John Churton Collins

“ Any sudden gust of passion, as an ecstasy of love in an unexpected meeting, cannot better be expressed than in a word and a sigh, breaking one another. Nature is dumb on such occasions; and to make her speak, would be to represent her unlike herself. But there are a thousand other concernments of lovers as jealousies, complaints, contrivances, and the like; where, not to open their minds at large to each other, were to be wanting to their own love, and to the expectation of the audience: who watch the Movements of their Minds, as much as the Changes of their Fortunes. ”

“ Scarcely a day passes in which some book is not hurried into the world, which owes its existence not to any desire on the part of its author to add to the stores of useful literature, or even to a hope of obtaining money, but simply to that paltry vanity which thrives on the sort of homage of which society of a certain kind is not grudging, and which knows no distinction between notoriety and fame. ”

“ First, then, I am of opinion, that Rhyme is unnatural in a Play, because Dialogue, there, is presented as the effect of sudden thought. For a Play is the Imitation of Nature: and since no man, without premeditation, speaks in rhyme; neither ought he to do it on the Stage. This hinders not but the Fancy may be, there, elevated to a higher pitch of thought than it is in ordinary discourse; for there is a probability that men of excellent and quick parts, may speak noble things ex tempore: but those thoughts are never fettered with the numbers and sound of Verse, without study ”

“ Why, this is just what nine men in ten who court fame have to do. Nature is kind, but seldom profuse. If she really endows a man with what, if trumpeted, would make him famous, the odds are she couples with her gifts pride, modesty, or self-respect, which, to say the least, heavily handicap him in the race for reputation. When she does not endow with the reality, she compensates by bestowing the power of acquiring the credit for it. She is, as a rule, much too thrifty to heap on the same man the keen pleasures of genuine enthusiasm and the sweets of popular applause. ”

“ As for their New Way of mingling Mirth with serious Plot, I do not, with LISIDEIUS, condemn the thing; though I cannot approve their manner of doing it. He tells us, we cannot so speedily re-collect ourselves, after a Scene of great Passion and Concernment, as to pass to another of Mirth and Humour, and to enjoy it with any relish. But why should he imagine the Soul of Man more heavy than his Senses? Does not the eye pass from an unpleasant object, to a pleasant, in a much shorter time than is required to this? ”

“ Scholars are beginning to see that what Socrates did for Philosophy must now be done for Greek, if Greek is to hold its own. Thus, it has preserved, and no doubt may preserve, its esoteric side; but that which constitutes its chief, its real importance—which justifies its retention in modern education—is not what appeals, and can only appeal, in each generation, to a small circle of "specialists"—its philological interest, but what appeals to liberal intelligence, to men as men, to the poet, to the philosopher, to the orator, to the critic. ”

“ To which I only answered coldly, that "the event will shew!" But it is the talent of our Age and nation to turn things of the greatest importance into ridicule. When the end of the year had verified all my Predictions; out cometh Mr. PARTRIDGE's Almanack! disputing the point of his death. So that I am employed, like the General who was forced to kill his enemies twice over, whom a necromancer had raised to life. If Mr. PARTRIDGE has practised the same experiment upon himself, and be again alive; long may he continue so! ”

“ If the legislators of this School decline to reform it, then it is the duty of Oxford—a duty which she owes alike to education and to her own honour—to counteract the mischief which this institution must, by degrading throughout England and the colonies the whole level of liberal instruction and study on its most important side, inevitably do. To the herd of imperfectly and erroneously disciplined teachers which this institution will turn loose on education, let her oppose, at least, a minority which shall worthily represent her. Let her establish a proper degree or diploma in Literature. ”

“ But to do this always, and never be able to write a line without it, though it may be admired by some few pedants, will not pass upon those who know that Wit is best conveyed to us in the most easy language: and is most to be admired, when a great thought comes dressed in words so commonly received, that it is understood by the meanest apprehensions; as the best meat is the most easily digested. But we cannot read a verse of CLEVELAND's, without making a face at it; as if every word were a pill to swallow. He gives us, many times, a hard nut to break our teeth, without a kernel for our pains. ”

“ Here we have the poet, and that poet Shakespeare, admitting the world into the innermost secrets of his life, taking his contemporaries, without the least reserve, into his confidence, inviting and assisting them to the study of his own morbid anatomy, and, in a word, stripping himself bare with all the shameless abandon of Jean Jacques and of Casanova. Everything that we know of Shakespeare seems to discountenance the probability of his having any such intention. ”

“ We shall find that a quotation out of Qui mihi, an Axiom out of Logic, a Saying of a Philosopher, or the like, though managed with some quickness and applied with some seeming ingenuity, will not, in our days, pass, or be accepted, for Wit.
For we must know that, as we are now in an Age of great Philosophers and Men of Reason, so of great quickness and fancy! and that Greek and Latin, which heretofore (though never so impertinently fetched in) was counted admirable, because it had a learned twang; yet, now, such stuff, being out of fashion, is esteemed but very bad company! ”

“ Revelling alike in the world of nature, and in the world of man, at once simple and intense, at once playful and pathetic, his poetry has a freshness as of the morning, an abandon as of a child at play. ”

“ No morning sun lasts a whole day,
as Poor RICHARD says.
Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but, ever while you live, Expense is constant and certain: and 'tis easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel, as Poor RICHARD says. So rather go to bed supperless, than rise in debt!
Get what you can! and what you get, hold! 'Tis the Stone that will turn all your lead into gold!
as Poor RICHARD says. And when you have got the Philosopher's Stone, sure, you will no longer complain of bad times, or the difficulty of paying taxes.
This doctrine, my friends! is Reason and Wisdom! ”

“ Now it will not be disputed that if the Universities ought, in the interests of liberal culture, to provide adequately for instruction in Literature, they ought also, in the interests of science, to provide adequately for instruction in Philology. It is a branch of learning of immense importance. It is, and ought to be, the peculiar care of Universities, and nothing could be more derogatory to a University than deficiency in such a study. But it is a study in itself. As a science it has no connection with Literature. ”