Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches
Although it would be presumptuous to introduce the work of Arthur Symons, a word or two about this particular collection may not be out of place. A number of these essays have appeared in representative American and English periodicals, but their preservation here needs no apo...
Although it would be presumptuous to introduce the work of Arthur Symons, a word or two about this particular collection may not be out of place. A number of these essays have a...
2. Part 2Conrad conceals his astonishing invention under many disguises. What has seemed to some to be untidy in construction will be found to be a mere matter of subtlety, a skilful arr...
3. Part 3In the preface to the first volume of his _Théâtre_, Maeterlinck takes us very simply into his confidence, and explains to us some of his intentions and some of his methods. He...
4. Part 4Meredith first conceives that the novelist's prime study is human nature and his first duty to be true to it. Moreover, being an artist, he is not content with simple observatio...
5. Part 5_The Picture of Dorian Gray_ (1891) is partly made out of Wilde himself, partly out of two other men, both of whom are alive. Not being creative he was cruel enough to mix his s...
6. Part 6The work of the brothers De Goncourt--twelve novels, eleven or twelve studies in the history of the eighteenth century, six or seven books about art, the art mainly of the eight...
7. Part 7Rossetti's eyes desire some feverish thing, but the mouth and chin hesitate in pursuit. All Rossetti is in that story of his _MS._ buried in his wife's coffin. He could do it, h...
8. Part 8As I have said that George Moore might be supposed to be a lineal descendant of Zola, it seems to me that in many ways his method is almost the same as Zola's; only, they have d...
9. Part 9If Crashaw, Shelley, Donne, Marvell, Patmore and some other poets had not existed, Francis Thompson would be a poet of remarkable novelty. Not that originality, in the strictest...
10. Part 10What could be more significant than this heaping up of long and extravagant and sometimes feeble words, instead of the direct language of Hugo, who in this poem, though not with...
11. Part 11Many people doubt whether Christianity has done much, or even anything, for the "progress" of the human race as a race; and there is more to be said in defence of such doubt tha...
12. Part 12In that grave shade august That round your Eton clings, To you the centuries must Be visible corporate things And the high Past appear Affably real and near, For all its grandio...
13. Part 13as he says in one of the poems of that book; and in all these poems, "La Foule, L'Ivresse, La Joie," and the rest, we see the poet sending his soul into the universe and becomin...
14. Part 14If you had seen him, when the heat and the climb and the bothers of travelling were too much for me--in the very hot weather--helping, waiting on me--going out to get me books t...
15. Part 15There is a moment near the beginning where Lafont asks Clotilde if she has been to see her milliner or her dressmaker, and she answers sarcastically: "Both!" Her face, as she su...
16. Part 16I see before me, as I write, the night when I went from the Giddecca to the Teatro Rossini, where a company of excellent Italian comedians gave one of Goldoni's comedies, and, a...
17. Part 17The science of the Renaissance was divided, as it were, by a thousand refractions of things seen and unseen; so that when Leonardo, poring over his crucibles, desires no alchemi...
18. Part 18Leonardo da Vinci's unfinished _Saint Jerome_, in the Vatican at Rome, is exactly like intarsia work; the ground almost black, the men and the lion a light brown. This particula...
19. Part 19When Byron wrote to Murray, "You might as well want a midnight all stats as rhyme all perfect," he was theorizing over his own failure to achieve sustained excellence on any one...