Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches
In an age of reminiscences, is there room for the confessions of a veteran, who remembers a great deal about books and very little about people? I have often wondered that a _Biographia Literaria_ has so seldom been attempted--a biography or autobiography of a man in his relat...
In an age of reminiscences, is there room for the confessions of a veteran, who remembers a great deal about books and very little about people? I have often wondered that a _Bi...
2. Chapter 2We spoke of a rest in a Fairy hill of the north, but he Far from the firths of the east and the racing tides of the west Sleeps in the sight and the sound of the infinite southe...
3. Chapter 3To say what ought to be said concerning Dr. John Brown, a man should have known him well and long, and should remember much of that old generation of Scotchmen to whom the autho...
4. Chapter 4Never but once did I enjoy the privilege of meeting the author of "Elsie Venner"--Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was at a dinner given by Mr. Lowell, and of conversation with Dr. Hol...
5. Chapter 5"Enough," said the pupil of the wise Imlac, "you have convinced me that no man can be a poet." The study of Mr. William Morris's poems, in the new collected edition, {5} has con...
6. Chapter 6Does any one now read Mrs. Radcliffe, or am I the only wanderer in her windy corridors, listening timidly to groans and hollow voices, and shielding the flame of a lamp, which,...
7. Chapter 7The finding of a rare book that you have wanted long is one of the happier moments in life. Whatever we may think of life when we contemplate it as a whole, it is a delight to d...
8. Chapter 8My copy of the Confessions is a dark little book, "a size uncumbersome to the nicest hand," in the format of an Elzevir, bound in black morocco, and adorned with "blind-tooled,"...
9. Chapter 9The great English novelists of the eighteenth century turned the course of English Literature out of its older channel. Her streams had descended from the double peaks of Parnas...
10. Chapter 10Sainte-Beuve says somewhere that it is impossible to speak of "The German Classics." Perhaps he would not have allowed us to talk of the American classics. American literature i...
11. Chapter 11We were talking of Love, Constancy, the Ideal. "Who ever loved like the poets?" cried Lady Violet Lebas, her pure, pale cheek flushing. "Ah, if ever I am to love, he shall be a...
12. Chapter 12The first name in romance, the most ancient and the most enduring, is that of Argive Helen. During three thousand years fair women have been born, have lived, and been loved, "t...
13. Chapter 13To dream over literary projects, Balzac says, is like "smoking enchanted cigarettes," but when we try to tackle our projects, to make them real, the enchantment disappears. We h...
14. Chapter 14We have had a drought for three weeks. During a whole week this northern strath has been as sunny as the Riviera is expected to be. The streams can be crossed dry-shod, kelts ar...
15. Chapter 15It is a truism that the supernatural in fiction should, as a general rule, be left in the vague. In the creepiest tale I ever read, the horror lay in this--_there was no ghost_!...
16. Chapter 16"If any Gentlemen, and others, will be pleased to send me any relations about Spirits, Witches, and Apparitions, In any part of the Kingdom; or any Information about the Second...
17. Chapter 17As a humble student of savage life, I have found it necessary to make researches into the manners and customs of boys. Boys are not what a vain people supposes. If you meet them...