Studies of a Biographer, Volume 3Duckworth and Company, 1902 |
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Common terms and phrases
accept admirable admits æsthetic argued argument Bagehot become believe Ben Jonson Bishop Wilberforce Caleb Williams Carlyle Carlyle's casuistry character charm confess creed criticism cynic declares difficulty divine doctrine Donne Donne's doubt fact Falkland fancy feeling Ferroll force force of reason friends Froude Froude's genuine gives Godwin Gosse happy hero honour human Huxley Huxley's illustrate imitated implies impressed instinct intellectual interest Islands voyage J. S. Mill Jesuits learning letters literary living logical Matthew Arnold ment mind misanthropy Modern Painters moral murder nature never opinion passion peculiar perhaps philosophy phrase poems poet political Presidential system principle problem question R. H. Hutton readers reason recognised religion religious remarkable revealed Ruskin says scientific secret seems sentiment speak spite story strange stupidity style suggests supposed syllogism tells theory things thought tion true truth Tyrrel utterances Waverley Novel whole writings
Popular passages
Page 78 - Accordingly it was proposed, in the invention of the following work, to comprehend, as far as the progressive nature of a single story would allow, a general review of the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism, by which man becomes the destroyer of man.
Page 132 - Let us understand, once for all, that the ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it.
Page 160 - I remember us sitting on the brow of a peat hag, the sun shining, our own voices the one sound. Far, far away to the westward over our brown horizon, towered up, white and visible at the many miles of distance, a high irregular pyramid. 'Ailsa Craig' we at once guessed, and thought of the seas and oceans over yonder.
Page 171 - Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees A mountain ascending, a vision of trees ; Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapsidc.
Page 110 - A phrase in a letter to Mr. Clifford dashes out a quaint comment upon human nature. ' Men, my dear, are very queer animals, a mixture of horse nervousness, ass stubbornness, and camel malice, with an angel bobbing about unexpectedly like the apple in the posset ; and when they can do exactly as they please, are very hard to drive.
Page 131 - ... to forward the application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life to the best of my ability, in the conviction which has grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.
Page 16 - Wakefield - as a prose idyll - a charming narrative in which we have as little to do with the reality of Donne as with the reality of Dr Primrose, I can only subscribe to the judgment of my betters. But there are two objections to the life if taken as a record of facts. The first is that the facts are all wrong; and the second that the portraiture is palpably false.
Page 131 - The only religion which appeals to me,' he writes to Romanes, ' is prophetic Judaism. Add to it something from the best Stoics and something from Spinoza and something from Goethe, and there is a religion for men.
Page 129 - The blow which had stirred all his convictions to their foundation had not shaken that belief. "If wife and child and name and fame were all lost to me one after the other, still I would not lie." He speaks, as he says, more openly and distinctly than he ever has to any human being except his wife. He has been standing by the coffin of his little son, and his force and solemnity show how deeply he is moved. The clearness and moral fire unite, as Mr. L. Huxley says, "In a veritable passion for truth.
Page 153 - Borrow's experience ; but the first walk, commonplace enough, remains distinct in my memory. I kept no journal, but I could still give the narrative day by day — the sights which I dutifully admired and the very state of my bootlaces. Walking tours thus rescue a bit of one's life from oblivion. They play in one's personal recollections the part of those historical passages in which Carlyle is an unequalled master ; the little islands of light in the midst of the darkening gloom of the past, on...