Friends on the Shelf

Happy is the man who enjoys _himself_. His are the true riches. Saving physical pain and mortal illness, few evils can touch him. He may lose friends and make enemies; all the p...

“To see the golden sun, the azure sky, the outstretched ocean; to walk upon the green earth, and be lord of a thousand creatures; to look down yawning precipices or over distant...

“Why, sir,” said Doctor Johnson to Boswell, “you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; f...

And as he was always reading Scott, and as often praising him, so he was always reading and praising Don Quixote. In 1867 he has been on his yacht. “I have had Don Quixote, Bocc...

Rightly considered, Thoreau’s singularity consisted, not in his lodging in a cabin, nor in his wearing coarse clothes, nor in his non-observance of so-called social amenities, n...

For the average (uninitiated) reader, be it said, there is nothing better in Thoreau than his thumb-nail sketches of humble, every-day humanity; as there is no part of his work,...

Most admirable, thrown in thus by the way, amid unaffected, matter-of-fact description and every-day sense, and with its homely “brags” and “switches” to hold it true,--to save...

His remark, quoted above, about the “plenty of sailors to talk to” suggests another thing: his exceeding fondness for rubbing elbows with what are called, inappropriately enough...

The welcome of Stevenson to his younger Scotch contemporary was characteristic of the man. In all his letters there is not a glimmer of professional jealousy nor a word of belit...

But as we counted it fortunate that he had already had the courage to forsake everything else for the pursuit of poetry, so we must be thankful that now, feeling his educational...

A few years later, wiser now and more worldly-minded, he is determined to set up catalogues like his old friend Father Le Beau; and soon (joy on the top of joy, and audacity alm...

Since then, somehow, we cannot profess to know exactly how or why, a change appears to have come over him; a change not altogether for the worse, nor altogether for the better....

And here, as I think, we may gather a hint as to the impassable gulf that separates inspired poetry from the very highest verse of the next lower order. Take such a dainty bit o...

In literature, the value of half-lights is recognized, consciously or not, by all who dabble in foreign tongues. Indeed, so far, at least, as amateurs are concerned, it is one o...

Thus far, it must be owned, it can boast little or no representation among the supremely great of the earth. The genius of a new country produces men of action rather than poets...