Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works, Τόμος 2

Εξώφυλλο
J. B. Lippincott & Company, 1866
 

Άλλες εκδόσεις - Προβολή όλων

Συχνά εμφανιζόμενοι όροι και φράσεις

Δημοφιλή αποσπάσματα

Σελίδα 322 - If the flights of Dryden therefore are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight.
Σελίδα 322 - The style of Dryden is capricious and varied, that of Pope is cautious and uniform ; Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind, Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid ; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation ; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by the roller. Of genius, that power which constitutes...
Σελίδα 329 - Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows ; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar : When Ajax strives some rock's vast- weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow ; Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Σελίδα 250 - As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, O'er Heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene ; Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumber'd gild the glowing pole, O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, And tip with silver every mountain's head...
Σελίδα 614 - Church-yard' abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.
Σελίδα 342 - After all this it is surely superfluous to answer the question that has once been asked, whether Pope was a poet? otherwise than by asking in return, if Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found?
Σελίδα 329 - Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join The varying verse, the full resounding line, The long majestic march, and energy divine.
Σελίδα 440 - The great defect of The Seasons is want of method ; but for this I know not that there was any remedy. Of many appearances subsisting all at once, no rule can be given why one should be mentioned before another; yet the memory wants the help of order, and the curiosity is not excited by suspense or expectation. His diction is in the highest degree florid and luxuriant, such as may be said to be to his images and thoughts 'both their lustre and their shade'; such as invests them with splendour, through...
Σελίδα 487 - I have formerly said of his writings may be added, that his diction was often harsh, unskilfully laboured, and injudiciously selected. He affected the obsolete when it was not worthy of revival ; and he puts his words out of the common order, seeming to think, with some later candidates for fame, that not to write prose is certainly to write poetry.
Σελίδα 351 - ... this as the most valuable of all Pope's epitaphs : the subject of it is a character not discriminated by any shining or eminent peculiarities; yet that which really makes, though not the splendour, the felicity of life, and that which every wise man will choose for his final and lasting companion in the languor of age, in the quiet of privacy, when he departs weary and disgusted from the ostentatious, the volatile, and the vain. Of such a character, which the dull overlook, and the gay despise,...

Πληροφορίες βιβλιογραφίας