Studies of a Booklover |
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Common terms and phrases
Allan Ramsay appeared ballads beauty believe BOOKLOVER Boswell Browning Browning's century character characteristic charm classical close club contemporary criticism dead death delight doubt Edinburgh Elegy English poet English poetry epic essays fact fame famous father feeling Fergusson friends Goldsmith Grande Chartreuse Gray Gray's hand heart human Hume humor Johnson JUNIUS SPENCER MORGAN king Latin learning least less letters lish literary literature lived London lyric matter Matthew Arnold Milton mind minstrel nature never night noble Obermann Oliver Goldsmith once Paracelsus passages passion perhaps period Philistia play poems poet poet's poetic poetry Pope praise prose reader religion Robert Fergusson romantic Rugby Chapel Samuel Johnson Scott seems sense Shakespeare song Sordello soul spirit Stanzas story studies sympathy tender Tennyson things THOMAS MARC PARROTT thought Thyrsis tion to-day town true truth utterance verse volume words Wordsworth write written wrote youth
Popular passages
Page xii - He found us when the age had bound Our souls in its benumbing round ; He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears. He laid us as we lay at birth On the cool flowery lap of earth...
Page x - Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head. Physician of the iron age, Goethe has done his pilgrimage. He took the suffering human race, He read each wound, each weakness clear; And struck his finger on the place, And said: Thou ailest here, and here!
Page 2 - ... is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow. Ye alight in our van ! at your voice, Panic, despair, flee away. Ye move through the ranks, recall The stragglers, refresh the outworn, Praise, re-inspire the brave ! Order, courage, return. Eyes rekindling, and prayers, Follow your steps as ye go. Ye fill up the gaps in our files, Strengthen the wavering line, Stablish, continue our march, On, to the bound of the waste, On, to the City of God.
Page 116 - I was confirmed in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem...
Page 114 - Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home; not sleeping, or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring, in winter often ere the sound of any bell awake men to labour or to devotion; in summer as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary, or memory have its full fraught: then, with useful and generous labours preserving the body's health and hardiness...
Page 111 - ... the church; to whose service, by the intentions of my parents and friends, I was destined of a child, and in mine own resolutions, till coming to some maturity of years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the church, that he who would take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal ; which unless he took with a conscience that would retch, he must either strait perjure, or split his faith; I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence, before the sacred office of speaking,...
Page 118 - Xenophon : where, if I should tell ye what I learnt of chastity and love, I mean that which is truly so, whose charming cup is only virtue, which she bears in her hand to those who are worthy ; (the rest are cheated with a thick intoxicating potion, which a certain sorceress, the abuser of love's name, carries about ;) and how the first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of her divine generation, knowledge and virtue : with such abstracted sublimities...
Page 210 - You may easily imagine what difficulties I had to encounter, left as I was without friends, recommendations, money, or impudence ; and that in a country where being born an Irishman was sufficient to keep me unemployed. Many in such circumstances would have had recourse to the friar's cord or the suicide's halter. But with all my follies I had principle to resist the one, and resolution to combat the other.
Page 180 - And in my breast the imperfect joys expire; Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer, And new-born pleasure brings to happier men; The fields to all their wonted tribute bear; To warm their little loves the birds complain. I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear, And weep the more because I weep in vain...
Page 115 - I became, to my best memory, so much a proficient that if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy things of themselves, or unchaste of those names which before they had extolled, this effect it wrought with me; from that time forward their art I still applauded, but the men I deplored...