John Dennis

“ His finger touched her nipple, played with it. She closed her eyes as his mouth again sought hers. "Darling ..." she murmured. [Pg 84]
But she was speaking to a man who had come from nowhere and had identified himself only as John Dennis. She had no number at which to call him. She could only wait until he returned again, if he ever did.
She thought: Oh, God, John Dennis. Why do you turn away from me? Why did you strip me naked and look at me as though I were a statue? Will you come back again? Please come back and make love to me.
She felt Frank Corson unsnapping her brassiere. ”

“ We may thus account for the manners and style of Dennis, pushed almost to the verge of insanity, and acting on him very much like insanity itself—a circumstance which the quick vengeance of wit seized on, in the humorous “Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the Frenzy of Mr. John Dennis, an officer of the Custom-house.” [42]
57
It is curious to observe that Dennis, in the definition of genius, describes himself; he says—“Genius is caused by a furious joy and pride of soul on the conception of an extraordinary hint. ”

“ In the same year he published Christian Perfection, a profoundly earnest but puritanically narrow work, in which our earthly life is regarded simply as the road to another. 'There is nothing that deserves a serious thought,' he writes, 'but how to get out of the world and make it a right passage to our eternal state.' No man ever practised what he preached with more sincerity and persistency than William Law, but it can hardly be doubted that he narrowed the range of his influence by the views he expressed with regard to culture and to all human learning. ”

“ Dennis writes freely and simply, and with a thorough knowledge of the period with which he deals, and goes straight to the point without revelling in circumambient fancies. The result of this is that in 250 pages of good print we have as concise a history of Queen Anne literature as we could wish."—Cambridge Review.
"An excellent little volume."—Athenæum.
THE AGE OF SHAKESPEARE
"Both volumes are excellently done, with knowledge, judgement, and a pleasant touch of vivacity. It is no easy matter to make a text-book both informing and readable; but here the feat is accomplished. ”

“ The military genius of England was displayed in Marlborough and in Clive, her mercy in John Howard, her spirit of enterprise in Cook, her self-sacrifice in Wesley and Whitefield, her statesmanship in Walpole, in Chatham, and in William Pitt. In oratory as everyone knows, the eighteenth century was surpassingly great, and never before or since has the country produced a political philosopher of the calibre of Burke. What England reaped in literature during the period of which Pope has been selected as the most striking figure, it will be my endeavour to show in the course of these pages. ”

“ Snow on the ground, and blossoms on the trees!
⁠A bitter wind sweeps madly 'cross the moor;
⁠The children shiver at the cottage door,
And old men crouch beside the fire for ease.
Yet still the happy lark disdains the breeze ”

“ The History of John Bull is not fitted to attain lasting popularity. It will be read from curiosity and for information; but the keen excitement, the amusement, and the irritation caused by a brilliant satire of living men and passing events can be but vaguely imagined by readers whose interest in the statecraft of the age is historical and not personal. Arbuthnot, like Swift, belonged to the Tory camp, and both did their utmost to depreciate the great General who never knew defeat, and to promote the designs of Harley. ”

“ No man ever entered on a better fight with his fellow citizens, with the Governors, with the British Government, with the scientists, with the judicial authorities, indeed with almost every authority that was there to be fought, than John Macarthur when he undertook singlehanded the great fight which finally established the wool industry in Australia. ”

“ He cannot walk, he cannot speak,
Nothing he knows of books and men,
He is the weakest of the weak,
And has not strength to hold a pen;
He has no pocket, and no purse,
Nor ever yet has owned a penny,
But has more riches than his nurse,
Because he wants not any. ”

“ We enjoy Swift's egotism and trivialities, as we enjoy the egotism of Pepys or Montaigne, and can imagine the eagerness with which the Letters were read by the lovely woman whose destiny it was to receive everything from Swift save the love which has its consummation in marriage. The style of the Journal is not that of an author composing, but of a companion talking ”

“ Your youngest son is perhaps at this very moment riding on a poker with great delight, not at all regretting that it is not a gold one, and much less wishing it an Arabian horse which he would not know how to manage. ”

“ We are so intimate that we can be company in whatever state of mind we meet, and can entertain each other without expecting always to rejoice. The wine we found to be generous and warming, but with such a heat as moved us rather to be cheerful than frolicsome. ”

“ In Toledo, Ohio, an urban city with a high African-American concentration, 28,000 voters were purged from the voting rolls in August of 2004, just prior to the presidential election. This purge was conducted under the control and direction of George W. Bush’s agent, Ohio Secretary of State John Kenneth Blackwell outside of the regularly established cycle of purging voters in odd-numbered years. ”

“ He was a brilliant politician who affected to be a wise statesman, a traitor to his country while pretending to be a patriot, an orator whose lips distilled honied phrases which his actions belied, a man of insatiable ambition who masked as a philosopher, a profligate without shame, a faithless friend, and an unscrupulous opponent. Blessed with every charm of manner, features, and voice, with a taste for literature and a large faculty of acquisition, he was a slave to the meanest vices. ”

“ The poets of the period are for the most part without enthusiasm, without passion, and without the 'fine madness' which, as Drayton says, should possess a poet's brain. Wit takes precedence of imagination, nature is concealed by artifice, and the delight afforded by these writers is not due to imaginative sensibility. Not even in the consummate genius of Pope is there aught of the magical charm which fascinates us in a Wordsworth and a Keats, in a Coleridge and a Shelley. The prose of the age, masterly though it be, stands also on a comparatively low level. ”

“ Arbuthnot,' he said, 'the first man among the wits of the age. He was the most universal genius, being an excellent physician, a man of deep learning, and a man of much humour.' His genius and generous qualities were amply acknowledged by his contemporaries, Pope calls Arbuthnot 'as good a doctor as any man for one that is ill, and a better doctor for one that is well;' Swift said he had every virtue which could make a man amiable ”

“ The Revolution of 1688 produced a change in English politics scarcely more remarkable than the change that took place a little later in English literature and is to be seen in the poets and wits who are known familiarly as the Queen Anne men. It will be obvious to the most superficial student that the gulf which separates the literary period, closing with the death of Milton in 1674, from the first half of the eighteenth century, is infinitely wider than that which divides us from the splendid band of poets and prose writers who made the first twenty years of the present century so famous. ”

“ Dennis hesitated. "And what does it make my own?"
"Exactly the one you came to take. You have taken it by your startling presence; you're up to your eyes in it, and there's nothing that will become you so as to wear it bravely and gallantly. If you don't like it," Rose added, "you should have thought of that before!"
"You like it so much on your side," Dennis retorted, "that you appear to have engaged in measures to create it even before the argument for it had acquired the force that you give such a fine account of." ”

“ The Wife of whom thou art about to make choice, having been hitherto unblemish’d in her Conduct, and brought up, as they tell us within Port Royal, in the Practice of every Virtue, regulates her Passions by Reasons severe Rule ”

“ His income more than sufficed for all his wants. At Twickenham the great in intellect, and the great by birth, met around his table; he was welcomed by the highest society in the land, and although proud of his intimacy with the nobility, 'unplaced, unpensioned,' he was 'no man's heir or slave,' and jealously preserved his independence. 'Pope,' says Johnson, 'never set genius to sale, he never flattered those whom he did not love, or praised those whom he did not esteem,' and he was, we may add, in this respect a striking contrast to Dryden, who lavished his flatteries wholesale. ”

“ Swift began his literary career by writing Pindaric odes, one of which led Dryden to say, and the prediction was amply verified, 'Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet.' Probably no man of genius ever wrote worse poetry than is to be found in these portentous efforts. ”

“ There are verbal inspirations in a great poet which satisfy the ear, capture the imagination, and live in the memory for ever. Milton's pages are studded with them like stars; Gray has a few, Wordsworth many, and Keats some not to be surpassed for witchery. Of such poetically suggestive lines Thomson has his share, and although it seems unfair to remove them from their context, the excision may be made in a few cases, since they show not only that a new poet had appeared in an age of prose, but a poet of a new order, whose inspiration was felt by his successors. ”

“ As a satirist Pope acknowledged the master he was unable to excel, and so did many of the eighteenth century versemen, who appear to have looked upon satire as the beginning and the end of poetry. Moreover Dryden may be regarded, without much [Pg 2] exaggeration, as the father of modern prose. Nothing can be more lucid than his style, which is at once bright and strong, idiomatic and direct. He knows precisely what he has to say, and says it in the simplest words. It is the form and not the substance of Dryden's prose to which attention is drawn here. ”

“ He was advised to lay aside his dead-dress, now that he had so unexpectedly come among the living; but it was too valuable a piece of finery, and had cost Dennis too much oratory the preceding day, to be parted with so readily. He met nobody on the road; but if he had, his dress would have been his protection; for everyone would have run from him, as from a ghost. He might have gone in any dress, however, in security; few people, in any country, would be willing to lead to the gallows a man just escaped from it; few people in Ireland would refuse to run some risk to save him from it. ”

“ He was happy too in having very powerful patrons, but what could be done for a man, who declared war against all the world? Dennis has given evidence against himself in the article of politeness; for in one of his letters he says, he would not retire to a certain place in the country, left he should be disturbed in his studies by the ladies in the house: for, says he, I am not over-fond of the conversation of women. But with all his foibles, we cannot but consider him as a good critic, and a man of genius. ”

“ WINE AND ROSES: A New Volume of Poems.
By Victor J. Daley. With portrait. Cloth gilt, gilt top, 3s. 6d.; full morocco, gilt edges, 6s. (postage 2d.) Daily Telegraph: "Most of his verse is tinged with sadness—as in most Irish poetry—but there is a fine imaginative quality that lifts it to a far higher plane than that of the conventional melancholy rhymer. There are poems in this book that recall the magic of Rossetti... Victor Daley has left his mark in the beginnings of an Australian literature."
HOW HE DIED, AND OTHER POEMS.
By John Farrell. ”

“ On the following day Dennis was again promoted and his pay increased. A man more of the Pat Murphy type was found to perform the coarse work of the store. As Mr. Ludolph had said, Dennis could hardly realize his good fortune. He felt like one lifted out of a narrow valley to a breezy hillside. He was now given a vantage-point from which it seemed that he could climb rapidly, and his heart was light as he thought of what he would be able to do for his mother and sisters. Hope grew sanguine as he saw how he would now have the means to pursue his beloved art-studies to far greater advantage. ”

“ I could go to the gallows without a tear; but cannot bear your goodness, it over comes me."
It did fully overcome him, for he wept and sobbed aloud. He then, to the astonishment of Mr. S———, confessed that he was not in his employment by accident, but in consequence of a scheme of his manservant, Dennis. He had been sheltered in the cabin of the father of the latter, before he applied to Mr. S——— for employment. The misguided man had often meditated robbing his master, but shrunk dismayed from so daring a crime. The presence of so adventurous a robber encouraged him. ”

“ He always gives me more than anyone else," she announced with the air of one conscious of a triumph.
"Where will you end, Rojjie?" cried Dorothy.
"Suburbs probably," she replied practically. "These old wasters take you out to dinner; but marry you—not much." She shook her wise little head so vigorously that her bobbed hair shook like a fringe. "I wish I had a John Dene," she said after a pause.
"A John Dene!"
"Ummm!" nodded Marjorie. ”

“ Before, he had directed the force that governed and protected him on the boy as he slept, and who could tell in what fury of lambent evil it had begun to encompass him? But now, he himself, whom above all Dennis loved and trusted, had approached him with the same initiation, and yet all his love and trust had not given Dennis confidence: the spiritual semaphore of his instinct had hung out the red light of danger. The boy had recoiled from what he brought with a shrinking that was not reassured by the fact that it was his father who brought it. ”