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[504:2] "A phrase," says Coleridge, "which I have borrowed from a Greek monk, who applies it to a patriarch of Constantinople."
[504:3] See Burton, page 185.
[504:4] See Wordsworth, page 481.
[505:1] Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.—Shelley: Fragments of Adonais.
You know who critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art.—Disraeli: Lothair, chap. xxxv.
JOSIAH QUINCY. 1772-1864If this bill [for the admission of Orleans Territory as a State] passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation; and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation,—amicably if they can, violently if they must.[505:2]
Abridged Cong. Debates, Jan. 14, 1811. Vol. iv. p. 327.
[505:2] The gentleman [Mr. Quincy] cannot have forgotten his own sentiment, uttered even on the floor of this House, "Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must."—Henry Clay: Speech, Jan. 8, 1813.
[506]
ROBERT SOUTHEY. 1774-1843."You are old, Father William," the young man cried,
"The few locks which are left you are gray;
You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,—
Now tell me the reason I pray."
The Old Man's Comforts, and how he gained them.
The march of intellect.[506:1]
Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society. Vol. ii. p. 360. The Doctor, Chap. Extraordinary.
The laws are with us, and God on our side.
On the Rise and Progress of Popular Disaffection (1817), Essay viii. Vol. ii. p. 107.
Agreed to differ.
Life of Wesley.
My days among the dead are passed;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.
Occasional Pieces. xxiii.
How does the water
Come down at Lodore?
The Cataract of Lodore.
So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store.
The Cataract of Lodore.
Through moss and through brake.
The Cataract of Lodore.
Helter-skelter,
Hurry-scurry.
The Cataract of Lodore.
A sight to delight in.
The Cataract of Lodore.
And so never ending, but always descending.
The Cataract of Lodore.
And this way the water comes down at Lodore.
The Cataract of Lodore.
[507]
From his brimstone bed, at break of day,
A-walking the Devil is gone,
To look at his little snug farm of the World,
And see how his stock went on.
The Devil's Walk. Stanza 1.
He passed a cottage with a double coach-house,—
A cottage of gentility;
And he owned with a grin,
That his favourite sin
Is pride that apes humility.[507:1]
The Devil's Walk. Stanza 8.
Where Washington hath left
His awful memory
A light for after times!
Ode written during the War with America, 1814.
How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures; nor cloud, or speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths;
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!
Thalaba. Book i. Stanza 1.
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why, that I cannot tell," said he;
"But 't was a famous victory."
The Battle of Blenheim.
Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue.[507:2]
Madoc in Wales. Part i. 5.
What will not woman, gentle woman dare,
When strong affection stirs her spirit up?
Madoc in Wales. Part ii. 2.
[508]
And last of all an Admiral came,
A terrible man with a terrible name,—
A name which you all know by sight very well,
But which no one can speak, and no one can spell.
The March to Moscow. Stanza 8.
They sin who tell us love can die;
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.
. . . . .
Love is indestructible,
Its holy flame forever burneth;
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
. . . . .
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of love is there.
The Curse of Kehama. Canto x. Stanza 10.
Oh, when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then for pains and fears,
The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrow, all her tears,
An over-payment of delight?
The Curse of Kehama. Canto x. Stanza 11.
Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe;
But 't is the happy that have called thee so.
The Curse of Kehama. Canto xv. Stanza 11.
The Satanic School.
Vision of Judgment. Original Preface.
[506:1] See Burke, page 408.
[507:1] See Coleridge, page 501.
[507:2]
"Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,"
As some one somewhere sings about the sky.
Byron: Don Juan, canto iv. stanza 110.
CHARLES LAMB. 1775-1834.The red-letter days now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.
Oxford in the Vacation.
For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak profanely) to be present with the Lord.
Oxford in the Vacation.
A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game.
Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist.
[509]
Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am incapable of a tune.
A Chapter on Ears.
Not if I know myself at all.
The Old and New Schoolmaster.
It is good to love the unknown.
Valentine's Day.
The pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling—a homely fancy, but I judged it to be sugar-candy; yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy.
My First Play.
Presents, I often say, endear absents.
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig.
It argues an insensibility.
A Dissertation upon Roast Pig.
Books which are no books.
Detached Thoughts on Books.
Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.
Amicus Redivivus.
Gone before
To that unknown and silent shore.
Hester. Stanza 7.
I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days.
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
Old Familiar Faces.
For thy sake, tobacco, I
Would do anything but die.
A Farewell to Tobacco.
And half had staggered that stout Stagirite.
Written at Cambridge.
Who first invented work, and bound the free
And holiday-rejoicing spirit down
. . . . . .
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood?
. . . . . .
Sabbathless Satan!
Work.
I like you and your book, ingenious Hone!
In whose capacious all-embracing leaves
[510]The very marrow of tradition 's shown;
And all that history, much that fiction weaves.
To the Editor of the Every-Day Book.
He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.
Captain Starkey.
Neat, not gaudy.[510:1]
Letter to Wordsworth, 1806.
Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!
Lamb's Suppers.
Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr. Gilman's guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town. A woman asked the coachman, "Are you full inside?" Upon which Lamb put his head through the window and said, "I am quite full inside; that last piece of pudding at Mr. Gilman's did the business for me."
Autobiographical Recollections. (Leslie.)
[510:1] See Shakespeare, page 130.
JAMES SMITH. 1775-1839.No Drury Lane for you to-day.
Rejected Addresses. The Baby's Début.
I saw them go: one horse was blind,
The tails of both hung down behind,
Their shoes were on their feet.
Rejected Addresses. The Baby's Début.
Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait.
The Theatre.
WILLIAM PITT. —— -1840.A strong nor'-wester 's blowing, Bill!
Hark! don't ye hear it roar now?
Lord help 'em, how I pities them
Unhappy folks on shore now!
The Sailor's Consolation.
[511]
My eyes! what tiles and chimney-pots
About their heads are flying!
The Sailor's Consolation.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 1775-1864.Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.
Rose Aylmer.
Wearers of rings and chains!
Pray do not take the pains
To set me right.
In vain my faults ye quote;
I write as others wrote
On Sunium's hight.
The last Fruit of an old Tree. Epigram cvi.
Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,[511:1]—
Therefore on him no speech! And brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walk'd along our roads with steps
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse.
To Robert Browning.
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
To Robert Browning.
But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed
In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave:
Shake one, and it awakens; then apply
Its polisht lips to your attentive ear,
[512]And it remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.[512:1]
Gebir. Book i. (1798).
Past are three summers since she first beheld
The ocean; all around the child await
Some exclamation of amazement here.
She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased,
Is this the mighty ocean? is this all?
That wondrous soul Charoba once possest,—
Capacious, then, as earth or heaven could hold,
Soul discontented with capacity,—
Is gone (I fear) forever. Need I say
She was enchanted by the wicked spells
Of Gebir, whom with lust of power inflamed
The western winds have landed on our coast?
I since have watcht her in lone retreat,
Have heard her sigh and soften out the name.[512:2]
Gebir. Book ii.
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art.
I warm'd both hands against the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Dying Speech of an old Philosopher.
[511:1]
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.
R. W. Emerson: May-Day and Other Pieces. Solution.
[512:1] See Wordsworth, page 480.
Poor shell! that Wordsworth so pounded and flattened in his marsh it no longer had the hoarseness of a sea, but of a hospital.—Landor: Letter to John Forster.
[512:2] These lines were specially singled out for admiration by Shelley, Humphrey Davy, Scott, and many remarkable men.—Forster: Life of Landor, vol. i. p. 95.
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 1777-1844.'T is distance lends
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