Essays in Little

But none of those early works, nor the delightful book on Edinburgh, prophesied of the story teller. Mr. Stevenson's first published tales, the "New Arabian Nights," originally...

This was the right side of his love of the Vikings; it was thus _they_ lived, when not at war--thus that every gentleman who has youth and health should work, winning new worlds...

This was the state of affairs in Norway when a king arose, Harold Fair- Hair, who tried to bring all these proud people under him, and to make them pay taxes and live more regul...

Are we better or worse for no longer believing as Bunyan believed, no longer seeing that Abyss of Pascal's open beside our armchairs? The question is only a form of that wide ri...

"Nine and twenty knights of fame Hung their shields in Branksome Hall; Nine and twenty squires of name Brought their steeds to bower from stall, Nine and twenty yeomen tall Wait...

This is what Chesterfield calls "the porter-like language of Homer's heroes." Such are the moods of Homer, so full of love of life and all things living, so rich in all human sy...

As human nature persistently demands a moral, and, as, to say truth, Thackeray was constantly meeting the demand, what is the lesson of his life and his writings? So people may...

Dumas' first play, an unimportant vaudeville, was acted in 1825. His first novels were also published then; he took part of the risk, and only four copies were sold. He afterwar...

By this time the Sioux were flying in all directions, mowed down by the fire of Gatling and Maxim guns. The scrub of Little Big Horn Creek was strewn with the bodies of writhing...

This, at least, is a not unfriendly explanation. Yet I cannot but believe that, though Dickens took great pains with his plots, he was not a great plotter. He was not, any more...

This was pleasant for "him"; but the point is that these are lines to an Indian air. Shelley, also, about the same time, wrote Lines to an Indian air; but we may "swear, and sav...

To De Banville (he does not conceal it) a journey to a place so far from Paris as the Riviera was no slight labour. Even from the roses, the palms, the siren sea, the wells of w...

"With water-weeds twined in their locks of gold The strange cold forest-fairies dance in glee; Sylphs over-timorous and over-bold Haunt the dark hollows where the dwarf may be,...

Preface Alexandre Dumas Mr. Stevenson's works Thomas Haynes Bayly Theodore de Banville Homer and the Study of Greek The Last Fashionable Novel Thackeray Dickens Adventures of Bu...

His faults are so conspicuous, so much on the surface, that they hardly need to be named. They are curiously visible to some readers who are blind to his merits. There is a fals...