Critical and miscellaneous essays, collected and republishedP.F. Collier, 1901 |
Common terms and phrases
ADALBERT admiration already altogether appears beauty believe Burns Burns's called character Chorus Christian Gottlob Heyne clear critics dark deep divine earnest earth endeavor existence external farther Faust feeling Franz Horn French genius German Goethe Goethe's groschen hand heart Heinrich Döring Helena Heyne highest Hitzig humor intellectual least less light literary literature living look Lynceus Madame de Staël man's matter means mechanical Menelaus ment Mephistopheles mind moral Müllner nature ness never noble Novalis nowise ourselves perhaps philosopher PHORCYAS Phosphoros piece Playwrights poem poet poetical poetry poor praise Protestantism readers reckon regard Religion reverence Richter scene seems sense Shakspeare singular sorrow sort soul speak spirit stands strange style taste thee things thou thought Tibullus tion Tragedy true truth virtue Voltaire Voltaire's Werner whole Wilhelm wise wonderful word worth writings
Popular passages
Page 294 - I may truly say, Virgilium vidi tantum. I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, when he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense and feeling enough to be much interested in his poetry, and would have given the world to know him: but I had very little acquaintance with any literary people, and still less with the gentry of the west country, the two sets that he most frequented. Mr. Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father's. He knew Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to dinner; but...
Page 295 - 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 18 - True humour springs not more from the head than from the heart ; it is not contempt, its essence is love ; it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper.
Page 265 - Here are no fabulous woes or joys; no hollow fantastic sentimentalities; no wiredrawn refinings, either in thought or feeling : the passion that is traced before us has glowed in a living heart; the opinion he utters has risen in his own understanding, and been a light to his own steps.
Page 284 - In hut and hall, as the heart unfolds itself in many-coloured joy and woe of existence, the name, the voice of that joy and that woe, is the name and voice which Burns has given them. Strictly speaking, perhaps no British man has so deeply affected the thoughts and feelings of so many men, as this solitary and altogether private individual, with means apparently the humblest.
Page 264 - All that remains of Burns, the Writings he has left, seem to us, as we hinted above, no more than a poor mutilated fraction of what was in him ; brief, broken glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete ; that wanted all things for completeness : culture, leisure, true effort, nay even length of life.
Page 295 - Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, Perhaps that mother wept her soldier slain ; Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child of misery baptised in tears.
Page 260 - An educated man stands, as it were, in the midst of a boundless arsenal and magazine, filled with all the weapons and engines which man's skill has been able to devise from the earliest time ; and he works, accordingly, with a strength borrowed from all past ages. How different is his state who...
Page 222 - After that which the poet has received from nature, — the right enjoyment of the world; the feeling of himself in others; the harmonious conjunction of many things that will seldom exist together.
Page 296 - ... me, as I could not expect he should. He was much caressed in Edinburgh : but (considering what literary emoluments have been since his day) the efforts made for his relief were extremely trifling. " I remember, on this occasion I mention, I thought...