Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Volume 2

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Baudry's European Library, 1839 - European literature

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Page 234 - In Shakespeare's poems the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to threaten the extinction of the other.
Page 180 - For proof whereof, let but most of the verses be put in prose, and then ask the meaning, and it will be found that one verse did but beget another, without ordering at the first what should be at the last; which becomes a confused mass of words, with a tinkling sound of rhyme, barely accompanied with reason.
Page 194 - The Laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the Fir that weepeth still, The Willow, worn of forlorn paramours, The Yew obedient to the bender's will, The Birch for shafts, the Sallow for the mill, The...
Page 261 - The elder is named Pamela, by many men not deemed inferior to her sister. For my part, when I marked them both, methought there was (if at least such perfections may receive the word of more) more sweetness in Philoclea, but more majesty in Pamela: methought love played in Philoclea's eyes and threatened in Pamela's: methought Philoclea's beauty only persuaded, but so persuaded as all hearts must yield; Pamela's beauty used violence, and such violence as no heart could resist.
Page 225 - Shakespeare," says one of our greatest living authors (Hallam, in his Introduction to the Literature of Europe) of our greatest dead one, "whom, through the mouths of those whom he has inspired to body forth the modifications of his immense mind, we seem to know better than any human writer, it may be truly said that we scarcely know anything.
Page 180 - But truly many of such writings as come under the banner of unresistible love, if I were a mistress, would never persuade me they were in love; so coldly they apply fiery speeches, as men that had rather read lovers...
Page 98 - French language, the first whom a gentleman is ashamed not to have read. So long as an unaffected style and an appearance of the utmost simplicity and good nature shall charm, so long as the lovers of desultory and cheerful conversation shall be more numerous than those who prefer a lecture or a sermon, so long as reading is sought by the many as an amusement in idleness, or a resource in pain, so long will Montaigne be among the favourite authors of mankind.
Page 183 - Experience has shown that the faculties peculiarly deamed poetical are frequently exhibited in a considerable degree, but very few have been able to preserve a perspicuous brevity without stiffness or pedantry (allowance made for the subject and the times), in metaphysical reasoning, so successfully as Sir John Davies.
Page 222 - His David and Bethsabe is the earliest fountain of pathos and harmony that can be traced in our dramatic poetry. His fancy is rich, and his feeling tender ; and his conceptions of dramatic character have no inconsiderable mixture of solid veracity and ideal beauty. There is no such sweetness of versification and imagery to be found in our blank- verse anterior to Shakespeare.

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