On the Margin: Notes and Essays

With the increased attention paid to bibliophilous niceties, has come a great increase in price. Limited _éditions de luxe_ have become absurdly common in France, and there are...

An anniversary celebration is an act of what Wordsworth would have called “natural piety”; an act by which past is linked with present and of the vague, interminable series of t...

The device is childish in its formality, the words, in their obscurity, almost devoid of significance. But what matter, since the stanza is a triumph of sonorous beauty? The Eli...

I do not know whether any one has yet written a history of advertising. If the book does not already exist it will certainly have to be written. The story of the development of...

In moments of complete despair, when it seems that all is for the worst in the worst of all possible worlds, it is cheering to discover that there are places where stupidity rei...

The ten syllables are there all right, but except in the last line there is no recognizable rhythm of any kind, whether regular or irregular. But when Surrey comes to the second...

Drip drop, drip drap drep drop. So it goes on, this watery melody, for ever without an end. Inconclusive, inconsequent, formless, it is always on the point of deviating into sen...

It seems I have no tears left. They should have fallen— Their ghosts, if tears have ghosts, did fall—that day When twenty hounds streamed by me, not yet combed out But still all...

Throughout the Middle Ages this demon was known as Acedia, or, in English, Accidie. Monks were still his favourite victims, but he made many conquests among the laity also. Alon...

PAGE I: CENTENARIES 9 II: ON RE-READING _CANDIDE_ 19 III: ACCIDIE 25 IV: SUBJECT-MATTER OF POETRY 32 V: WATER MUSIC 43 VI: PLEASURES 48 VII: MODERN FOLK POETRY 55 VIII: BIBLIOPH...

And as in winter leavés been bereft, Each after other, till the tree be bare, So that there nis but bark and branches left, Lieth Troilus, bereft of each welfare, Ybounden in th...