Hours in a Library, Volume 3 New Edition, with Additions

In the post-revolutionary period the world becomes more merciful and duller. Lawyers speak at greater length; and even the victims of '45, the strange Lord Lovat himself, give l...

Mr. Lowell, in one of the most charming essays ever written about a garden, takes his text from White of Selborne, and admirably explains the charm of that worthy representative...

But, for all this, it would be permissible also to suppose that there was a strongly-marked provincial character in that region, even if Miss Brontë's life-like portraits were n...

The phrase 'sentimentalism' became common towards the middle of the century, as I have remarked in speaking of Richardson. Some time earlier Sterne was writing a love letter to...

Such a doctrine, it may be said, is too specific and narrow to be considered as the animating principle of the various books in which it appears. This is doubtless true, and it...

'Alton Locke' is a more ambitious and coherent effort; and the descriptions of the London population, and of the futile attempt at a rising in the country, are in the same vigor...

To this Godwin has no very intelligible answer, or perhaps he hardly sees that an answer is desirable. But, in truth, his whole system appears to be so grotesque when brought to...

It would be tempting here to draw the obvious parallel between Mill and Carlyle, which must just now be in everyone's mind; for certainly whatever may be said of the 'Reminiscen...

There is no answer to this as to any other such problems. It is enough to take note of the fact that George Eliot possessed a vein of humour, of which it is little to say that i...

yet we feel that none of his contemporaries—perhaps none of his successors—could have equalled, in dignity and richness of style, the noble passage in which that phrase occurs....

After reading many painfully conclusive proofs of this passion, I confess that I think it less remarkable that his demoralisation in this respect seemed to be complete about 181...

It is only when we compare this exquisite picture with the highest art that we are sensible of its comparative deficiency. The imaginative force of Cervantes is proved by the fa...

This is but a new version of the Puritan contempt for the vain speculations of human wisdom when he is himself conscious of an inner light guiding him infallibly through the lab...

Gray speaks of Mason's 'insatiable reforming mouth,' and remarks that he has no passions 'except a little malice and revenge.' There was a good deal of acidity in his nature, de...

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep— He hath awakened from the dream of life; 'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And, in...

Enough has been written by the competent and the incompetent, the prosaic and the poetical, the hyperbolical panegyrists and the calm analytical critics, of Shelley considered p...

The prince of all autobiographers in this full sense of the word—the man who represents the genuine type in its fullest realisation—is undoubtedly Rousseau. The 'Confessions' ma...

It should follow, according to the doctrine just set forth, that we ought to love Uncle Toby's creator. But here I fancy that everybody will be sensible of a considerable diffic...

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It is easy to point out the dangers of this position. It rests, after all, you may say upon the individual conviction, and lends itself too easily to that kind of dogmatism in w...

Poetry, without the mystic or spiritual element, meant Darwin's 'Botanic Garden'—an ice-palace, as he called it, a heap of fine phrases and sham personifications. Take the same...

We have, it is plain, got a long way from Rousseau. We are almost, it may be said, at the very opposite pole of character. If vanity be a determining force in both cases, it is...

The change, so far as we need consider it, is sufficiently indicated by one circumstance. The 'prelude' invites us to remember Saint Theresa. Her passionate nature, we are told,...

It would be easy to give a paradoxical turn to these remarks, and to show how Gray was at once the opponent and the representative of the poetical creed of his day. The puzzle,...

[10] This case was in 1665. It is curious that in the case of Hathaway, in 1702, a precisely similar experiment convinced everybody that the accuser was an impostor; and got him...

The symptoms are significant of the pervading flaw in otherwise most effective workmanship. They imply what, in a scientific sense, would be an inconsistent theory, and, in an æ...

Some kind philosopher professes to put my thoughts into correct phraseology by saying that for such a purpose I require thoroughly 'objective' treatment. I must, however, reject...

Another hero of that time, unfortunately a principal instead of a mere spectator in the recorded tragedy, is so full of exuberant vitality that we can scarcely reconcile ourselv...

Certainly it is a queer topsy-turvy world to which we are introduced in 'Lavengro.' It gives the reader the sensation of a strange dream in which all the miscellaneous populatio...

This applies to all Carlyle's preachings about contemporary politics; the weakest of his writings are those in which his rash dogmatism, coloured by his gloomy temperament, was...

8. =HOGGARTY DIAMOND, YELLOWPLUSH PAPERS, AND BURLESQUES:=— The Great Hoggarty Diamond—Yellowplush Papers—Novels By Eminent Hands—Jeames's Diary—Adventures of Major Gahagan—A Le...