William Lyon Phelps

“ Throughout the heat of the conflict, Tolstoi felt its utter absurdity, really holding the same views of war that he held as an old man. "And why do not Christian people," he wrote in Sevastopol in May, "who profess the one great law of love and self-sacrifice, when they behold what they have wrought, fall in repentance upon their knees before Him who, when He gave them life, implanted in the soul of each of them, together with the fear of death, a love of the good and beautiful, and, with tears of joy and happiness, embrace each other like brothers?" ”

“ It is a singular but happy human characteristic that we love so ardently the scenes of our childhood; even those brought up in a detestable climate will, when far away in golden sunlight, become homesick for the fog, the mist, and the rain. Many who have left home in early manhood will return thither in old age, as though drawn by invisible but irresistible bonds.
American traditions go back to Colonial days; and those days went back to the English country and English speech. We ought not to forget these traditions or be untrue to the best that is in Anglo-Saxon civilisation. ”

“ It is the absolute object that interests this poet, rather than vague or futile speculation about it. The flower in the crannied wall he would leave there. He would never pluck it out, root and all, wondering about the mystery of the life principle. No poet is more clean-eyed. His eyes are achromatic. He has lost his illusions gladly; every time he has lost an illusion he has gained a new idea. The world as it is seems to him more beautiful, more interesting than any false-coloured picture of it or any longing to remould it nearer to the heart's desire. He faces life with steady composure. ”

“ That is the way Robert Browning catches you. The first sixty or seventy pages of The Ring and the Book are altogether the most doleful reading, in point either of idea or of music, in the English language; and yet the monologue of Giuseppe Caponsacchi, that of Pompilia Comparini, and the two of Guido Franceschini, are unapproachable, in their kind, by any living or dead poet, me judice. Here Browning's jerkiness comes in with inevitable effect. You get lightning glimpses—and, as one naturally expects from lightning, zigzag glimpses—into the intense night of the passion of these souls. ”

“ The garden scene between Lisa and Lavretsky is the very ecstasy of passion, although, like the two characters, it is marked by a pure and chaste beauty of word and action, that seems to prove that Love is something divine. Only the truly virtuous really understand passion--just as the sorrows of men are deeper than the sorrows of children, even though the latter be accompanied by more tears. Those who believe that the master passion of love expresses itself by floods of words or by abominable imagery, will understand Turgenev as little as they understand life. ”

“ But these are shadows, and my life has mainly been passed in sunshine.
It would of course be very nice to be an immortal poet or an immortal something-or-other; to feel the steadfast assurance that one had left on earth some enduring work that would remain as a permanent memorial. But although one knows, as I do, that everything one has done will be speedily forgotten, I do not see why that should make one miserable. Why spend one’s life or even one’s last moments in crying for the moon? Why not make the best of the good old world? ”

“ No twentieth century English poet has a stronger personality than William Watson. There is not the slightest tang of it in The Prince's Quest. This long, rambling romance, in ten sections, is as devoid of flavour as a five-finger exercise. It is more than objective; it is somnambulistic. It contains hardly any notable lines, and hardly any bad lines. Although quite dull, it never deviates into prose—it is always somehow poetical without ever becoming poetry. It is written in the heroic couplet, written with a fatal fluency; not good enough and not bad enough to be interesting. ”

“ In order to understand such a paradox, we must remember that in Browning's philosophy, Love is the engine of the whole universe. I have no doubt that Love meant to him more than it has ever meant to any other poet or thinker; just as I am sure that the word Beauty revealed to Keats a vision entirely beyond the range of even the greatest seers. Love is the supreme fact; and every manifestation of it on earth, from the Divine Incarnation down to a chance meeting of lovers, is more important than any other event or idea. ”

“ Every river has a fascination for me, because it is alive. In a green landscape, or in a rocky gorge, or in the midst of a forest, or dividing a city, it gives to every scene the element of life. Living waters flowing through meadows, over sands, between mountains are always moving, progressing, going somewhere. If one climbs a hill, and looks off on a vast expanse of fresh woods and pastures new, and suddenly sees a river, the heart leaps up with recognition. ”

“ The immediate result of all this suffering as set forth in the lives and in the books of the great Russians, is Sympathy -- pity and sympathy for Humanity. Thousands are purified and ennobled by these sublime pictures of woe. And one of the most remarkable of contemporary Russian novels -- Andreev's The Seven Who Were Hanged, a book bearing on every page the stamp of indubitable genius -- radiates a sympathy and pity that are almost divine. ”

“ Yeats and Mr. Russell are both mystics and of a quite different stamp. Mr. Yeats is not insincere, but his mysticism is a part of his art rather than a part of his mind. He is artistically, rather than intellectually, sincere. The mysticism of Mr. Russell is fully as intellectual as it is emotional; it is more than his creed; it is his life. His poetry and his prose are not shadowed by his mysticism, they emanate from it. He does not have to live in another world when he writes verse, and then come back to earth when the dinner or the door bell rings; he lives in the other world all the time. ”

“ Now just as we judge of the value of a glass by its ability to bring things as they are within the range of our vision, so, says Browning, old age is much better than youth. In age our old eyes become achromatic. The rosy illusions of youth vanish, thank God for it! The colors which we imagined belonged to the object were in reality in our imperfect eyes—as we grow older these pretty colors disappear and we see what? We see life itself. Life is a greater and grander thing than any fool's illusion about it. ”