Lectures on the English Poets; Delivered at the Surrey Institution

Transcriber's note: This file was proofed, using a text-to-speech reader, against the hard copy 2nd. edition published in 1819. No attempt has been made to change the text of an...

There can never be another Jacob's dream. Since that time, the heavens have gone farther off, and grown astronomical. They have become averse to the imagination, nor will they r...

Another writer whom I shall mention last, and whom I cannot persuade myself to think a mere modern in the groundwork, is Ossian. He is a feeling and a name that can never be des...

And more pleasaunt to me by manifold, Than meat or drinke, or any other thing, Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold, The wholesome sauours eke so comforting, That as I demed...

"And eke that stranger knight amongst the rest Was for like need enforc'd to disarray. Tho when as vailed was her lofty crest, Her golden locks that were in trammels gay Upbound...

The striking peculiarity of Shakspeare's mind was its generic quality, its power of communication with all other minds--so that it contained a universe of thought and feeling wi...

It remains to speak of the faults of Shakspeare. They are not so many or so great as they have been represented; what there are, are chiefly owing to the following causes:--The...

are still his. The sense of his punishment seems lost in the magnitude of it; the fierceness of tormenting flames is qualified and made innoxious by the greater fierceness of hi...

"Now meet thy fate, incens'd Belinda cry'd, And drew a deadly bodkin from her side. (The same his ancient personage to deck, Her great, great grandsire wore about his neck, In t...

It should appear, in tracing the history of our literature, that poetry had, at the period of which we are speaking, in general declined, by successive gradations, from the poet...

Cowper, whom I shall speak of in this connection, lived at a considerable distance of time after Thomson; and had some advantages over him, particularly in simplicity of style,...

The love of the country has been sung by poets, and echoed by philosophers; but the first have not attempted, and the last have been greatly puzzled to account for it. I do not...

Gay's Fables are certainly a work of great merit, both as to the quantity of invention implied, and as to the elegance and facility of the execution. They are, however, spun out...

Collins is a writer of a very different stamp, who had perhaps less general power of mind than Young; but he had that true _vivida vis_, that genuine inspiration, which alone ca...

"Unfortunate boy! short and evil were thy days, but thy fame shall be immortal. Hadst thou been known to the munificent patrons of genius . . . "Unfortunate boy! poorly wast tho...

As Tammie glowr'd amaz'd, and curious, The mirth and fun grew fast and furious: The Piper loud and louder blew; The dancers quick and quicker flew; They reel'd, they set, they c...

I would speak of the living poets as I have spoken of the dead (for I think highly of many of them); but I cannot speak of them with the same reverence, because I do not feel it...

Walter Scott is the most popular of all the poets of the present day, and deservedly so. He describes that which is most easily and generally understood with more vivacity and e...

Mr. Wordsworth is at the head of that which has been denominated the Lake school of poetry; a school which, with all my respect for it, I do not think sacred from criticism or e...