Modern Painters, Volume 3

Front Cover
Smith, Elder, 1872 - Aesthetics

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 294 - Sound needed none, Nor any voice of joy ; his spirit drank The spectacle : sensation, soul, and form All melted into him ; they swallowed up His animal being ; in them did he live, And by them did he live ; they were his life. In such access of mind, in such high hour Of visitation from the living God, Thought was not ; in enjoyment it expired.
Page 290 - Fear and trembling Hope, Silence and Foresight; Death the Skeleton And Time the Shadow ; — there to celebrate, As in a natural temple scattered o'er With altars undisturbed of mossy stone, United worship ; or in mute repose To lie, and listen to the mountain flood Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves.
Page 268 - I find this conclusion more impressed upon me, — that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one.
Page 100 - And the word of the Lord came unto me the second time, saying, What seest thou ? And I said, I see a seething pot; and the face thereof is toward the north. Then the Lord said unto me, Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.
Page 266 - Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled anybody else, — only they do not expect their fellowmen therefore to fall down and worship them; they have a curious under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them; that they could not do or be anything else than God made them. And they see something Divine and God-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.
Page 204 - At length the freshening western blast Aside the shroud of battle cast; And first the ridge of mingled spears Above the brightening cloud appears, And in the smoke the pennons flew, As in the storm the white seamew. Then marked they, dashing broad and far, The broken billows of the war, And plumed crests of chieftains brave Floating like foam upon the wave...
Page 282 - The mountain-shadows on her breast Were neither broken nor at rest ; In bright uncertainty they lie, Like future joys to Fancy's eye.
Page 280 - Piled deep and massy, close and high, Mine own romantic town ! But northward far, with purer blaze, On Ochil mountains fell the rays, And as each heathy top they kiss'd, It gleam'da purple amethyst.
Page 167 - Note, here, the high poetical truth carried to the extreme. The poet has to speak of the earth in sadness, but he will not let that sadness affect or change his thoughts of it. No ; though Castor and Pollux be dead, yet the earth is our mother still, fruitful, life-giving.
Page 14 - What I have had under consideration is the sublimest style, particularly that of Michael Angelo, the Homer of painting. Other kinds may admit of this naturalness, which of the lowest kind is the chief merit ; but in painting, as in poetry, the highest style has the least of common nature.

Bibliographic information