John Henry Ingram

“ In the foremost ranks of classic claimants may be placed the false Alexander, who claimed the Jewish crown under the pretence of being a son of Herod Antipas. Herod, although tributary to the Roman empire, raised the Jewish kingdom to a higher pitch of grandeur than it had reached since the days of Solomon. Great, however, as were his military successes, and extraordinary the pomp and magnificence of his court, his tyranny and cruelty render the annals of his lengthy reign almost unreadable. The record of his crimes, as detailed by Josephus, equals in enormity the worst page of Roman history. ”

“ He had travelled and had seen personally what Elizabeth Barrett had only read of or dreamed about. It is no wonder that a feeling stronger and deeper than had as yet stirred the depths of her heart should grow up and impel the poetess towards the poet. With so many themes and thoughts in common as they had, it is no matter for surprise that the correspondence which they commenced, and for a long time continued, should grow and deepen into something warmer and more sympathetic than the usual interchange of literary manuscripts arouses. ”

“ In this world men, after all, look to the facts, not to motives, and . . . you cannot escape the broad fact that, in the hour of Italy's need (before, mind you, not after the victory) it was the Emperor Napoleon alone who came forward to rescue Italy, who overthrew the tyranny of Austria, and who, willingly or unwillingly, thereby created the Italian kingdom. . . . This is the one simple fact which the Italians have not forgotten and cannot forget; and of this fact Mrs. Browning's mind took hold with all the ardour of her love for Italy, and all the intensity of her poet's feelings. ”

“ If your heart is still able to understand the plaintive cry of outraged nature; if more than thirty-six years of suffering and exile would appear to you sufficient punishment for the enormous crime of being your nearest relation; if your hate is extinguished, break this culpable silence; since fortune once more puts you at the mercy of foreigners, would it not be better to throw yourself into the arms of your unfortunate brother? ”

“ Hawthorne's account of their hostess is quite as representative as her husband's. She describes her as "very small, delicate, dark, and expressive. She looked like a spirit. A cloud of hair falls on each side her face in curls, so as partly to veil her features. But out of the veil look sweet, sad eyes, musing and far-seeing and weird. Her fairy fingers looked too airy to hold, and yet their pressure was very firm and strong. The smallest possible amount of substance encloses her soul, and every particle of it is infused with heart and intellect. ”

“ Poe could not have written The Raven in youth. It exhibits a method so positive as almost to compel us to accept, against the denial of his associates, his own account of its building. The maker does keep a firm hand on it throughout, and for once seems to set his purpose above his passion. This appears in the gravely quaint diction, and in the contrast between the reality of everyday manners and the profounder reality of a spiritual shadow upon the human heart. The grimness of fate is suggested by phrases which it requires a masterly hand to subdue to the meaning of the poem. ”

“ Browning's marriage settlement, says, "I cannot recollect when I have been more moved and excited by any surprise, beyond the circle of my immediate hopes and fears," than when "she married, after an intimacy suspected by none save a very few, under circumstances of no ordinary romance, and in marrying whom she secured for the residue of her life an emancipation from prison and an amount of happiness delightful to think of, as falling to the lot of one who, from a darkened chamber, bad still exercised such a power of delighting others." ”

“ It is unfortunate that the class of men to whom we are compelled to resort chiefly for historic and social information prior to the invention of printing, are the very men whose writings it is necessary to hold in greatest doubt; and it is, beyond dispute, well ascertained that history which had to filter through a priest's brains, as a rule descended to posterity deeply tinged, to say the best of it, with the hue its author wished it to have in the eyes of the world. ”

“ Rarely has an attempt been made, and still more rarely with success, to investigate the germination of any poetic chef d'œuvre: Edgar Poe's most famous poem—The Raven—has, however, been a constant object of such research. Could the poet's own elaborate and positive analysis of the poem—his so styled Philosophy of Composition—be accepted as a record of fact, there would be nothing more to say in the matter, but there are few willing to accept its statements, at least unreservedly. ”

“ Up to 1421 no one would appear to have entertained any doubt of the death of Prince Mustapha at the famous battle of Angora, when suddenly he, or a claimant to his name, appeared, and demanded the sovereignty of the empire, by virtue of being Bajaret's eldest son. Who this man was still remains doubtful. With the single exception of Nectori, who is, however, a creditable authority, all the Turkish historians declare this soi disant Mustapha to have been an impostor, whilst Christian writers, favouring the Greek cause, persistently assert him to have been the veritable prince himself. ”

“ Miss Barrett's original conception of the work is shadowed forth in these words:—
My idea, the terror attending spiritual consciousness—the man's soul to the man—is something which has not, I think, been worked hitherto, and seems to admit of a certain grandeur and wildness in the execution. The awe of this soul-consciousness breaking into occasional lurid heats through the chasm of our conventionalities has struck me, in my own self-observation, as a mystery of nature very grand in itself, and is quite a distinct mystery from conscience. ”

“ Upon the death of the renowned Alexis, Emperor of the Eastern Empire, his nephew, bearing the same name, was called to the throne. The young monarch being only thirteen years of age, was placed under the guardianship of his mother Xene, and of his cousin Andronicus, a man of great audacity and courage, but who, despite his royal birth, had suffered innumerable vicissitudes of fortune. Her coadjutor speedily contrived to get the empress mother banished, forcing her own son to sign the warrant of exile; and then, still fearful of the poor woman's influence in the state, had her strangled. ”

“ Return and choke my utterance.
"All this time," says Elizabeth, "we lived at Hope End, a few miles from Malvern, in a retirement scarcely broken to me except by books and my own thoughts, and it is a beautiful country, and was a retirement happy in many ways. . . . There I had my fits of Pope and Byron and Coleridge, and read Greek as hard under the trees as some of your Oxonians in the Bodleian; gathered visions from Plato and the dramatists, and eat and drank Greek and made my head ache with it." ”

“ William Minto, in a remarkably thoughtful and original essay [1] —have elected to place entire reliance upon Poe's statements, as given in The Philosophy of Composition; we, for reasons to be given, can only regard them as the result of an afterthought, as the outcome of a desire—or perhaps of a necessity—to produce an effect; to create another sensation.
Those unable or unwilling to accept the poet's theory for The Raven's composition have diligently sought for the source of its inspiration—for the germ out of which it grew. ”

“ One day, in the fancied seclusion of the grounds, poetic ardour betrayed her into crowning herself, in anticipation of the world's recognition, with a wreath of ivy. Thus bedecked, she was discovered by her cousin, Romney, the heir of the Leigh estates, a calm, earnest philanthropist, who had his dreams—more extravagant even than Aurora's. His ambition was to break down the strong barriers existent between the masses and classes; to elevate the poorest and vilest by the personal intercourse and aid of his own social order. ”

“ Browning's face upon which one loved to gaze—that face and head which almost lost themselves in the thick curls of her dark brown hair. That jealous hair could not hide the broad, fair forehead, 'royal with truth,' as smooth as any girl's, and 'too large for wreath of modern wont.' Her large brown eyes were beautiful, and were in truth the windows of her soul. ”

“ Browning's Imperialism dated from the time of the Italian War. It is difficult to convey an idea to strangers of the intenseness of all her feelings about Italy. Hers was no dilettante artistic love, but a deep personal attachment for the land of her home and her affections. All who had written or spoken or worked in behalf of Italy were as welcome to her as friends of long standing; while for those who had exerted their powers against Italy, as open enemies or false friends, she felt as personal an enmity as it was possible for that gentle nature to feel against any living being. ”

“ He lies by me on the sofa, where I lie and write. He lies quite at ease between the velvet of my gown and the fur of my couvre-pied; and has no wicked dreams, I can answer for it, of a hare out of breath, or of a partridge shot through the whirring wing; if he sees a ghost at all it is of a little mouse which he killed once by accident. He is as innocent as the first dog, when Eve patted him."
In Miss Barrett's correspondence with another literary friend of this period, the late Thomas Westwood, of poetic repute, the name of Flush frequently figures. ”

“ Browning as a wife and as a mother have found it difficult to realise her life under any other condition, so vivid and complete is the image of her peaceful home, of its fire-side where the logs are burning, and the mistress established on her sofa, with her little boy curled up by her side, the door opening and shutting meanwhile to the quick step of the master of the house and to the life of the world without, coming to find her in her quiet corner. ”

“ The poverty of the plot, the improbability of the whole story, the author's frequent ignorance of worldly matters, the faulty and too long deferred rhymes, lapses in the rhythm and occasional commonplaces, all vanish in the passionate glow of thought, in the rush of burning words, and the magnificent flood of imaginative poetry, tearing everything along with it in a resistless torrent of glory and grandeur, that fairly overpowers and conquers the most critical reader's judgment. ”