A Dish of Orts : Chiefly Papers on the Imagination, and on Shakespeare

Let us then, my friends, beware lest our opinions come between us and our God, between us and our neighbour, between us and our better selves. Let us be jealous that the human s...

In its origin, opinion is the intellectual body, taken for utterance and presentation by something necessarily larger than any intellect can afford stuff sufficient for the embo...

What is the central point from which this poem can be regarded? It does not seem to be very hard to find. Novalis has said: “Die Philosophie ist eigentlich Heimweh, ein Trieb üb...

But all the time his mother lives in the hope of his growth. In the present babe, her heart broods over the coming boy--the unknown marvel closed in the visible germ. Let mother...

“But,” say some impatient readers, “when shall we have done with Shakspere? There is no end to this writing about him.” It will be a bad day for England when we have done with S...

The exquisite duet between _Lorenzo_ and _Jessica_, in the opening of the fifth act of “The Merchant of Venice,” finds for its subject the circumstances that produce the mood--t...

Since printing throughout the title _Orts_, a doubt has arisen in my mind as to its fitting the nature of the volume. It could hardly, however, be imagined that I associate the...

Whatever the main object of the ghost’s appearance, he has spoken but a few words concerning the matter between him and Hamlet, when he turns abruptly from it to plead with his...

And now comes the crisis: if here the man sets himself honestly to do the thing the Son of Man tells him, he so, and so first, sets out positively upon the path which, if there...

All that has been said, then, tends to enforce the culture of the imagination. But the strongest argument of all remains behind. For, if the whole power of pedantry should rise...

There is yet a higher and more sustained influence exercised by nature, and that takes effect when she puts a man into that mood or condition in which thoughts come of themselve...

But a high end may be gained in this world, and the vision into the world beyond so justified, as in King Lear. The passionate, impulsive, unreasoning old king certainly must ha...

The scope and variety of the whole picture, in which mass is effected by the accumulation of individuality; in which, on the one hand, Troy stands as the impersonation of the ai...

But Lord Bacon, amongst other branches of knowledge which he considers ill-followed, makes especial mention of medicine, which he would submit to the same rules of observation a...

Although we are anticipating, it is better to mention here another book, published in the same year, namely, 1590, when Shakspere was six-and-twenty: the first three books of Sp...

And now the shadows are beginning to lengthen towards the night, which, whether there be a following morn or no, is the night, and spreads out the wings of darkness. And still a...

This is true concerning every form in which truth is embodied, whether it be sight or sound, geometric diagram or scientific formula. Unintelligible, it may be dismal enough, re...

Yet when Shakspere came first upon the scene of dramatic labour, he had to serve his private apprenticeship, to which the apprenticeship of the age in the drama, had led up. He...

In the scientific region of her duty of which we speak, the Imagination cannot have her perfect work; this belongs to another and higher sphere than that of intellectual truth--...

Perhaps the highest moral height which a man can reach, and at the same time the most difficult of attainment, is the willingness to be _nothing_ relatively, so that he attain t...

The character of Shelley has been sadly maligned. Whatever faults he may have committed against society, they were not the result of sensuality. One of his biographers, who was...

That we have in English no word corresponding to the German _Mährchen_, drives us to use the word _Fairytale_, regardless of the fact that the tale may have nothing to do with a...