On The Art of Reading

Now of all ways of dealing with literature that happens to be the way we should least admire. By that way we disassociate literature from life; 'what they said' from the men who...

My author thinks not: and I am sure he is right. So, in writing, only out of long preparation can come the truly triumphant flash: and I ask you to push this analogy further, in...

So evident is this calculated harmony that men, seeking to interpret it by what was most harmonious in themselves or in their human experience, supposed an actual Music of the S...

Well, whatever the perplexities of our Library we may be sure they will never break down that tradition of service, help and courtesy which is, among its fine treasures, still t...

And when Athaliah heard the noise of the guard and of the people, she came to the people into the temple of the Lord.-- And when she looked, behold, the king stood by a pillar,...

The lady wished the donkey to bathe its legs in the sea, to make it strong and clean. But the donkey did not like to go near the sea. So the lady bound a brown shawl over its ey...

If you crave for Knowledge, the banquet of Knowledge grows and groans on the board until the finer appetite sickens. If, still putting all your trust in Knowledge, you try to do...

Will you still go on to imagine that all the poetry is printed as prose; while all the long paragraphs of prose are broken up into short verses, so that they resemble the little...

[Footnote 2: The loose and tautologous style of this Preface is worth noting. Likely enough Browne wrote it in a passion that deprived him of his habitual self-command. One phra...

It were cruel, I say, to condemn these attempts as little above those of Sternhold and Hopkins, or even of those of Tate and Brady: for Milton made them at fifteen years old, an...

The following twelve lectures have this much in common with a previous twelve published in 1916 under the title "On the Art of Writing"--they form no compact treatise but presen...

And now that we are returned from great sorrows, let us not fall into a dearth of victories, nor foster griefs; but as we have ceased from our tiresome troubles, we will publicl...

As the unprejudiced reader sees [Dr Gummere proceeds] this clear and admirable account confirms the doctrine of early days revived with fresh ethnological evidence in the writin...

But you are happier. You are happier, not in having your selection of reading in English done for you at school (for you have in the Public Schools scarce any such help): but ha...

Well, now, I put it to you that without mental breeding, without at least some sense of ancestry, an Englishman can hardly have this perception of value, this vision. I put to y...

'Elsewhere,' says Longinus, 'I have written as follows: _"Sublimity is the echo of a great soul."_ Hence even a bare idea sometimes, by itself and without a spoken word will exc...