Lectures on the English Poets: Delivered at the Surrey InstitutionThomas Dobson and Son, at the Stone house, no. 41, South Second Street. William Fry, printer., 1818 - English poetry - 331 pages |
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Page 7
... tion will distort or magnify the object , and con- vert it into the likeness of whatever is most proper to encourage the fear . " Our eyes are made the fools " of our other faculties . This is the universal law of the imagination ...
... tion will distort or magnify the object , and con- vert it into the likeness of whatever is most proper to encourage the fear . " Our eyes are made the fools " of our other faculties . This is the universal law of the imagination ...
Page 8
... tion of his age with theirs ; for there is no other image which could do justice to the agonising sense of his wrongs and his despair ! Poetry is the high - wrought enthusiasm of fancy and feeling . As in describing natural objects , it ...
... tion of his age with theirs ; for there is no other image which could do justice to the agonising sense of his wrongs and his despair ! Poetry is the high - wrought enthusiasm of fancy and feeling . As in describing natural objects , it ...
Page 13
... tion in the next street , the theatre would very soon be empty . It is not then the difference between fiction and reality that solves the difficulty . Chil- dren are satisfied with the stories of ghosts and witches in plain prose : nor ...
... tion in the next street , the theatre would very soon be empty . It is not then the difference between fiction and reality that solves the difficulty . Chil- dren are satisfied with the stories of ghosts and witches in plain prose : nor ...
Page 14
... tion ; to make it a bugbear to ourselves , to point it out to others in all the splendour of deformity , to embody it to the senses , to stigmatise it in words , to grapple with it in thought , in action , to sharpen our intellect , to ...
... tion ; to make it a bugbear to ourselves , to point it out to others in all the splendour of deformity , to embody it to the senses , to stigmatise it in words , to grapple with it in thought , in action , to sharpen our intellect , to ...
Page 17
... tion , that is , of passion and indifference , cannot be the same , and they must have a separate language to do justice to either . Objects must strike dif- ferently upon the mind , independently of what they are in themselves , as ...
... tion , that is , of passion and indifference , cannot be the same , and they must have a separate language to do justice to either . Objects must strike dif- ferently upon the mind , independently of what they are in themselves , as ...
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Common terms and phrases
admirable affectation allegory appear Ballads beauty Beggar's Opera blank verse Boccaccio breast character Chaucer common Cutty Sark delight describes despair doth equal excellence face 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 love ys dedde Lyrical Ballads 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 sense sentiment Shakspeare soul sound Spenser spirit spring story style sweet Tam o'Shanter ther thing thou thought tion Titian tree truth verse Whan wings wolde words Wordsworth writer wyllowe-tree youth
Popular passages
Page 326 - Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother: They parted — ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining — They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder A dreary sea now flows between ; — But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.
Page 148 - He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
Page 143 - Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
Page 227 - Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish, As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. At thirty man suspects himself a fool ; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ; At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; In all the magnanimity of thought, Resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same. And why? because he thinks himself immortal. All men think all men mortal, but themselves; Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate Strikes thro...
Page 226 - tis madness to defer: Next day the fatal precedent will plead ; Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life. Procrastination is the thief of time ; Year after year it steals, till all are fled, And to the mercies of a moment leaves The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
Page 326 - Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.
Page 264 - But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed ; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white — then melts for ever ; Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place ; Or like the rainbow's lovely form Evanishing amid the storm. Nae man can tether time or tide ; The hour approaches Tarn maun ride ; That hour, o...
Page 130 - Others more mild, Retreated in a silent valley, sing With notes angelical to many a harp Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall By doom of battle ; and complain that fate ' Free virtue should enthrall to force or chance.
Page 114 - I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters...
Page 329 - What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower ; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind ; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be ; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering ; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.