Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, if they could ; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed ; therefore they turn critics."

Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, p. 36. Delivered 1811-1812. Schiller has the material sublime.

Table Talk. I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose, words in their best order ; poetry, - the best words in their best order.

That passage is what I call the sublime dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery four-in-hand round the corner of nonsense. .

lago's soliloquy, the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity – how awful it is !

Notes on some other Plays of Shakespeare.

Ibid.

Ibid.

JOSIAH QUINCY. 1772-1864. If this bill [for the admission of Orleans Territory as a State) passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation; and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a separation, - amicably if they can, violently

Abridged Cong. Debates, Jan. 14, 1811. Vol. iv. p. 327.

if they must.?

1 Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are à most stupid and malignant

art. - DISRAELI: Lothair, chap.

author turns critic. - SHELLEY: Fragments of Adonais,

You know who critics are? . The men who have failed in literature and terthe gentleman (Mr. Quincy cannot have forgotten his own sentiment, uttered even on the

floor of this House, “ Peaceably if we can, forcibly if we HENRY CLAY : Speech, Jan. 8, 1813.

ROBERT SOUTHEY. 1774–1843.

“ You are old, Father William,” the young man cried,

“ The few locks which are left you are gray ; You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man, Now tell me the reason I pray."

The Old Man's Comforts, and how he gained them. The march of intellect.

Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society. Vol. i.

p. 360. The Doctor, Chap. Extraordinary. The laws are with us, and God on our side.

On the Rise and Progress of Popular Disaffection (1817).

Essay viii. Vol. ii. p. 107. Agreed to differ.

Life of Wesley
My days among the dead are passed;

Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,

The mighty minds of old ;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.

Occasional Pieces.
How does the water
Come down at Lodore ?

The Cataract of Lodore.
So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store.

Ibid.
Through moss and through brake. Ibid.

Helter-skelter,
Hurry-scurry.

Ibid.
A sight to delight in.

Ibid. And so never ending, but always descending.

Toid. And this way the water comes down at Lodore.

1 See Burke, pago 408.

From his brimstone bed, at break of day,

A-walking the Devil is gone,
To look at his little snug farm of the World,
And see how his stock went on.

The Devil's Walk. Stanea 1
He passed a cottage with a double coach-house, -
A cottage of gentility;
And he owned with a grin,

That his favourite sin
Is pride that apes humility. "

Ibid. Stanza 8.
Where Washington hath left

His awful memory
A light for after times !

Ode written during the War with America, 1814.
How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures; nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths;

Beneath her steady ray

The desert circle spreads
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!

Thalaba. Book i. Stanza 1. “But what good camè of it at last ?”

Quoth little Peterkin. “Why, that I cannot tell,” said he; “But ’t was a famous victory.”

The Battle of Blenheima Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue.,

Madoc in Wales. Part i 5. What will not woman, gentle woman dare, When strong affection stirs her spirit up?

Part i 2

1 See Coleridge, page 501.

Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,"
As some one somewhere sings about the sky.

BYRON: Don Juan, canto iv. stanza 110

And last of all an Admiral came,
A terrible man with a terrible name,
A name which you all know by sight very well,
But which no one can speak, and no one can spell.

The March to Moscow. Stanza &
They sin who tell us love can die;
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.

Love is indestructible,
Its holy flame forever burneth;
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.

It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of love is there.

The Curse of Kehama. Canto 2. Stanza 10.
Oh, when a mother meets on high

The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then for pains and fears,

The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrow, all her tears,
An over-payment of delight?

Stanza 11
Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe;
But 't is the happy that have called thee so.

Canto xv. Stanza 11.

The Satanic school.

Vision of Judgment. Original Preface.

CHARLES LAMB. 1775-1834.

The red-letter days now become, to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days.

Oxford in the Vacation. For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak profanely) to be present with the Lord.

Ibid. A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game.

Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whish

.

Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but orgarically I am incapable of a tune, 4 Chapter om Ears. Not if I know myself at all. The Old and New Schoolmaster. It is good to love the unknown.

Valentine's Day. The pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), resembling – a homely fancy, but I judged it to be sugar-candy; yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy.

My First Play, Presents, I often say, endear absents.

A Dissertation upon Roast Pig. It argues an insensibility.

Ibid. Books which are no books.

Detached Thoughts on Books. Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.

Amicus Redivivus. Gone before To that unknown and silent shore.

Hester. Stanza 7. I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days. All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Old Familiar Faces. For thy sake, tobacco, I Would do anything but die.

A Farewell to Tobacco. And half had staggered that stout Stagirite.

Written at Cambridge. Who first invented work, and bound the free And holiday-rejoicing spirit down To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood ? Sabbathless Satan!

Work I like you and your book, ingenious Hone !

In whose capacious all-embracing leaves