Classic

“ The complexity of the fable, the rapid transitions in the action, the picturesque beauty of the scenes, and the domestic nature of the emotions it excites, have a far less classic than romantic stamp. ”

“ If it is not epoch-making, it should be. It treats in charming style and convincing manner a theme of vital and universal interest. The thoughtful man who reads it will feel that a new classic has been added to the world's literature. ”

“ The charm, then, of what is classical in art or literature is that of the well-known tale, to which we can nevertheless listen over and over again, because it is told so well. To the absolute beauty of its form is added the accidental, tranquil charm of familiarity. ”

“ Instead there is a spirit of independence and revolt, an insistence on the value of originality and the right of the individual to express himself in his own fashion. 2. There is a strong reassertion of the value of emotion, imagination, and enthusiasm. This naturally involves some reaction against the pseudo-classic, and also the true classic, regard for finished form. 3. There is a renewal of genuine appreciation and love for external Nature, not least for her large and great aspects, such as mountains and the sea. ”

“ Surely that style, so fresh, so rich, so full of surprises—that style which stamps as classical your fragments of slang, and perpetually astonishes and delights—would alone give immortality to an author, even had he little to say. ”

“ some are full of Petrarchic tenderness and grace, and moulded with classic correctness, others are impetuous and romantic, or disfigured by false learning, or full of tedious pictures of the conflicts of passion with reason. ”

“ one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or "pure English, undefiled," wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought. ”

“ Now, come to stalwart manhood, that mighty generation, eager to speed the coming of red-blooded Romanticism and the going of cold and correct Classicism, showed itself alert in many directions, notably prolific in literature and the arts, after the sterility of so many years. ”

“ The classical dramatist is too sensitive to the beautiful, the sublime, the essential, and the universal to admit into his conception of fine art either moral and physical deformity or the accidental and particular aspects of life. ”

“ The term Classical, used in its narrow sense, implies a servile adherence to the Unities, but in its wide and best sense, it means such a simplicity of plan, selection of actors and events, such judicious limitations on time and range of subject, as may concentrate the interest, perfect the illusion, and make the impression most distinct and forcible. ”

“ And in this we may notice, by the way, one distinct value of the study of the classics,—that the great ideas and facts about human life which the superb ancients put into their poetry shall not be absolutely lost as are their arts. ”

“ There is no better recreation for the mind than the study of the ancient classics. Take any one of them into your hand, be it only for half an hour, and you will feel yourself refreshed, relieved, purified, ennobled, strengthened; just as though you had quenched your thirst at some pure spring. Is this the effect of the old language and its perfect expression, or is it the greatness of the minds whose works remain unharmed and unweakened by the lapse of a thousand years? Perhaps both together. But this I know. ”

“ No apologue addressed to the mature intelligence alone, or framed to fit the society of his day, is here included.
Many books which men have agreed to call classics are seldom taken down from the shelves. ”

“ The pleasure we feel on this classical ground, and the interest we take in all the objects around, is not altogether derived from their own native beauties; a great part of it arises from the magic colouring of poetical description. ”

“ The life of the ode is ideal, that of the epic grandiose, that of the drama real. In fine, this triple poetry springs from three grand sources—the Bible, Homer, Shakspere. Such are the diverse aspects of thought at different eras of man and society. Here are its three faces—youth, manhood, old age. Examine a single literature by itself or all literatures en masse, and you will always reach the same fact—the lyric poets before the epic, the epic before the dramatic. ”

“ These are the epic poem, the drama, and the novel. Each purports to be, in some sort, a reflex of human life and action, as obeying certain laws and tending to a certain end. In each men are represented, not as at rest, or in contemplative isolation, but in co-operation or collision. In each there is a combination of two elements, an outer element of incident, an inner of passion and character. ”

“ Of the origin and essence of the romantic I treated in my first Lecture, and I shall here, therefore, merely briefly mention the subject. The ancient art and poetry rigorously separate things which are dissimilar; the romantic delights in indissoluble mixtures; all contrarieties: nature and art, poetry and prose, seriousness and mirth, recollection and anticipation, spirituality and sensuality, terrestrial and celestial, life and death, are by it blended together in the most intimate combination. ”

“ The energy and dignity of the author's manner, the unaffected elevation of his style, the conciseness, perspicuity and simplicity of his diction, are everywhere suited to his subject, which is solemn, novel, luminous, affecting,—a subject perhaps the most universally interesting to the human race that has ever been presented to their contemplation. ”

“ So the novel was born, expressing, though in a different way, exactly the same ideals of personality and of the dignity of common life which were later proclaimed in the American and in the French Revolution, and were welcomed with rejoicing by the poets of the romantic revival. To tell men, not about knights or kings or types of heroes, but about themselves in the guise of plain men and women, about their own thoughts and motives and struggles, and the results of actions upon their own characters,--this was the purpose of our first novelists. ”

“ There are many such,—dramas on the stage of history, life scenes that are pictures in action, tales pathetic, stirring, enlivening, full of the element of the unusual, of the stuff the novel and the romance are made of, yet with the advantage of being actual fact. ”

“ In the enlightened motive, in the station of the actors, in the character of the action itself, and in its beautiful consummation, there is nothing in the archives of history, ancient or modern, nor even in the volumes of the boldest and wildest imagination, that will bear a comparison. ”

“ Not slowly to build up a grand poem of continuous ideal action, not quietly and at leisure to weave forth tissues of fantastic imagery, not perseveringly and laboriously to prosecute one track of speculation and bring it to a close, not earnestly and courageously to throw one’s whole soul into a work of moral agitation and reform, was now what was regarded as natural in literature. ”

“ The freshness of the new field which was opened up to the imagination—so full of vivid lights and shadows, light-hearted fun, grinding hardship, stirring adventure, heroic action, warm friendships, bitter hatreds—was in exhilarating contrast to the world of the historical romancer and the fashionable novelist, to which the mind of the general reader was at that date given over. ”

“ Finally, I have recorded the names of a small group of stories which possess, I believe, an even finer distinction—the distinction of uniting genuine substance and artistic form in a closely woven pattern with a spiritual sincerity so earnest, and a creative belief so strong, that each of these stories may fairly claim, in my opinion, a position of some permanence in our literature as a criticism of life. Stories of such quality are indicated in the year-book index by three asterisks prefixed to the title, and are also listed in a special “Roll of Honor.” ”

“ Even the humorous concluding scenes have traits of special grace, retaining in less emphatic passages a stray lire or word of power, as it seems, so that we watch to the end for the traces where the nobler hand has glanced along, leaving its vestiges, as if accidentally or wastefully, in the rising of the style. ”

“ This historic value of the tales, however, great as it is to the student of manners, is secondary to their poetic value, which lies in the sentiment, feeling, and pathos with which the experience of life embodied in them, the workings of simple human nature, in however debased surroundings, is set forth. ”

“ All beauties of language, all flights of poetry, all particular scenes and speeches, powerful and impressive as they may be, are merely subordinate. No character, how exquisitely or elaborately soever conceived and finished, is drawn for itself ”

“ But he who can put up with indifferent fare cheerfully, whose serenity of temper remains unshaken by the assaults of a flea, and who can draw amusement from the stores of memory and imagination, will find the powers of both wonderfully excited during this journey. Sacred history unites with profane, truth conspires with fable, to afford him entertainment, and render every object interesting. ”

“ For the drama of our time it must always remain the model. The interest of the story, the quiet art with which it is unfolded, the naturalness and soberness of the means that are used, and by which great effects are produced, the brilliancy and richness of the dialogue—all these things make it a singularly perfect and interesting work. ”

“ From the society of such characters, who seem to consider the noble productions of superior intellect, the fine and vigorous flights of fancy, the brilliant effusions of a sublime imagination, and the refined feelings of the heart, as fancied conceits or wild deliriums, those who examine them by a better standard than that of fashion or common taste, fly with delight. ”

“ Intelligences and emotions, relieved of all the imbecile preoccupations of civilised life, move in intricate and subtle dances, crossing and recrossing, advancing, retreating, impinging. An immense erudition and an immense fancy go hand in hand. All the ideas of the present and of the past, on every possible subject, bob up among the Tales, smile gravely or grimace a caricature of themselves, then disappear to make place for something new. ”

“ When the dramatic feeling warrants it, the humblest rise to the highest poetry. The renaissance was an age of deeper, mightier feelings than our own, and this intense life speaks in verse, for only thus can it adequately express itself. ”

“ They are all types, to the author's mind, of something general, of something that is bound up with the history, at large, of families and individuals, and each of them is the centre of a cluster of those ingenious and meditative musings, rather melancholy, as a general thing, than joyous, which melt into the current and texture of the story and give it a kind of moral richness. ”

“ Such occasions, however, are the exceptions which prove the rule. Have you noticed how often there comes in the greatest literature, after the surge and passion of a mighty theme, the contrasted beauty of a quiet and measured close? ”

“ His comedies offer elaborate and subtle—even tender—pictures of human character in its eternal types, lively sketches of social follies and literary extravagances, and broad appeals to the ordinary sources of vulgar merriment. Light and perspicuous in construction, he is master of the delicate play of irony, the penetrating force of wit, and the expansive gaiety of frolicsome fun. ”

“ It is exposed to the attractions of all kinds of subordinate and partial literature,—the fairy story, the conventional romance, the pathetic legend,—and it escapes them all by taking them all up as moments, as episodes and points of view, governed by the conception, or the comprehension, of some of the possibilities of human character in a certain form of society. ”

“ Perhaps no where does a more beautiful treatise of the kind exist. The good sense and wisdom of the thoughts, the delicacy of the feelings, and the charm of the style, are, throughout, equally conspicuous. ”

“ Simplicity and extravagance of style, homeliness and quaintness, tragedy and comedy, interchangeably set their hands and seals to this admirable production. We find the simplicity of prose with the graces of poetry. The stalk grows out of the ground ”

“ They flourished in times full of spirit and lustihood, when men enjoyed life roughly, but heartily and vigorously; times wild and picturesque, which have furnished poetry with its richest materials, and the drama with its most attractive variety of characters and manners. ”

“ In place of a mental output, rigidly confined within unbending modes of thought and expression, we have a literature that reflects the varied phases of human life, that can discard romance and look upon the commonplace ”

“ But there is more than the subject in our "Heroic Ballads" or our "Romances of the Round Table": there is the sentiment of the subject; and nothing, to tell the truth, is lacking to them but the sentiment of form and art. I cannot devote less than three lectures to the French poetry of the Middle Ages. ”

“ Character, humor, poignant pathos, and the sad grotesque conjunctions of old and new civilizations are expressed through the medium of a style that has distinction and strikes a note of rare personality. ”

“ But it must always be remembered that in such writing as Comedy and Romance the strict rules of motivation must be relaxed, and indeed in all literature, even in Tragedy, the idealization, condensation, and heightening which are the proper methods of Art require them to be slightly modified. ”

“ Here is a story whose artistic realism will appeal to everyone, while its distinction as a serious novel is made evident by its clever analysis, sparkling dialogue and thrilling and powerful situations. ”

“ The seventeenth century had seen, especially in comedy, the drama descending from heroic themes of kings and princes to pictures of contemporary life in ordinary society, not highly realistic as we understand the term, yet reproducing many of the types and much of the atmosphere existing around the author. ”