Critical and Miscellaneous Essays

الغلاف الأمامي
D. Appleton & Company, 1873 - 568 من الصفحات

من داخل الكتاب

الصفحات المحددة

طبعات أخرى - عرض جميع المقتطفات

عبارات ومصطلحات مألوفة

مقاطع مشهورة

الصفحة 331 - Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less ; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation. My Lord, your lordship's most humble, most obedient servant,
الصفحة 108 - His person was strong and robust; his manners rustic, not clownish ; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect perhaps from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture : but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits.
الصفحة 8 - Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time, Ere humane statute purged the gentle weal ; Ay, and since too, murders have been perform'd Too terrible for the ear : the time has been, That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end...
الصفحة 101 - Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the jEolian 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 woe beyond death and the grave.
الصفحة 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.
الصفحة 25 - Let some beneficent Divinity snatch him when a suckling from the breast of his mother, and nurse him with the milk of a better time ; that he may ripen to his full stature beneath a distant Grecian sky. And having grown to manhood, let him return, a foreign shape, into his century ; not, however, to delight it by his presence ; but terrible, like the Son of Agamemnon, to purify it.
الصفحة 108 - I never saw a man in company with his superiors in station or information more perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon remark this. — I do not know anything I can add to these recollections of forty years since.
الصفحة 110 - Dumfries one fine summer evening about this time, to attend a county ball, he saw Burns walking alone on the shady side of the principal street of the town, while the opposite side was gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies, all drawn together for the festivities of the night, not one of whom appeared willing to recognise him. The horseman dismounted and joined Burns, who, on his proposing to him to cross the street, said, " Nay, nay, my young friend, that's all over now...
الصفحة 98 - ... beautiful emotions in his soul, noble thoughts, and definite resolves ; and he speaks forth what is in him, not from any outward call of vanity or interest, but because his heart is too full to be silent. He speaks it with such melody and modulation as he can ; ' in homely rustic jingle;' but it is his own, and genuine.
الصفحة 107 - I was a lad of fifteen in 1786-7, when he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense and feeling enough to be much interested in his poetry, and would have given the world to know him; but I had very little acquaintance with any literary people, and still less with the gentry of the west country, the two sets that he most frequented. Mr Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father's. He knew Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to dinner, but had no opportunity to keep his word, otherwise...

معلومات المراجع