The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose Papers on Poetry

When Bellerophon, mounted on Pegasus, set forth to kill the Chimera, Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, gave him a golden bridle with which to curb and guide his winged steed. Hence th...

Let us now take a step, and a long one, in the scale of importance attained by the various kinds of poetry, and consider the classics of Lyrical Poetry. Here extensive quotation...

The great stumbling-block of literary criticism, alike for the professional critic and the unprofessional reader, is the tacit assumption that the opinions, preferences, and est...

Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud hissing urn Throws up a steaming column, and the cups...

I have no fault to find with these lines. They express a profound and enduring truth; and, if they do so with some little exaggeration, they do it half humorously, and so protec...

There exists in no language a more lyrical outburst inspired by the hey-day of life, and lavishly radiating rustic joy. They are as jocund as a gipsy rondeau of Haydn, as gracio...

Holding the opinion he does concerning Wordsworth and Byron, Mr. Arnold has published a selection from the works of both, in distinct and separate volumes, and he believes that...

Not only is it impossible, we think, for the disinterested lover of poetry to read this either with pleasure or with edification, but it is not easy for him to read it without a...

This, we submit, is only another way of saying what we have ventured to say, and what Mr. Arnold himself has said. May we not reasonably conclude that M. Scherer would reject at...

Has he forgotten the passage? or would he now expunge it? Mr. Arnold the poet, and Mr. Arnold the critic, are evidently at issue. But we think no one will experience much diffic...

But if Mr. Arnold sees insuperable objections to this course, and the canon about poetry being a criticism of life is to be added to that list of delightful formulae, which, dur...

So far we have seen, by illustrations purposely taken from passages in the _Inferno_ and the _Purgatorio_ familiar to all serious readers of the _Divine Comedy_, how Dante, by r...

It is not necessary to comment here on the First Canto of the _Divina Commedia_. That, one has done already before the Dante Society, and it is not requisite for one's present t...

It is not necessary to dwell on the fatuousness of such criticism, more especially as one discerns welcome signs of a disposition on the part of the reading public to turn away...

In protesting, therefore, against Pessimism in Poetry, I am only returning to the oldest, soundest, and noblest traditions in English Literature, and in the English character. I...

What does it mean? Several years ago I ventured to express the opinion that Mr. Tennyson's was rather a feminine than a masculine Muse, borrowing, naturally enough, its idiosync...

Would not the proper conclusion, therefore--a conclusion not overstrained and if not stated with excessive dogmatism--seem to be, that literature, though demanding precedence in...

The theme is one that easily lends itself to illustration; but enough perhaps has been said to justify the conclusion that it is for the best and highest interests of literature...

"I should approve," he replied, "if there were no danger of the mounting of the piece diverting the attention of the audience from the play itself, and if it did not appear nece...