ... an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intense study, (which I take to be my portion in this life,) joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die.
Page 271 - Kate soon will be a woefu' woman! Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg, And win the keystane of the brig; There, at them thou thy tail may toss, A running stream they dare na cross! But ere the keystane she could make, The fient a tail she had to shake; For Nannie, far before the rest, Hard upon noble Maggie prest, And flew at Tarn wi' furious ettle; But little wist she Maggie's mettle!
Page 21 - Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream : The genius, and the mortal instruments, Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.
Page 273 - But hark ! a rap comes gently to the door ; Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the same, Tells how a neebor lad cam' o'er the moor, To do some errands, and convoy her hame. The wily mother sees the conscious flame Sparkle in Jenny's e'e, and flush her cheek ; With heart-struck anxious care, inquires his name, While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak : Weel pleased the mother hears it's nae wild, worthless rake. Wi...
Page 117 - And, missing thee, I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven green To behold the wandering moon, Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the heaven's wide pathless way, And oft, as if her head she bowed, Stooping through a fleecy cloud.
Page 243 - I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous Boy, The sleepless Soul that perished in his pride; Of Him who walked in glory and in joy Following his plough, along the mountain-side : By our own spirits are we deified : We poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.
Page 199 - Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store Of charms which Nature to her votary yields ! The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields ; All that the genial ray of morning gilds, And all that echoes to the song of even, All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields, And all the dread magnificence of Heaven, Oh, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven ! X.