The Vagabond in Literature

And yet in the warm tribute which Mr. Watts-Dunton has paid to Borrow I cannot help feeling that some of the illustrations he gives in justification of his eulogy are scarcely a...

In many respects indeed Borrow will not have realized the fancy picture of the Englishman as limned by Hawthorne's fancy--the big, hearty, self-opiniated, beef-eating, ale-drink...

As a critic of books his originality is perhaps more pronounced, but wise and large though many of his utterances are, here again it is the pleasant wayward Vagabond spirit that...

The characteristics, then, which I find in the Vagabond temperament are (1) Restlessness--the wandering instinct; this expresses itself mentally as well as physically. (2) A pas...

Unimpeachable in sentiment, but too obviously inspired for us to view them with satisfaction. And Thoreau at his best is so fresh, so original, that we decline to be put off wit...

"A Dissenting minister is a character not so easily to be dispensed with, and whose place cannot be well supplied. It is a pity that this character has worn itself out; that tha...

And this is why the literary Vagabond is such excellent company, having wandered from the beaten track he has much to tell others of us who have stayed at home. There is a wild...

His aim is right enough; it is to his method one may take objection. Not on the score of morality. Whitman's treatment of passion is not immoral; it is simply like Nature hersel...

When quite a boy he had constituted himself imaginary king of an imaginary kingdom of Gombrom. Speaking of this fancy he writes: "O reader! do not laugh! I lived for ever under...

Even apart from fiction, his earlier work varied greatly in quality. With the publication of _The Game-keeper at Home_, it was clear that a new force had entered English literat...

But the melancholy that visits the Idealist--the Worshipper of Beauty--is not by any means a mood of despair. The moth may not attain the star, but it feels there is a star to b...

In the introductory paper to this volume an attempt is made to justify the epithet "Vagabond" as applied to writers of a certain temperament. This much may be said here: the ter...

And not only did he sweep away the Conservative traditions and conventions of literature, he endeavoured to overthrow the aristocratic principle that underlies it. Selectness he...