Architects of English Literature: Biographical Sketches of Great Writers from Shakespeare to Tennyson |
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Architects of English Literature: Biographical Sketches of Great Writers ... R. Farquharson Sharp No preview available - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
admiration affection affectionate afterwards appeared Bacon beauty became Brit brother Burns Byron Cambridge career Carlyle Carlyle's character Coleridge Cowper Craigenputtock DANIEL DEFOE daughter David Copperfield death delight Dickens died Edinburgh Edinburgh Review edition Ellisland Emerson England essays Facsimile fact fame famous father favour fortunate friends gave Globe Theatre Goldsmith Gray happiness heart honour Johnson Keats later Leigh Hunt letters literary lived London Lord marriage married Mary Godwin matter Milton mind months Moor Park mother nature Nether Stowey never passion poems poet poet's poetic poetry political Pope probably published realised Robinson Crusoe romance satire says seems sense settled Shakespeare Shelley Shelley's spirit spite Stella Stoops to Conquer success Swift sympathy taste Tennyson Thackeray thought tion took Unwin Vanity Fair verse volume Westminster Abbey wife Wordsworth writing written wrote young
Popular passages
Page 7 - English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention.
Page 151 - I trust is their destiny ? .—to console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight, by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and therefore to become more actively and securely virtuous—this is their office, which I trust they will faithfully perform, long after we (that is, all that is mortal of us) are mouldered in our graves.
Page 117 - BY inscribing this slight performance to you, I do not mean so much to compliment you as myself. It may do me some honour to inform the public, that I have lived many years in intimacy with 5 you. It may serve the interests of mankind also to inform them, that the greatest wit may be found in a character, without impairing the most unaffected piety.
Page 94 - I have at the distance of half a mile, through a green lane, a forest (the vulgar call it a common) all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no human thing in it but myself.
Page 91 - The old philosopher is still among us in the brown coat with the metal buttons and the shirt which ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans.
Page 127 - ... pace, with an air and a grace, swimming about, now in and now out, with a deal of state, in a figure of eight, without pipe or string, or any such thing; and now I have writ, in a rhyming fit, what will make you dance, and as you advance, will keep you still, though against your will, dancing away, alert and gay, till you come to an end of what I have...
Page 96 - I am conscious that in the beginning of the differences between Gray and me, the fault was mine. I was too young, too fond of my own diversions, nay, I do not doubt, too much intoxicated by indulgence, vanity, and the insolence of my situation, as a Prime Minister's son, not to have been inattentive and insensible to the feelings of one I thought below me...
Page 222 - Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what
Page 204 - His features were not symmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of the whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met with in any other countenance.
Page 80 - Ah, sir, I was mad and violent. It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic. I was miserably poor, and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority.