A History of English Literature |
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A. B. Grosart A. C. Swinburne A. H. Bullen Addison artistic beauty Ben Jonson Beowulf Biography and Criticism.-Life character Charlotte Brontë Chaucer chief Church classical comedy criticism Cynewulf death Dowden drama dramatists Dryden early edition eighteenth century Elizabethan England English Literature Essays Faerie Queene famous father fiction French G. E. Saintsbury George Eliot hero human humor ideal imagination influence interest Johnson King later Layamon Letters literary lived London Lord lyric Macmillan Marlowe medieval ment Milton modern mood moral Morley's Universal Library mystical nature novel passion period play poem poet poetic poetry political Pope popular prose published Puritan Queen R. H. Hutton realism religious Renaissance rhyme romantic satire Scott Scribner sense Series Shakespeare shows social songs sonnets Spenser spirit story Studies style Swift Tennyson Thomas thought tion tragedy translation verse Victorian Victorian Literature William Wordsworth writing written wrote young
Popular passages
Page 165 - Ay me! whilst thee the shores and sounding seas Wash far away, where'er thy bones are hurled; Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, Where thou perhaps under the whelming tide Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world...
Page 217 - Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well ; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
Page 278 - Of aspect more sublime: that blessed mood In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened; that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on, Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul...
Page 110 - A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus, And his love Thisbe ; very tragical mirth.
Page 142 - But little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
Page 306 - I STROVE with none, for none was worth my strife; Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art; I warmed both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
Page 195 - The King was struck with horror at the description I had given of those terrible engines, and the proposal I had made. He was amazed how so impotent and grovelling an insect as I (these were his expressions) could entertain such inhuman ideas...
Page 102 - Was this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Page 147 - Now since these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of Methuselah and in a yard under ground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong and specious buildings above it, and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests...
Page 303 - I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed, for centuries, at the summit, or in secret rooms : I was the idol ; I was the priest ; I was worshipped ; I was sacrificed.