Views and Reviews: Essays in appreciation: Literature

which is a pun as unexpected and imaginative as any that exists, not excepting even Lamb's renowned achievement, the immortal 'I say, Porter, is that your own Hare or a Wig?' Bu...

He is one of the heroes of modern art. Envy and scandal have done their worst now. The libeller has said his say; the detectives who make a specialty of literary forgeries have...

'Bethink ye, Gods, is there no other way?-- Speak, were not this a way, a way for Gods? If I, if Odin, clad in radiant arms, Mounted on Sleipner, with the warrior Thor Drawn in...

Their enthusiasm was not all irrational. Hugo's supremacy was not that he was the greatest artist in essentials, for here Dumas was immeasurably his superior. It was not that he...

To read the _Memoires_ is to feel that in writing them the great musician deliberately set himself to win the heart of posterity. He believed in himself, and he believed in his...

They that would have it are many; they that achieve their desire are few. For in the minor artist the passionate--the elemental quality--is not often found: he being of his esse...

Champfleury--novelist, dramatist, archaeologist, humourist, and literary historian--belonged to a later generation than that of Petrus Borel and Philothee O'Neddy; but he could...

_Suggested by one friend and selected and compiled by another_, _this volume is less a book than a mosaic of scraps and shreds recovered from the shot rubbish of some fourteen y...

He is so superior a person that to catch him tripping is a peculiar pleasure. It is a satisfaction apart, for instance, to reflect that he has (it must be owned) a certain genti...

But we have the plays, and who runs may read and admire. I say advisedly who runs may read, and not who will may see. Congreve's plays are, one can imagine, as dull in action as...

How long is it that the wise and good have ceased to say (striking their pensive bosoms), '_Here_ lies Gay'? It is--how long? But for all that Gay is yet a figure in English let...

Just as Moliere in the figures of Alceste and Tartuffe has summarised and embodied all that we need to know of indignant honesty and the false fervour of sanctimonious animalism...

But if _Grandison_ be dull and _Pamela_ contemptible _Clarissa_ remains; and _Clarissa_ is what Musset called it, 'le premier roman du monde.' Of course _Clarissa_ has its fault...