A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day: Modern criticism. Appendix I. The Oxford chair of poetry. Appendix II. American criticismW. Blackwood and Sons, 1904 - Criticism |
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Page 207 - DURING the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination.
Page 275 - Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
Page 211 - It may be safely affirmed that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.
Page 249 - ... the utterance of a passion for truth, beauty, and power, embodying and illustrating its conceptions by imagination and fancy, and modulating its language on the principle of variety in uniformity.
Page 209 - A poem is that species of composition, which is opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth ; and from all other species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.
Page 518 - Their theory and practice alike, the admirable treatise of Aristotle, and the unrivalled works of their poets, exclaim with a thousand tongues — ' All depends upon the subject ; choose a fitting action, penetrate yourself with the feeling of its situations ; this done, everything else will follow.
Page 69 - But it is absurd to think of judging either Ariosto or Spenser by precepts which they did not attend to. We who live in the days of writing by rule, are apt to try every composition by those laws which we have been taught to think the sole criterion of excellence.
Page 209 - Finally, GOOD SENSE is the BODY of poetic genius, FANCY itS DRAPERY, MOTION itS LIFE, and IMAGINATION the SOUL that is everywhere, and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.
Page 204 - I am willing to allow that in order entirely to enjoy the Poetry which I am recommending it would be necessary to give up much of what is ordinarily enjoyed.
Page 609 - Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in the world.