Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, Volume 1 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
already altogether appears Atheism beauty become Burns called century cern character clear Corn-Law critics dark deep Denis Diderot Diderot divine earnest Earth Encyclopédie endeavour existence eyes fair father Faust feeling Franz Horn FRASER'S MAGAZINE Friedrich Schlegel genius German German Literature gifts Goethe Goethe's hand heart Heldenbuch Helena Heyne highest History honour hope humour infinite James Boswell Johnson King labour less lies light literary Literature living look man's matter means ment Mephistopheles mind moral nature ness never Nibelungen noble Novalis nowise once perhaps Philosopher Poem Poet poetic Poetry poor racter readers reckon Religion Richter round Samuel Johnson Schiller seems sense singular sort soul speak spirit stand strange Tale of Tales thee things thou thought tion true truth ture universal virtue Voltaire Werner whole wise wonderful words worth writing
Popular passages
Page 105 - hi« future years, The child of misery baptized in tears." "Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather by 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
Page 99 - 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 97 - Spirit sorrowfully wasted : and a hundred years may pass on, before another such is given us to waste. 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
Page 96 - In one word, what and how produced was the effect of society on him; what and how produced was his effect on society ? He who should answer these questions, in regard to any individual, would, as we believe, furnish a model of perfection in biography. Few individuals, indeed, can deserve such a study; and many
Page 106 - countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. I should have taken the poet, had I not known what he was, for a very sagacious country farmer of the old Scotch school, i. e. none of your modern agriculturists who keep labourers for their drudgery, but the
Page 109 - is not the least wretched, but the most. Still we do not think that the blame of Burns':; failure lies chiefly with the world. The world, it seems to us, treated him with more, rather than with less kindness, than it usually shows to such men. It has ever, we fear, shown but small favour
Page 100 - Wallace bled ; since all know it, from the king to the meanest of his subjects ? This dithyrambic was composed on horseback ; in riding in the middle of tempests, over the wildest Galloway moor, in company with a Mr. Syme, who, observing the poet's looks, forebore to speak, —judiciously enough,—for a man composing Brace's
Page 217 - A trusty shield and weapon ; He'll help us clear from all the ill That hath us now o'ertaken. The ancient Prince of Hell, Hath risen with purpose fell; Strong mail of Craft and Power He weareth in this
Page 105 - called by the unpromising title of " The Justice of Peace." I whispered my information to a friend present, he mentioned it to Burns, who rewarded me with a look and a word, which, though of mere civility, I then received
Page 99 - next to nothing, of the structure of our souls so we cannot account for those seeming caprices in them, that one should be particularly pleased with this thing, or struck with that which, on minds of a different cast, makes