"Critic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... immediately opposite the one set aside for royalty the Lady Shalem sat in well-considered prominence, confident that every press critic and reporter would note her presence, and that one or two of them would describe, or misdescribe, her toilet. Already quite a considerable section of the audience knew her by name, and the frequency with ...
— When William Came • Saki
... not a major critic a good part of his charm and interest for us stems from a mind that is not in the least doctrinaire. His method is inductive, his appeal is always to the human psychology as that can be known experientially, ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... a very hearty laugh, and, when Isabel gaw him so excessively amused, she ventured to laugh too at her ancient prejudice, and the strange chance which had made the fantastic Viscount, Sir Roland's critic. ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... [272] An eminent critic has called Tacitus' account of this battle an 'historical nightmare', but those who do not suffer from a surfeit of military knowledge may find that it lies easy upon them. It is written for the plain man with an eye for situations and an ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... find indeed that Place had called his attention to the account of Kant, published by Wirgman in the Encyclopaedia Londinensis 1817. Mill about the same time tells Place that he has begun to read The Critic of Pure Reason. 'I see clearly enough,' he says, 'what poor Kant would be about, but it would require some time to give an account of him.' He wishes (December 6, 1817) that he had time to write a book which would 'make the human mind ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... time to ask an explanation, the appearance of another customer caused his face to brighten, and changed the current of his thoughts. The person who now entered was an exceedingly brilliant looking girl of twenty, dressed in the height of fashion, and extremely well, though a severe critic might have thought she was OVER dressed for the streets, still she had alighted from a carriage. Her face was decidedly handsome, and her person exquisitely proportioned. As a whole, I had scarcely ever seen a young creature that could lay claim to more ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... knowledge and experience." But unfortunately almost anybody does it—any one about the office who is willing to give up his evening to go to the theater. To be sure, many metropolitan papers employ skilled critics to write their dramatic copy and run the theatrical news over the critic's name. Some editors of smaller papers have the decency to do the work themselves. But in most cases the work is given to an ordinary reporter—and not infrequently to the greenest reporter on the staff. Worse than that, the work is seldom given to the same ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... most important service as a Biblical critic. In 1516 A.D. he published the New Testament in the original Greek, with a Latin translation and a dedication to the pope. Up to this time the only accessible edition of the New Testament was the old Latin version known as the Vulgate, which St. Jerome had made near the close of the fourth century. ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... creature adored perfumes. She would go into ecstasies on breathing in the patchouli and vetiver used for Cashmere shawls. She had also a taste for music. Nestling upon a pile of scores, she would listen most attentively and with every mark of satisfaction to the singers who came to perform at the critic's piano. But high notes made her nervous, and she never failed to close the singer's mouth with her paw if the lady sang the high A. We used to try the experiment for the fun of the thing, and it never failed once. It was quite ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... Galatea, Raphael says, that in order to paint a beautiful woman, he must see many, but that, after all, he must work upon a certain ideal image present in his mind. 'We thus see,' says the French critic, 'that he really sought after the beautiful which Nature presents to art, but which the imagination of the artist alone can seize, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 432 - Volume 17, New Series, April 10, 1852 • Various
... he surprised even his friend Dr. X——. The ladies admired his taste as a poet, the gentlemen his accuracy as a critic; Lady Delacour loudly applauded, and Belinda silently approved. Clarence was elated. The Spanish gentleman, to whom he had just quoted a case in point from Vida's Scacchia, asked him if he were as perfect in the practice as in the theory of the game. Clarence was too proud ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... is a little too just for the age he lives in; he has read all, but approves of very few. His familiarity with the customs, manners, actions, and writings of the ancients, makes him a very delicate observer of what occurs to him in the present world. He is an excellent critic, and the time of the play is his hour of business; exactly at five he passes through New Inn, crosses through Russell Court, and takes a turn at Will's until the play begins; he has his shoes rubbed ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... frankly, at the end of three days, a very prejudiced critic, so that one morning when, in the garden, my great man had offered to read me something I quite held my breath as I listened. It was the written scheme of another book—something put aside long ago, before ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... outline, seemed competent to impart at short notice any information required of her. She had never struck Mrs. Peyton as more alert and efficient. A melting grace of line and colour tempered her edges with the charming haze of youth; but it occurred to her critic that she might emerge from this morning mist as a ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... mentioned in these volumes ever befell one and the same ship, though ready enough to admit that they may very well have occurred to several different ships: a mode of commenting that is much in favour with your small critic. To this objection, we shall make but a single answer. The caviller, if any there should prove to be, is challenged to produce the log-book of the Montauk, London packet, and if it should be found to contain a single sentence to controvert any one of our statements ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... these people exactly as they are, but he is utterly unable to see Flavia as they see her. There you have the situation. Why can't he see her as we do? My dear, that has kept me awake o' nights. This man who has thought so much and lived so much, who is naturally a critic, really takes Flavia at very nearly her own estimate. But now I am entering upon a wilderness. From a brief acquaintance with her you can know nothing of the icy fastnesses of Flavia's self-esteem. It's like St. Peter's; ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... John was the guest of Mr. Fox at Stable Yard, the subject of Lord Melville's acquittal by the Peers came up for discussion. Next day the shrewd young critic wrote the following characteristic remark in his journal: 'What a pity that he who steals a penny loaf should be hung, whilst he who steals thousands of the public money should be acquitted!' The brilliant qualities of Fox made a great impression on the lad, and there can be ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... Russian literature, faced with the realities of modern life, a spirit titanic and in clash with its material, and produced in the mastery of this every-day material, commonly called sordid, a phantasmagoria intense with beauty. A clue to all Russian realism may be found in a Russian critic's observation about Gogol: "Seldom has nature created a man so romantic in bent, yet so masterly in portraying all that is unromantic in life." But this statement does not cover the whole ground, for it is easy to see in almost ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... of worship.[47] Next, try to overcome the present popular obsession regarding the sermon. The church is more than an oratory station. The sermon is only one incident. Many criticisms of the sermon indicate that the critic measures the preacher by ability to entertain, that he attends church to be entertained. If that is essentially your attitude, you cannot complain if your children are dissatisfied unless they too are entertained ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... opens with an adagio introduction for instruments which is of a very dramatic character, and, unlike nearly all of the sacred music of that time, is noticeable for the absence of the fugue. Barbedette, the great French critic, pronounces it the chef-d'oeuvre of introductions, and a masterpiece in the serious style. The first number is a recitative and aria for tenor, sung by Jesus ("All my Soul within me shudders"), which, notwithstanding the anomaly of such a scene ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... a degree of power in Parliament and of popularity out-of-doors that no former minister, not even his own father, had ever enjoyed. As such, by the confession of one who was certainly no friendly critic,[108] "he became the greatest master of Parliamentary government that has ever existed." His administration may be regarded as a fresh starting-point in the history of the country, as the inauguration of the principle of steady ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... what was good or noble—his hardest critic could not nail him to one such sentence; and yet, it seemed somehow to me that his unknown nature was a systematic blasphemy against it all. If fiend he was, he was yet something higher than the ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... the young man at her side. "Well, I should say! Don't you know that a distinguished American art critic declares this building the most symmetrical, the most harmonious, the most perfectly proportioned bit of architecture on the American continent. And that is something, from a citizen of the ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... grace of a kind and tactful courtesy toward all classes, she may contribute mightily to the popular influence of her husband; and if she is a woman of culture and literary taste, she can be of immense service to him in the preparation of his sermons. The best critic that ministers can have is one who has a right to criticize and to "truth it in love." Who has a better right to reprove, exhort and correct with all long suffering than the woman who has given us her heart and herself? There are a ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... them be unattainable; but errors arising from mere carelessness are not to be pardoned. Further, in many of these cases of supposed contradiction there is an element of carelessness indeed; but it lies at the door of the critic, not of the author; and this appears to be true in the present instance. The dilemma, as it presented itself to the contemporary mind, must be carefully kept in view. Either the spirits of the departed could revisit this world, ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... 29, and 30 of the second portion of this discourse we meet with a doctrine which, at first sight, seems to be merely "le manoir a l'envers," indeed one English critic has actually said of Nietzsche, that "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is no more than a compendium of modern views and maxims turned upside down. Examining these heterodox pronouncements a little more closely, however, we may possibly perceive their truth. Regarding good ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... encouraging demonstration that we should never allow ourselves to grow old. Many of these 'Lives' are very beautiful. They are all suggestive. Only the other day I read them again in the fine new edition that was prepared by that staunch Johnsonian, Dr. Birkbeck Hill. The greatest English critic of these latter days, Mr. Matthew Arnold, showed his appreciation by making a selection from them for popular use. From age to age every man with the smallest profession of interest in literature will study them. Of how many books ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... Mr Wopples, waving a fork with a piece of cold beef at the end of it, 'makes perfect. My dear Vandeloup, if you will permit me to call you so, my son Buckstone is truly a wonderful critic.' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... being, moral judgments would never exist. A man would no more think of the merit and demerit of his sentiments than of the beauty or deformity of his own face. Such criticism is exercised first upon other beings; but the critic cannot help seeing that he in his turn is criticised, and he is thereby led to apply the common standard to his own actions; to divide himself as it were into two persons—the examiner or judge, and person examined into, or judged of. He knows ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... human loveliness, do more than approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our daily path. Byron, who often erred, erred not in saying, I've seen more living beauty, ripe and real, than all the nonsense of their stone ideal. In landscape alone is the principle of the critic true; and, having felt its truth here, it is but the headlong spirit of generalization which has induced him to pronounce it true throughout all the domains of Art. Having, I say, felt its truth here. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... subduers of her eccentricity. Short intervals, to her own sense, stood now for great differences, and this renewed inhalation of her native air had somehow left her to feel that she already, that she mainly, struck the compatriot as queer and dissociated. She moved such a critic, it would appear, as to rather an odd suspicion, a benevolence induced by a want of complete trust: all of which showed her in the light of a person too plain and too ill-clothed for a thorough good time, and yet too rich and too befriended—an intuitive cunning within her managing ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... never gave any peculiar pleasure to the authoress; but for deep feeling and pathos they are remarkable. They seem to be the outgushings of a soul stirred up with holy enthusiasm and flowing out in channels of its own formation. She evidently wrote, not for the severity of the critic, but for the warm heart of the Christian; not to awaken feelings of admiration, but to kindle up the flame of divine animation; not to win fame for herself, but to inspire others with love ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... handbreadth through the turmoil, but cherishing the hope that somehow all would soon become clear. As to British policy during the summer of 1792, it may be classed as masterly inactivity or nervous passivity, according to the standpoint of the critic. In one case alone did Pitt and Grenville take a step displeasing to the French Government, namely, by recalling Gower from the embassy at Paris; and this was due to the fall of the French monarchy on 10th August, and to the danger attending the residence of a noble in Paris. Only by a display ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... died, shot through with a remarkable arrow. Confucius knew all about them. 4 d. 5 Z. 6 This ia related by Sze-ma ch'ien դl@a, p. 7, and also in the 'Narratives of the School.' I would fain believe it is not true. The wonder is, that no Chinese critic should have set about disproving it. 7 Ana. ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... means the least remarkable, of the Charles Lamb set came to lodge at No. 9, half-way down on the right-hand side as you come from Holborn. There for four years lived, taught, wrote, and suffered that admirable essayist, fine-art and theatrical critic, thoughtful metaphysician, and miserable man, William Hazlitt. He lodged at the house of Mr. Walker, a tailor, who was blessed with two fair daughters, with one of whom (Sarah) Hazlitt, then a married ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... one of the Lantern Bearers describes Louis as he was then. "A slender, long legged boy in pepper and salt tweeds, with an undescribable influence that forced us to include him in our play as a looker on, critic and slave driver.... No one had the remotest intention of competing with R.L.S. in story making, and his tales, had we known it, were such as the world would listen to ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... light of reason "paled the ineffectual fires" of his imagination; all things presented themselves to his vision "with hard outlines, colorless, and with no surrounding atmosphere." That he did, nevertheless, write verses, so creditable as to justify a judicious modern critic in their citation and approval, can perhaps be accounted for only as one of the phenomena of that subtle and transforming influence to which even his stern nature was unconsciously ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the illegitimate French drama. Miss CARLOTTA LECLERCQ, an actress who deserves the highest praise, and who would receive it were it not that a doubt as to the proper pronunciation of her name prevents the bashful critic from mentioning her when flushed with the generous enthusiasm of beer, played PAULINE, and a number of Uncertain People played the dickens with the rest of the dramatis person. Every one knows the play, and no one cares to hear how the Uncertain ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... well shows how Donatello, who from his earliest period was opposed to the conventions of the Pisan school, took the lead among those who founded their art upon the observation of nature. A later critic, shrewd and now much neglected, said that Titian "contented himself with pure necessity, which is the simple imitation of nature."[24] One could not say quite so much of Donatello, in whom, curiously enough, the love of nature was limited ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... Town; They reason and conclude by precedent, And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men. Of all this servile herd, the worst is he That in proud dulness joins with Quality.{22} A constant critic at the great man's board, To fetch and carry nonsense for my Lord. What woful stuff this madrigal would be, In some starv'd hackney sonneteer, or me? But let a Lord once own the happy lines, How the wit brightens! how the style refines! ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... any uncertainty as to the work being completed. Not to mention his own deep disappointment, Mr. B. would almost consider it a crime if a work possessing so much interest and useful instruction were not given to the world. The author is the only critic of whom Mr. B. is afraid, and after what he has said, he anxiously hopes that this censor of the press will ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... well-known military critic, says of this battle: "It would be hard to find a better instance of that masterly comprehension of the actual condition of things which marks a great general than was exhibited in General Lee's allowing our formidable attack, in which more than half the Federal army was taking part, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... travel further drunk than—" Harkness measured his critic with an insolent eye—"than some folks sober." He commenced to warm himself at the stove, whereupon the other ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... the greater part creative. The Lectures, though partly creative—resurrective, at any rate—are professedly and substantially critical. Now, a good deal has been said already of Thackeray's qualities and defects as a critic: and it has been pointed out that, in consequence of his peculiar impulsiveness, his strong likes and dislikes, his satiric-romantic temperament, and perhaps certain deficiencies in all-round literary and historical learning, his critical light was apt to be rather ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... imagination, it seems as if all the world regarded his race as a constantly increasing swarm of flies, and had started in on a systematic course of extirpation. [Footnote: See G. K. Chesterton, More Poets Yet.] As for the professional critic, he becomes an ogre, conceived of as eating a poet for breakfast every morning. The new singer is invariably warned by his brothers that he must struggle for his honor and his very life against his malicious ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... wise to Mr. Stale, nee Cohenheimer, the Human Harpoon! Say, Bunch! he's a joke. I caught him the day he first left the blacksmith shop, some ten years ago, with a boathook in each hand and a toasting fork between his teeth. That duck isn't a critic, he's only a Foofoo." ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... House. Of course I went, anticipating a disagreeable interview, but it turned out absolutely the reverse. The president was most cordial, and his frankness most attractive. After a long and full discussion, the president said the Times had been his most unsparing critic, but he was forced to agree with much the Times said; that he had sent for me to make a request; that he had come to the presidency without any preparation whatever for its duties or for civic responsibilities; that he was compelled to take the best advice he could find and surround himself with ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... to Wittenberg for another year, that he might complete the work for graduation; graduated in December of that year as Master of Arts, and then returned to his work in Berlin. He worked industriously, not only as critic, but also in translation from the classics, from French, English, and Italian; and he was soon able to send help towards providing education for the youngest of the household of twelve children in the Camenz parsonage. In 1753 he gave himself eight weeks of withdrawal ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... When I thought of the manly figures and handsome, eager faces of my friends of the "Union" and the "Excelsior,"—the Excelsiors won by ten tallies, I should say, the return match to come off at Smithville the next month,—and then looked at the meagre form and wan countenance of their critic, I thought to myself, "Dolorosus, my boy, you are killing something besides Time, if you only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... unknown life beyond. She touches these themes sometimes lightly, sometimes almost humorously, more often with weird and peculiar power; but she is never by any chance frivolous or trivial. And while, as one critic has said, she may exhibit toward God "an Emersonian self-possession," it was because she looked upon all life with a candor as unprejudiced as ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... who had come to meet them, upon the points which did not satisfy them in the past transactions, and upon the best and mutually most advantageous manner of conducting the war in future. The severest critic of the present proceedings was Lichas, who said that neither of the treaties could stand, neither that of Chalcideus, nor that of Therimenes; it being monstrous that the King should at this date pretend to the ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... be difficult to name a philosopher at once so subtle, so profound, so bold, and so good as Hume. Notwithstanding his heterodox reputation, many learned and excellent Christians openly enjoyed his friendship. A contemporary critic recently presented the public with 'a curious instance of contrast and of parallel,' between Robertson and Hume. 'Flourishing (says he) in the same walk of literature, living in the same society at the same ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... who has never driven a machine is not qualified to speak concerning the things contained herein, while the critic who has will speak with the charity and chastened humility which spring ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... to be. It can laugh at the phenomenal distinctions on which science is based, for it draws its vital breath from a region which—whether above or below—is at least altogether different from that in which science dwells. A critic, however, who cannot disprove the truth of the metaphysic creed, can at least raise his voice in protest against its disguising itself in 'scientific' plumes. I think that all who have had the patience to follow me thus far will agree that the spencerian 'philosophy' ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... not been wrong, perhaps, in citing him as the example, par excellence, in this country, of the privately admired and publicly-unappreciated man of genius. Within the last year or two, it is true, an occasional critic has been urged, by honest indignation, into very warm approval. Mr. Webber,[4] for instance (than whom no one has a keener relish for that kind of writing which Mr. Hawthorne has best illustrated), gave us, in a late number of The American Review, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Household; Dr. Ernst von Ihne, Hof-Architekt Sr. Maj. d. Kaisers; Dr. Reinhold Koser, Principal Director of the Prussian State Archives, and Prof. Dr. Fritz Schaper, sculptor; from Great Britain, Mr. William Archer, author and critic; Sir Robert S. Ball, Director of Cambridge Observatory; Dr. C. F. Moberly Bell, manager London "Times"; Sir Robert Cranston, late Lord Provost of Edinburgh; Sir Edward Elgar, composer; Mr. James Currie Macbeth, Provost of Dunfermline; Dr. P. Chalmers Mitchell, Secretary ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... of him that "he was an orator from the beginning:" that his first public address "was like Charles Lamb's roast pig, good throughout, no part better or worse than another." "His delivery," says a candid and scholarly critic, "was rather earnest than passionate. He had a deep, strange, rich voice, which he knew how to use. His eyes were extraordinary, living sermons, a peculiar shake and nod of the head giving the impression of deep-settled ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... thats been kept a dead secret. I just said your daughter has asked for a real play with a real author and a real critic and all the rest of it. The moment I mentioned the daughter I had him. He has a daughter of his own. Wouldnt hear of payment! Offered to come just to please her! Quite human. I ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... three of the guests present were celebrities. Amongst them was England's greatest critic sitting beside an ambassador. There happened to be a lull in the talk. All looked ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... displayed. In Chicago the notices were worthy of the Temps or the Journal des Debats. There was no attempt to force the personality of the writer into the foreground nor to write a style that would attract attention to the critic and leave the thing criticised to take care of itself. William Winter and, of late years, Alan Dale have had their personalities associated with their criticisms, but they are exceptions. Curiously ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... more considerate than he deserves," said Andy's critic. "And by the way, here is the hotel detective. Officer, will you come here, please? Here is a case that ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... and I'll discover it." I depended upon him to do so: where else was the fresh eye? But he produced at last nothing more luminous than "I don't know—I don't like your types." This was lame for a critic who had never consented to discuss with me anything but the question of execution, the direction of strokes and the ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... journal (or more than one), or editing a journal, or writing for journals, especially a person who is regularly employed in some responsible directing or creative work on a journal, as a publisher, editor, writer, reporter, critic, etc. This use of the word is comparatively modern, and it is commonly restricted to persons connected with daily or weekly newspapers. Many older newspaper men scout it, preferring to be known as publishers, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... (broom,) HENRY, Lord, philosopher, law-reformer, statesman, orator, and critic, was born in 1779, at Edinburgh, where he was educated at the High School and University. He united with Jeffrey and Horner in establishing the "Edinburgh Review," and for nearly twenty years he was one of its most regular contributors. Having for a few years practised law ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... invited the Parisian critic to her box. It happened at a soiree, where he showed his savage profile among admiring musical lambs. But he was never punctual at musical ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... wealth of feeling, and the power of poetic expression went hand in hand with an indomitable will. In the spring of 1770 the young poet went to Strassburg to complete his law course. There Herder happened to be, even then a famed critic and scholar, and he aroused in Goethe a love and understanding of what was really great and genuine in literature: especially Homer, the Bible, Shakspere, and the Volkslied i.e., the simple folksong. In the fall of the year Goethe met Friederike Brion in the ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... leather. In fact, about him there's not one natural feather." Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch, The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch, Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic (Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic, And then fairly hooted, as if he should say, "Your learning's at fault this time, anyway; Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray. I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good day!" And the barber ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... to undertake it. But he presently perceived that the gentlemen at the head of that profession were wiser than he. All the motives they had mentioned, and one more, operated against him. The monarchs of the critic realm scouted him with one voice, because his work, was not written in the same cold, phlegmatic ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... lady paused it was evident she had produced a sensation, for Saul smiled at the fire, Ruth looked dismayed at this assault upon one of her idols, and the young ladies were both astonished and amused at the keenness of the new critic who dared express what they had often felt. Randal, however, was quite composed and laughed good-naturedly, though secretly feeling as if a pail of cold water ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... subjected to the most searching investigation. The Bible has nothing to fear, however, from the keenest scrutiny of any scholar who has only the desire to get at the truth. The trouble begins when a critic, who is hostile to its spiritual truth or who has a theory to maintain, takes a part in the investigation; even then the truth is sure, in time, to assert its rightful claim (Acts 5:39). The fact of ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... men of letters; he who entertained Dickens and Thackeray, and practically every foreign writer of note who visited this country; he who encouraged Hawthorne to the completion of the "Scarlet Letter," and he, who, as an appreciative critic, publisher, and editor, probably did more to elevate, inspire, and sustain the general literary tone of the city than any other single person. In these stirring days facile American genius springs up, like ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... portion to the right-about in utter confusion. To the end of his life Napoleon regarded the strategic operations culminating at Eckmuehl as his masterpiece in that particular line. Jomini, his able critic, remained always of the same opinion. French history knows this conflict as the Battle of Five Days; Thann, Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmuehl, and Ratisbon being the places in or near which on each day a skirmish or combat occurred to mark the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... pasture, volubly-rolling tongue, Intelligent wit and critic nostrils keen, O well and neatly ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... more to my wife than even she perhaps quite realizes. Not only has it been her study, since our marriage, to give me freedom for my work, but her literary advice, founded on her own experience as writer and critic, has been of the highest value, and she has ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... one which must be handled as tenderly as biscuit de Sevres, or Venetian glass. Whichever side of the question we may assume, as the most popular, or the most right, the feelings of so large and respectable a minority are to be consulted, that it behooves the critic or reviewer to move cautiously, and, imitating the actions of a certain feline household reformer, to show only the patte ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... the sense with one continued show; But as our two magicians try their skill, The vision varies, though the place stands still, While the same spot its gaudy form renews, Shifting the prospect to a thousand views. 20 Thus (without unity of place transgressed) The enchanter turns the critic to a jest. But howsoe'er, to please your wandering eyes, Bright objects disappear and brighter rise: There's none can make amends for lost delight, While from that circle ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... and its significance becomes more evident when we recall how the work of Wigand was received by the non-christian press a quarter of a century ago. It was either ridiculed or ignored. The two methods of treatment were applied to his writings which are always readily employed when the critic has nothing pertinent to say. It is interesting to note that Darwin himself employed this method. Wigand once told me that he had sent Darwin a copy of his work and had addressed a letter to him at the same time merely stating that he had sent the book, making no reference ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... other passages which for ages have been cited as proofs of the Divinity of Jesus (viz. "The Church of God which he has redeemed with his own blood," Acts ch. xx. 28. and "God was manifested in the flesh," in the first Epistle to Timothy, ch. iii. 16.) which the same Critic has proved to have been altered from their original reading to favour the same doctrine, and it is impossible to say how many more frauds of a similar nature might be detected, if the learned and candid Christians before- mentioned were in possession of the primitive ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... much to convert the armchair critic as he digs about in the scuttle. When we get our coal from the State, however, we shall, of course, carefully set apart these sections of slate, wrap them in brown-paper and send them by parcel post to the nearest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... comparison. But there is something more. I doubt, for one thing, if we are justified in the boast we sometimes make that the feeling for Nature is stronger in our poets than in those of other countries. The most scientific critic may be unable to pick a hole in Tennyson's botany and zoology; but the passion for, and feeling of oneness with Nature may exist without this modern minute accuracy. Be this as it may, it was not Tennyson, nor any other ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... years Lloyd George's most bitter public critic. He has now become his ally in the government of the British Empire. Despite the difference in their outlook on life, there are wonderful resemblances between the two men. There are sympathies, too. Northcliffe early recognized that Lloyd George was a person to be watched, not ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... side or the other. He was possessed of too much sense, force, and virility to be content to hold himself aloof and croak over the wickedness of people, who were trying to do something, even if they did not always try in the most perfect way. He was himself preeminently a doer of deeds, and not a critic or a phrase-maker, and we can read very distinctly in the extracts which have been brought together in this chapter what he thought on party and public questions. He was opposed to the party which had resisted all the great measures of his administration from the ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... he must have been a fool and a coward. Yet he could read and understand Shakespeare. He knew much,—by far too much,—of Byron's poetry by heart. He was a deep critic, often writing down his criticisms in a lengthy journal which he kept. He could write quickly, and with understanding; and I may declare that men at his office had already ascertained that he was no fool. He knew his business, and could do it,—as many men failed to do who were ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is that great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-soul, within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other; ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the country, seated upon sheaves of corn, quite unregarded by the world; doing as they listed with unabashed simplicity. He dined often at the little Hotel St. Malo near the Gare Montparnasse, where the excellent landlord played the host, father, critic, patron, comrade—often benefactor—to his bons enfants. He drank vin ordinaire, smoked caporal cigarettes, made friends, and was in all as a savage—or ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in which the oil and vinegar were deftly combined. The astute feminine reader will of course understand that this is the ordinary superficial masculine criticism, and at once make up her mind both as to the character of the young lady and the competency of the critic. I only know that I rather liked her. And her functions are somewhat important in ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... and full of feeling," he had sung them so, while "playing the old game of youth." To-day they seem to convey little forewarning of the matchless lyric gift that was soon to awaken, being a shade too intellectual and sententious. One hears more of the critic's comment than of the poet's cry. It was at this time also that he rewrote an earlier Leipzig play, expanding it from one act to three and giving it the title Die Mitschuldigen, or The Fellow-culprits. It is a sort of rogue's comedy in middle-class ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... by a billy-cock hat set at a rakish angle. Its most marked characteristic was the positive hatred which glowed in the sharp, pale-blue eyes. Grant wondered who this highly censorious young man might be. At any rate, he meant to ascertain whether or not the critic was susceptible of satire at his own expense. He walked up to the window, elevated his eyebrows at the frowning person within, pretended to read the words on the screen, looked again at the man inside, and shook his head gravely in the manner ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... Chorley, 1808-1872. He is known chiefly as a musical critic and author; for thirty-eight years he was connected with the "London Athenaeum." His books are mostly ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... notice to itself is in so far forth bad style, because it defeats its own end, which is expression; but beyond this, our interest in technical execution is purely intellectual, whereas art reaches the emotions. At the theatre a critic sits unmoved; dispassionately he looks upon the personages of the drama, as they advance, retreat, and countermarch, little by little yielding up their secret, disclosing all the subtle interplay of human motives. From the ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... believe in the Nobility of the Almanac; and it is certain that every man should believe in the Nobility of his work whatever it is—then he is sure of one ardent Admirer. It is sad to think that some carping critic had been riling the sweet soul of Nathan in the year 1732. It is all over now. Let us hope he is not damned for his Epicureanism, but is reaping his crop of praise in a better climate than Marblehead. He gives us more poetry in 1733, and a clear account of why Leap years are necessary, which I ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... acknowledges that there are very numerous ellipses even in the Songs of Degrees themselves, but they are of a very different nature. I might fill the whole of this Number with examples, which the most scrupulous critic would be obliged to acknowledge as being strictly analogous to the passage under review; but such a thing you would not allow. Two instances, however, you will not object to; they will prove a host for MR. JEBB's purpose, inasmuch as one ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... soul the canvass warms, Creates, inspires, impassions human forms, Spurns critic rules, and seizing safe the heart, Breaks down the former frightful bounds of Art; Where ancient manners, with exclusive reign, From half mankind withheld her fair domain. He calls to life each patriot, chief or sage, Garb'd in the dress and drapery of his age. Again bold Regulus ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... of my heresies, at least—a goodly array of gentlemen who wear the cloth of the orthodox churches whose doctrines he accuses me of denying. The published writings of these clergymen are accessible to all. The same critic declares that my interpretations are without "authority." This depends, of course; on one's view of "authority." But his accusation is true equally against many men who—if my observation be correct—are doing an incalculable service for religion ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... plenty of people who can see only your faults, and who like to tell you of them. You will find in the inexorable sequence of events a corrector of these faults more potent than any critics can be. But I am not your critic, but your friend. If many of you had not admitted me, a stranger, into your friendship during my many very solitary years, of what sort should I be now? How could I have lived those years alone? You kept alive ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... The chief critic of these proposals was Sheridan who, on 18th June brilliantly declaimed against the formation of a great Regular Army, as alien to the spirit of our people, and by all the arts of rhetorical necromancy ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... ignorant of anatomy can not appreciate either sculpture or painting! A knowledge of optics, of botany and of natural history, are necessary, equally to the artist or to the connoisseur; a knowledge of acoustics to the musician and musical critic. "No artist," says Mr. Spencer, "can produce a healthful work of whatever kind without he understands the laws of the phenomena he represents; he must also understand how the minds of the spectator or listener will be affected by his work—a ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... alleged Deceit Her uniform Kindness to Johnson Johnson's Feelings and Conduct Miss Wynn's Commonplace Book Johnson's unfounded Objections to the Marriage and erroneous Impressions of Piozzi Miss Seward's Account of his Loves Misrepresentation and erroneous Theory of a Critic Last Days and Death of Johnson Lord Macaulay's Summary of Mrs. Piozzi's Treatment of Johnson Life in Italy Projected Work on Johnson The Florence Miscellany Correspondence with Cadell and Publication of the "Anecdotes" Her alleged Inaccuracy, with Instances H. Walpole Peter Pindar H. Walpole ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... life. It isn't coloured for you by others. You get its form, its hardness or softness, its fragrance or the reverse, but you fix your own colour. That's why you'd be such a ripping critic. Will you let me read some ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... cannot spell the word theatre; but he is trenchant when dealing with what he saw at the Adelphi Theater. How completely he must have understood the dialogue, he who describes Webster as a comique de premier ordre! In the same paper the dramatic critic, after explaining that at the rehearsals of L'Abime, the actors, who continually are complaining that they are ordered off on the wrong side, are quieted with the information that matters dramatic are managed in this way in bizzare England—prints in a line apart, and by ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... not reprinted until two years after Stevenson's death, in 1896, when it was included in the Miscellanies (Edinburgh Edition, Miscellanies, Vol. IV, pp. 131-142). The editor of the Portfolio was the well-known art critic, Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1834-1894), author of the Intellectual Life (1873). Just one year before, Stevenson had had printed in the Portfolio his first contribution to any periodical, Roads. Although The Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places attracted scarcely any attention on its first ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Wiesbaden critic. A literary man or a flunkey, as you like. He is in the pay of a local speculator here, and so is bound to praise everything and be ecstatic over every one, though for his part he is soaked through and through with the nastiest venom, to which he ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... ago, and from the outset he showed a fatherly interest in me—an interest which this quaking stripling of an organist appreciated, I can assure you. Being one of the pillars of St. Luke's—the church I play at, you remember—and an esteemed musical critic withal, his hearty approval of me as a performer was an immense advantage ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... have the Honour to introduce to your Highness is the facetious Bob Smart, a professed Wit and Critic; no Man knows the Intrigues of the Court, the Theatres, or the City better, No Man has a finer Taste in the Belle' Letters, for he is deemed one of the best Gentlemen Harlequins in Europe, and is an Emminent Orator ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... the metaphors heaped up ad nauseam, and each of them harsh and absurd, a keen critic has noted another fault: namely, that nothing is more distant from the spirit of a man grieving and mourning for the death of a friend—and this is what Heinsius intended to depict—than such a wantonness of epithets. And so much ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole
... of an idle mind, Hides for a moment from the eyes of men; Or lightly opened by a critic wind, Affrightedly reviews ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... How long is art, Our life how short! With earnest zeal Still as I ply the critic's task, I feel A strange oppression both of head and heart. The very means how hardly are they won, By which we to the fountains rise! And haply, ere one half the course is run, Check'd in his ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... be gathered from her mistress's own words: "The king and I trust you so completely that we look upon you as we might a cat or a dog, and talk ahead with as much freedom as though you were not there." And the critic, Sainte-Beuve, adds: "When the destiny of a nation is in a woman's bedroom, the best place for the historian is in the ante-chamber. Madame du Hausset seemed created for this role of a Suetonius by ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... the upper end of the passage, the thing he saw in the passage, his suspicion of Seymour, and his struggle with Bruno. But he could give little artistic assistance about the black figure that he and Seymour had seen. Asked about its outline, he said he was no art critic—with a somewhat too obvious sneer at Seymour. Asked if it was a man or a woman, he said it looked more like a beast—with a too obvious snarl at the prisoner. But the man was plainly shaken with sorrow and sincere anger, and Cowdray quickly excused him from confirming ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... "Luke the Physician and Other Studies in the History of Religion" (New York: Armstrong and Sons, 1908), has answered Harnack from the side of the professional critic with much force. He appreciates thoroughly the value of Professor Harnack's book, and above all the reactionary tendency away from nihilistic so-called higher criticism which characterized so much of German writing on biblical themes in the nineteenth century. He says (p. 7): "This [book ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... illustrate a moment by the relation which we may sustain to another man. You do not necessarily come close to a man because you touch his elbow on the street. The people who lived in Shakspere's London might not have been so near to Shakspere as is Mr. Furness, the great Shakspere critic to- day, ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... age). But since that date many a theological Sisyphus has toiled to roll the stone again wholly or half-way up the hill—Movers especially, in genius it might seem the superior of the sober Protestant critic—with peculiar results. This scholar mixed up the inquiry into the historical value of those statements in Chronicles which we are able to control, with the other question as to the probable sources of its variations from the older historical books of the canon. In ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... help asking oneself, was the critic a member of the disbanded "Camp Committee"? The United States Ambassador on more than one occasion proved himself capable of speaking very decidedly to the German authorities of things he disapproved of. In this case, too, he speaks (though not to ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... lines. Then there was Fardell, also a schoolfellow, now a police magistrate, full of dry and pleasant humour, called by his intimates "The Beak "; Amberson, poseur and dilettante thirty years ago, but always a good fellow, now an acknowledged master of English prose and a critic whose word was unquestioned. These men, one and all, seemed to be up to the neck in life, kept young and human by the taste of it upon their palate. The contemplation of their whole-sided existence, ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... grown, if not handsomer, at least more vivid and expressive; her beauty had become more communicable: it was as though she had learned the conscious exercise of intuitive attributes and now used her effects with the discrimination of an artist skilled in values. To a dispassionate critic (as Glennard now rated himself) the art may at times have been a little too obvious. Her attempts at lightness lacked spontaneity, and she sometimes rasped him by laughing like Julia Armiger; but he had ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... ultimate final failure owing to the irresistible indulgence of a passionate physical instinct." At first this too seemed to be a failure. To use the words of Arne Garborg, a Norwegian author and critic, Lie "had spoken—cried out in the passion or agony of his soul, and people stood there quite calm and as if they had heard nothing;" there seemed to be a total lack of sympathetic comprehension on the part of the public. In the end, however, the book found ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... at once a philanthropist and a reformer, and both in the highest departments of human interest. The union of these ardent elements, and of a highly devotional temperament, not untouched with melancholy, with the patience of the scholar, and the sobriety of the critic, formed the singularity and almost the anomaly of his personal character. These contrasts were tempered by the discipline of experience; and his life, both as a man and a Christian, seemed to become more rich, genial, and harmonious ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... originally written "impossible," but a critic of my "Riddle of Personality," in which this point was taken up, has convinced me that "absurd" is the better word. The critic in question writes: "what evidence has the author that an apparition of the living is not a spirit? Why may not the spirit of the living person have left ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... himself—breaking off short with a quick smile at some recollection. Once he stopped and laughed aloud. Then he threw a stone at a rook which eyed him superciliously from the top of a turf dyke. He made a bad shot, at which the black critic wiped the bare butt of his bill upon the grass, uttered a hoarse "A-ha!" of derision, and plunged down squatty among the dock- leaves on the ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... may (if not "must") consist in "what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed," Gray's "Churchyard" is a majestic achievement—perhaps (accepting the definition offered) the supreme achievement of its century. Its success, so the great critic of its day thought, lay in its appeal to "the common reader"; and though no friend of Gray's other work, Dr. Johnson went on to commend the "Elegy" as abounding "with images which find a mirrour in every mind and with sentiments to which every ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray
... of Pope, as between the diverse schools known as the "Horatian" and the "Juvenalian". The cause of this, over and above the effect produced by prolonged study of these two classical models, was the overwhelming influence exercised on his age by the great French critic and satirist, Boileau. Difficult indeed it is for us at the present day to understand the European homage paid to Boileau. As Hannay says, "He was a dignified classic figure supposed to be the model of fine taste",[15] His word was law in the realm of criticism, and for ...
— English Satires • Various
... and the reader, blinding perhaps both to not a little that was neither brilliant nor poetic. The lady wept at the sound of her own verses from the lips of one who was to her in the position of the hero toward the heroine; and the lover, critic as he was, could not but be touched when he saw her weep at passages suggesting his relation to her; so that, when they found the hand of the one resting in that of the other, it did not seem strange to either. When suddenly the lady snatched hers away, it was only ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... difficult for the most fair-minded critic to find in the character of Joseph Smith anything to commend, except an abundance of good-nature which made him personally popular with the body of his followers. He has been credited with power as a leader, and it was ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... human, made my closest and most holy friendships, and studied human beings. I became widely-acquainted with the real condition of my people. I realized the terrific odds which faced them. At Wilberforce I was their captious critic. In Philadelphia I was their cold and scientific investigator, with microscope and probe. It took but a few years of Atlanta to bring me to hot and indignant defense. I saw the race-hatred of the whites as I had never dreamed of it before,—naked and unashamed! The faint discrimination ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the dignity of a prime idea: which circumstance but shows us afresh how many quite incalculable but none the less clear sources of enjoyment for the infatuated artist, how many copious springs of our never-to-be-slighted "fun" for the reader and critic susceptible of contagion, may sound their incidental plash as soon as an artistic process begins to enjoy free development. Exquisite—in illustration of this—the mere interest and amusement of such at once ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... well. I was too condescending to the prejudices of vulgar opinion. The ignorant multitude imagine that a prince is a greater man than a critic. Their folly made me desire to claim kindred with ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... itself. For his pathos, not even his warmest admirer could perhaps offer a satisfactory case. The charge of exaggeration however is another matter. To the person who complains that he has never met Dick Swiveller or Micawber or Mrs. Gamp the answer is simply Turner's to the sceptical critic of his sunset, "Don't you wish you could?" To the other, who objects more plausibly to Dickens's habit of attaching to each of his characters some label which is either so much flaunted all through ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... also left him when he was helpless, and again when he was ill and weak. What she required now, therefore, was a blind idolatry; and so many had offered this that she felt entitled to it, even though there should be no such devotion on her part. If, in any sense, he should be critic as well as lover, he could make her exceedingly uncomfortable; and she had a growing perception that he was comparing her with others, that there was a lack of warmth in his words and manner, which even the circumstances could not extenuate. She resolved, therefore, to teach ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... desired to attend to what a celebrated critic* of a neighbouring nation says on the nature and design of tragedy, from the rules laid down by ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... the discoverer of America have furnished an almost inexhaustible theme for the critic, the biographer, and the historian. In the year 1892 there was celebrated an event which has come by common consent to be regarded as a world-famous epoch, worthy to be held in everlasting remembrance. We commemorated ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Pope, that "what raises the hero, often sinks the man." Of Blackmore is may be said that, as the poet sinks, the man rises; the animadversions of Dennis, insolent and contemptuous as they were, raised in him no implacable resentment; he and his critic were afterwards friends; and in one of his latter works he praises Dennis "as equal to Boileau in poetry, and superior to him in critical abilities." He seems to have been more delighted with praise than pained by censure, and instead of slackening, ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... added, further, that it contains some of the masterpieces of these men. No one ever excelled Sir James Mackintosh in philosophical criticism. It was peculiarly his forte. He was rather a great judge of metaphysical power than a metaphysician. And yet it is this admirable critic who decides that the exquisitely classical dissertation of Dugald Stewart, written for this Encyclopaedia, is the most magnificent of that philosopher's works; and remarks, in accounting for the fact, that the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... worth while to follow the critic from up-state in some of his venturesome explorations of other parts of New York. Those to whom he was to return, those for whose entertainment and instruction his book was written, wanted to hear of the shadows as well as the sunshine. It was the picture of a very sinful metropolis ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... dark, like a thief. You know whether I sing out of tune, Leo. You know whether I am so stupid, so very stupid. Yes, I may not have cheek; I wish not to have cheek; even to commend myself to a critic. Ah, well, it is no use to be angry; every night I have a reception that you would like to hear, Leo, for you have no jealousy; and my heart says those people are not under bad influence; they are honest in saying they are pleased; to them I sing not ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... [6] Some ungainly critic has observed that the poet himself seems to have felt a doubt on the matter, because he has supplemented the dubious moonbeams by the "lantern dimly burning." The more generous, if somewhat a sanguine remark has been also made, that "the time ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... the pressure of party discipline. Political feeling ran high. The "Caucus" was called into more active operation. Political parties began to invent programmes to capture the groundlings. The conservative party, relinquishing its useful function of critic, revived the old policy of eleemosynary doles, and, in an unlucky moment for its future, has encumbered itself with an advocacy of the policy of protection. For strangely enough the democracy, the bestower of power, though developing symptoms of fiscal ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... non-slaveholding Southern whites, and was mainly made up of statistics, but contained occasional passages of intolerant and vindictive sentiment against slaveholders. Whether it could be considered "insurrectionary" depended altogether on the pro-slavery or anti-slavery bias of the critic. Besides, the author had agreed that the obnoxious passages should not be printed in the compendium which the Republicans recommended in their circular. When interrogated, Mr. Sherman replied that he had never seen the book, and that "I am opposed to any interference whatever ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... from which all historians derive their insight into the closing years of the reign of the "Grand Monarch," Louis XIV: whom the author shows to be anything but grand—and of the Regency. The opinion of the French critic, Sainte-Beuve, is fairly typical. "With the Memoirs of De Retz, it seemed that perfection had been attained, in interest, in movement, in moral analysis, in pictorial vivacity, and that there was no reason for expecting they could be surpassed. But the 'Memoirs' of Saint-Simon ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Stjernhoek who followed him, and listened to him with attention and the most unequivocal sympathy, whilst the young man gave such free scope to his thoughts and presentiments as he had never ventured to do before in the presence of the severe critic. But the truth is, there belongs to a dweller on the borders of the kingdom of death a peculiar rank, a peculiar dignity, and man believes that the whispering of spirits from the mysterious land reaches the ear which ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... columns in length, presenting, in his own terse, humorous, glowing, vigorous, convincing way, all sides of this chameleon-hued question; now analyzing the amendment and the laws to enforce it, turning aside here to answer the cavil of some carping critic, then to demolish and bury some blatant political defender of the whisky element; arraigning the Governor, Senate and House of Representatives for their gingerly treatment of the great question, and sending a trumpet-call to the honest, brave, and sincere temperance workers, both men and women, ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... create a fresh and simple pastoral manner. As a poet, Purney moved sharply away from the classical pastoral by curiously blending an entirely original subject matter with a sentimentalized realism and a naive, diffuse expression; and as a critic he pointed in the direction of Shenstone and Allan Ramsay by emphasizing the tender, admitting the use of earthy realism in the manner of Gay, and recommending for pastoral such "inimitably pretty and delightful" tales as The Two Children ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... deductions of Socialism are drawn, and private property is abolished, even the dullest will then say to himself: 'Why should I have to work long and hard for the simple reason that it pleases my neighbors to shove a dozen new members into society?'" It should seem that a critic should first acquaint himself with the A B C of Socialism before presuming to write upon the subject, and such preposterous ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... Carolan beauty and charm, and was his most gracious and radiant self to-day. His sunny cordiality gave Mary no chance to remember that she had a little feared the writer and critic. But, after the first moment, her eye was irresistibly drawn ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... and well informed. Her heart, perhaps, helped to instruct her understanding; for by a kind of intuition she could appreciate all that was beautiful and elevated. Her unvitiated and guileless taste had a logic of its own: no schoolman had ever a quicker penetration into truth, no critic ever more readily detected the meretricious and the false. The book that Evelyn could admire was sure to be stamped with the impress of the noble, the lovely, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book II • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... assistance. No man can tell aught but they who will tell nothing. But then, again, there is this safety, that let the story be ever so mistold,—let the fiction be ever so far removed from the truth, no critic short of a Cabinet Minister himself can convict the narrator ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... think I never faced a milder jury! Sad else our plight! where frowns are transportation. A hiss the gallows, and a groan damnation! But such the public candour, without fear My client waives all right of challenge here. No newsman from our session is dismiss'd, Nor wit nor critic we scratch off the list; His faults can never hurt another's ease, His crime, at worst, a bad attempt to please: Thus, all respecting, he appeals to all, And by the general voice will stand ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... asserts her iron reign, There, as in vengeance of the world's disdain, This half-flesh'd hag midst Wit's bright blossoms stalks, And, breathing winter, withers where she walks; Though there, long outlaw'd, desp'rate with disgrace, Invidious Dulness wields the critic mace, And sworn in hate, exerts his ruffian might Where'er young genius meditates his flight. Erewhile, when WHITE, by this fell fiend oppress'd, Felt Hope's fine fervours languish in his breast, When shrunk with scorn, and trembling to aspire, He dropp'd desponding his insulted lyre. ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... But you, critic, the reader undoubtedly will ask, what is your solution? Show us this synthesis which, retaining the responsibility, the personality, in short, the specialty of the laborer, will unite extreme division and the ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... and ever-ready smile, it carried considerable weight. His fair skin had not yet taken on its summer scorch of carmine, and its soft and babyish pinkness softened the salience of his short nose, and induced the critic to condone the want of decision in ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... into a sort of town meeting where the best orders had no chance whatever against the loudest 'sentiments.' They had themselves found the root of all evil in the retreat from Quebec. Their army, like every impartial critic, found it in 'the Commissioners and the smallpox'—with the commissioners easily first. The smallpox had been bad enough at Quebec. It became far worse at Sorel. There were few doctors, fewer medicines, and not a single hospital. The ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... getting tired, so that the officers had no lack of partners, and voted it great fun. There were many very pretty girls among them, and several with much more of the rose on their cheeks than usually falls to the share of West Indian damsels. Some censorious critic even ventured to hint that it was added by the hand of art. That this was false was evident, for the weather was so hot that had rouge been used it would have inevitably been detected; but the island damsels trusted ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston |
