Literary description

“ 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. ”

“ In subordination to one essential beauty in all good literary style, in all literature as a fine art, as there are many beauties of poetry so the beauties of prose are many, and it is the business of criticism to estimate them as such; as it is good in the criticism of verse to look for those hard, logical, and quasi-prosaic excellences which that too has, or needs. To find in the poem, amid the flowers, the allusions, the mixed perspectives, of Lycidas for instance, the thought, the logical structure:—how wholesome! ”

“ A simple moral tale being the groundwork of the piece, the charms of description and all the embellishments of the scene are only subservient to the higher purpose of picturing the manners, or touching the heart. ”

“ A consummate Delicacy of Sentiments, and an exquisite Judgment are the very Soul of Characteristic-Writing; for every particular Stroke, as well as the whole Character, has a proper Degree of Perfection. ”

“ They say to you, oh Poet, ‘Perfect those gifts of your higher nature—yet be not of them vainglorious, since, humanly speaking, they are not yours, but lent for a purpose, and the brief space of earth-life.’ Look upon every beautiful thought, every gift of expression, as the direction of One who has dowered you with the possibility of opening other eyes to the beauty, and other minds to the understanding of such expression. ”

“ With a broader and deeper background of experience and environment, which by some divine special privilege belongs to the poetic imagination, it is easier to set apart and contrast these opposing words and sympathies in a poet ”

“ Thought cherished in the mind becomes earnest; then expressed in words, it becomes poetry. The feelings move inwardly, and are embodied in words. When words are insufficient for them, recourse is had to sighs and exclamations. ”

“ In the meantime, if you demand on one hand, in defiance of their opinion— the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is, on the other hand, genuine then you are interested in poetry. ”

“ It will be good literary art not because it is brilliant or sober, or rich, or impulsive, or severe, but just in proportion as its representation of that sense, that soul-fact, is true, verse being only one department of such literature, and imaginative prose, it may be thought, being the special art of the modern world. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The flow is easy, the style graceful and natural; but the step from poetry to prose is substantial as well as formal; the imagination is ossified, and we exchange the exuberance of legendary creativeness for the dogmatic record of fact without reality, and fiction without grace. ”

“ Any charm of the story-tellers of the ages has entered into the body of the tale, which has become an objective presentment of a reality that concentrates on itself and keeps personality out of sight. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Into the texture of her fiction she wove poetic imagination and poetic significance derived from her clear, absolute, and sympathetic understanding of the human heart and of the hidden springs and the meaning of existence, from her superior and inclusive sympathetic intelligence. ”

“ The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in indignations and enthusiasms, in judgments—and even in love. The manner in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind. ”

“ To the most eloquent expression of the eye, to the handwriting of the passions on his features, to a sensibility which tears to pieces the hearts of his auditors, to powers so unparalleled, he adds a judgment of the most exquisite accuracy, the [Pg 25] fruit of long experience and close observation, by which he preserves every gradation and transition of the passions, keeping all under the control of a just dependence and natural consistency.... It was a fiction as delightful as fancy, and as touching as truth. ”

“ When it becomes necessary, as a guarantee of sincerity and knowledge, to exhibit in full all that is implied in a general statement, he reverses his favourite method, and permits his imagination to expatiate on his material with all the visionary activity of poetry. ”

“ To lure their wild minds into reflection, it invested truth and morality with the many-coloured garb of Fiction, and introduced them, through their delighted imagination, to their understanding and their heart ”

“ In truth, I think that these things are invented by poets in order that we may see our manners sketched under the character of strangers, and the image of our daily life represented under the guise of fiction. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression. ”

“ A high, pure tone of morality pervades each set of verses, and each strikes the reader as inspired by some real event, or condition of mind, and not by some idle fancy or fleeting sentiment.”—Spectator. ”

“ Imagination, reason, and that peculiar human quality in speech which defies analysis as much as the perfume of the rose, but which touches the heart and reaches the mind, are blended in each of these utterances in perfect proportion. ”

“ The description, in the fourth stanza, of the creative power or intelligence, issuing from the primal germ of being, and questioning itself as to its own faculties, has something in it that fills the mind with wonder. ”

“ They will find in them a truth to nature—a freshness and raciness of thought and diction—a freedom from the hackneyed conventionalisms of ordinary story-telling, a descriptive and dramatic power, which lend to them an unfailing charm. ”

“ Perhaps this question, which has so long puzzled the literary world, may be incapable of a categorical answer, but it seems to us essentially to consist of fine thoughts, deeply felt, and expressed in vivid and melodious language. Poets and poetesses see farther than other people, feel more deeply, and utter what they see and feel better. ”

“ The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is Art. ”

“ In his original poems, now and then, a happy line may perhaps be found, and now and then a short composition may give pleasure. But there is, in the whole, little either of the grace of wit, or the vigour of nature. ”

“ For what are the marks, what the qualities, which have distinguished these poets above their fellows, and by reason of which the world has extolled their genius? It is not merely for poetic diction, for tenderness of sentiment, for elevation of feeling, for apt simile, appropriate metaphor, illuminating imagery, and the play of fancy as exhibited in subordinate detail, that we estimate them as we do. ”

“ Yet, my Lord, our Tragedies may be read with great Advantage to Style and Language, if we can bring them down to our calmer Thoughts, and the stiller Scenes of Life, and only use them to be better acquainted with the Nature, Violence, Degrees, and Expression of all the various Passions that exercise and distract the Mind of Man. ”

“ Illustrated.
"The narrative is pervaded by a fine poetical spirit that is alive to the subtle graces of character, as well as to the tender influences of natural scenes. . . . Its chief merits must be placed in its graphic and expressive portraitures of character, its tenderness and delicacy of sentiment, its touches of heartfelt pathos, and the admirable wisdom and soundness of its ethical suggestions."—N. Y. Tribune. ”

“ For it is precisely the exact and delicate response to such subtle visitings, whether it be a visiting of fear and dread or of beauty and delight, which, expressing itself in the individual's manner of living and taste for life, we call personality; which, manifesting itself in his art, we call style; which, exhibiting itself in his purpose and action, we call character. ”

“ I think the use or value of poetry to be the suggestion it affords of the flux or fugaciousness of the poet. The mind delights in measuring itself thus with matter, with history, and flouting both. A thought, any thought, pressed, followed, opened, dwarfs matter, custom, and all but itself. ”

“ Under their authority we see introduced into literary work an habitual grace and perfection, a clearness and directness, a light and pliable strength, and a fine shading of expression, such as no other tongue can even define. We see the same high standard in their criticism, in their works of research, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and in short throughout literature. ”

“ We talk here, naturally, not of non-poetic forms, but of those whose highest bid is addressed to the imagination, to the spiritual and the æsthetic vision, the mind led captive by a charm and a spell, an incalculable art. ”

“ Of these it may be said, that their form is their essence, and their object, the production of pleasure in their contemplation. This is their final end. They are as much the product of genius and the result of composition, as are the lines of the poet or the historian's period. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All that is in man, his mysteries of soul, his thoughts and emotions—deep, wise, holy, loving, touching, and fearful,—or in the world, beautiful, vast, ponderous, gloomy, and awful, moved with rhythmic harmonious utterance—that is Poetry. ”

“ We may divide a dramatic poet's characteristics before we enter into the component merits of any one work, and with reference only to those things which are to be the materials of all, into language, passion, and character ”

“ Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things. Reason is to the imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance.
Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man. ”

“ In the one class of authors you find the prevalence of strong sense, flanked by wit and by fancy, but without much that can be called imaginative or romantic. In the other, imagination or fancy is the regnant faculty ”

“ In all ages the disposition of the more prosaic minds—by which term I do not mean minds belonging to persons devoid of feeling, or even of sentiment, but persons destitute of the poetic sense, or of what Poetry essentially is—has been to incline, in works of fiction whether in prose or verse, to Realism pure and simple ”

“ The abundance and the vividness of character-presentation; the liveliness and the abundance of the staging of that character; the variety of scene and incident—all most properly connected with the plot, but capable of existing and of being felt without it; the human dialogue; the admirable phrase in that dialogue and out of it, in the digressions, in the narrative, above, and through, and about, and below it all—these things and others (for it is practically impossible to exhaust the catalogue) fill up the cup to the brim, and keep it full, for the born lover of the special novel-pleasure. ”

“ First, verbal beauty, then the contemplation and passionate depiction of what really exists around us and in ourselves, that is to say, nature and feeling, and, finally, enveloping the entire work and creating its own atmosphere, the idea which the poet has of the unknown in which float the beings and things he evokes, of the mystery which dominates them and judges them and presides over their destinies. ”