Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, Volume 1Chapman and Hall, 1857 - 398 pages |
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ADALBERT admiration already altogether appears Authoress beauty better Burns Burns's called character chiefly clear critic deep divine earnest earth endeavour existence external eyes farther Faust feeling Franz Horn French French poetry genius German German literature give Goethe Goethe's Göttingen hand heart Heinrich Döring Helena Heyne highest Hitzig humour intellectual Klingemann labour least less light literary literature living look Lynceus Madame de Staël matter means Mephistopheles mind moral Müllner mystic nation nature never noble Novalis nowise perhaps philosopher PHORCY Phorcyas piece Playwrights poem poet poetic poetry poor praise Protestantism readers reckon regard Religion reverence Richter scene Schiller seems sense Shakspeare singular sorrow sort soul speak spirit stand strange style taste thee things thou thought Tibullus tion Tragedy true truth virtue Voltaire Voltaire's Werner whole Wilhelm words writings Zacharias Werner
Popular passages
Page 279 - Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the /Eolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident ; or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod ? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities : a God that made all things, man's immaterial and immortal nature, and a world of weal or wo beyond death and the grave.
Page 299 - Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather the ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were, and it chanced that nobody but myself remembered that they occur in a half-forgotten poem of Langhorne's called by the unpromising title of 'The Justice of the Peace'.
Page 482 - In Being's floods, in Action's storm, I walk and work, above, beneath, Work and weave in endless motion ! Birth and Death, An infinite ocean ; A seizing and giving The fire of Living : 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by.
Page 363 - Nemesis visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation...
Page 305 - I have already more than once had occasion to refer to, has often told me that he was seldom more grieved, than when riding into Dumfries one fine summer evening about this time to attend a county ball, he saw Burns walking alone, on the shady side of the principal street of the town, while the opposite side was gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn together for the festivities of the night, not one of whom appeared willing to recognise him.
Page 241 - Of this we make no secret; but we draw a veil over those sufferings, even because we reverence them so highly. We hold it a damnable audacity to bring forth that torturing Cross, and the Holy One who suffers on it, or to expose them to the light of the Sun, which hid its face when a reckless world forced such a sight on it; to take these mysterious secrets, in which the divine depth of Sorrow lies hid, and play with them, fondle them, trick them out, and rest not till the most reverend of all solemnities...
Page 266 - Peasant show himself among us ; ' a soul like an ^Eolian harp, in whose ' strings the vulgar wind, as it passed through them, ' changed itself into articulate melody.' And this was he for whom the world found no fitter business than quarrelling with smugglers and vintners, computing...
Page 299 - I never saw a man in company with his superiors in station or information more perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon remark this. — I do not know anything I can add to these recollections of forty years since.
Page 299 - His person was strong and robust ; his manners rustic, not clownish ; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect perhaps from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in Mr.
Page 5 - Works give us some glimpses into his singular and noble nature; and to our readers a few words on this man, certainly one of the most remarkable of his age, will not seem thrown away. Except by name, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter is little known out of Germany. The only thing connected with him, we think, that has reached this country, is his saying, imported by Madame de Stae'l, and thankfully pocketed by most newspaper critics: — " Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the...