"Parnassus" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pointed out. "A bare isolated hillock of grey stone stands at the point where our road from Daulia meets the road to Delphi and a third road that stretches to the south.... The road runs up a frowning pass between Parnassus on the right hand and the spurs of the Helicon range on the left. Away to the south a wild and desolate valley opens, running up among the waste places of Helicon, a scene of inexpressible grandeur and desolation" ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... if society should be turned over to the government of his theory of Liberty and Suffrage, it would go to ruin more rapidly than Frederick's province. Under his teachings the women of England might soon marshal their amazonian legions, and storm not only Parnassus but the ballot-box, the bench, and the forum. That this should occur in a country where a woman nominally rules, and certainly reigns, is not so surprising, but I dread the contagion of such ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... from the gods were received from certain inspired persons at places called oracles. The oracle of Apollo at Delphi in Phocis enjoyed the utmost veneration. It lay within a deep cave on the rocky side of Mount Parnassus. Out of a chasm rose a volcanic vapor which had a certain intoxicating power. The Pythia, or prophetess of Apollo, sat on a tripod over the steaming cleft and inhaled the gas. The words she uttered in delirium were supposed to come from the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... letters?But I guesspoetrypoetrythe soft seducer of youth. Yes! there is an acknowledging modesty of confusion in your eye and manner. And where lies your vein?are you inclined to soar to the, higher regions of Parnassus, or to flutter around the base of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of the cowled men living whilom in yonder ruins, with its horns and goatish limbs; and the harmless faun has been made the figuration of the most implacable of fiends. But why, O wanderer of the South, lingerest thou in these foreign dells? Why returnest thou not to the bi-forked hill-top of old Parnassus, or the wastes around the yellow ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... digest the requisite number of dinners, the devouring of which qualify a young gentleman to address an enlightened British jury, we have no authority for deciding. He was certainly not the first, nor the last, young Templar who has quitted special pleading on a crusade to the heights of Parnassus, and he began early to try the nib of his pen and the colour of his ink in a novel. Eheu! how many a novel has issued from the dull, dirty chambers of that same Temple! The waters of the Thames just there seem to have been ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... in Greek. They were so denominated from their resemblance to a woman's breast; and were particularly sacred to Orus and Osiris, the Deities of light, who by the Grecians were represented under the title of Apollo. Hence the summit of Parnassus was [278]named Tithorea, from Tith-Or: and hard by was a city, mentioned by Pausanias, of the same name; which was alike sacred to Orus and Apollo. The same author takes notice of a hill, near Epidaurus, called [279][Greek: Tittheion oros Apollonos.] There was a summit of the ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... Future;" "A Modern Music Lord," dealing with Tschaikowsky (the only personal and professional study of the kind in print); "Strauss and Nietzsche;" "The Greater Chopin," an inquiry into what Chopin was and was not, that has no superior; "A Liszt Etude;" "The Royal Road to Parnassus," a fluent survey of modern primitive works; and last, "A Note on ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... powers of description! She was nature itself! she was the most exquisite work of art! She was the very daisy, primrose, tuberose, sweet-brier, furze-blossom, gilliflower, wallflower, cauliflower, aurica and rosemary! In short, she was the bouquet of Parnassus! Where expectation was raised so high, it was thought she would be injured by her appearance; but it was the audience who were injured; several fainted before the curtain drew up! but when she came to the scene of parting with her wedding-ring, all! what a sight was there! The fiddlers ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... unhappiness, than for the sake of his poetry. And in Waller, too, you feel some supplemental interest, because he united what are usually thought the incompatible characters of a poet and a political plotter, and very nearly reached the altitudes of the gallows as well as those of Parnassus. ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... if Love should lose thy favour, Try the paths of honest fame, Climb Parnassus' summit hoary, Carve thy way by deeds of glory, Write on History's page thy name. Be no longer weary, weary, To the depth of sorrow hurl'd; Be no longer weary, weary, Weary, weary of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... lifting her out of obscurity to a position which should invite great souls to seek birth in her. He died in 527; two years later a son was born to the Eupatrid Euphorion at Eleusis; and I have no doubt there was some such stir over the event, on Olympus or on Parnassus, as happened over a birth at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564, and one in Florence in the May of 1265. In 510, Hippias, grown cruel since the assassination of his brother, was driven out from an Athens already ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... gradually grew up the big-eyed Greek and the deep-souled Hebrew. Then, through creative thought,—that is, thought quickened and exalted by an inward thirst for the beautiful,—one little corner of Europe became radiant, and the valley of Tempe and the wooded glens of Parnassus shone for the first time on the vision of men; for their eyes—opened from long sleep by inward stirring—were become as mirrors, and gave ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... Two eagles had been let loose, one from the eastern extremity of the world, the other from the west, and they met at Delphi—hence it was assumed that Delphi was at the centre of the world. And Delphi at this time was such a wonderful city. On the slopes of Mount Parnassus it stood high on a rock—on the heights stood the temple of Apollo with its immense riches, its golden statue of the great god, and its ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... must quarrel,' he cried, 'pray don't quarrel here. You would fight on the very peaks of Parnassus. I can't think of a word that will rhyme except "design." Stop, now ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... versatile—and—also delightful—Chopinist is Pachmann. From his very first afternoon recital at old Chickering Hall, New York, in 1890, he gave a taste of the unfamiliar Chopin. Joseffy, thrice wonderful wizard, who has attained to the height of a true philosophic Parnassus—he only plays for himself, O wise Son of Light!—also gives at long intervals fleeting visions of the unknown Chopin. To Pachmann belongs the honor of persistently bringing forward to our notice such gems as the Allegro de Concert, many ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... sunk into oblivion, whom it were unjust to number with this despicable class. Various kinds of literary fame seem destined to various measures of duration. Some spread into exuberance with a very speedy growth, but soon wither and decay; some rise more slowly, but last long. Parnassus has its flowers of transient fragrance, as well as its oaks of towering height, and its laurels of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... whispers refrain? Will poets the pent of Parnassus attain? Will travellers' tomes touch the truth to a T? Will critics ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... you don't do it I warn you, Dear Mat, I'll raise such a clamor and cry On Parnassus the Muses will scorn you As mocker of poets and fly With bitter complaints to Apollo: "Her spirit is proud, her heart hollow, Her beauty"—they'll hardly ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... bubbled the spring of Tilphusa, Copais lay bright in the moon, Helicon glass'd in the lake Its firs, and afar rose the peaks Of Parnassus, snowily clear; Thebes was behind him in flames, And the clang of arms in his ear, When his awe-struck captors led The Theban seer to the spring. Tiresias drank and died. Nor did reviving Thebes See ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the scar again, and all should be revealed. Now she drew near her lord to wash him, and straightway she knew the scar of the wound, that the boar had dealt him with his white tusk long ago, when Odysseus went to Parnassus to see Autolycus, and the sons of Autolycus, his mother's noble father, who outdid all men in thievery and skill in swearing. This skill was the gift of the god himself, even Hermes, for that he burned to him the well-pleasing sacrifice of the thighs ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... mind,"—the old enthusiasm and dash of humourous eccentricity. But he is fast disappearing from the catalogue of vagabonds—fast getting commonplace, I fear. Many people suspect him of dulness. Besides, such a crowd of well-meaning, amiable, most respectable men have broken down of late years the pales of Parnassus, and become squatters on the sacred mount, that the claim of poets to be a peculiar people is getting disallowed. Never in this world's history were they so numerous; and although some people deny that they are poets, few are cantankerous enough ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... general usefulness. This Society is developing day by day, and will soon become one of the most active and serviceable agents of the literary education and the scientific movement of the country. The Parnassus pursues this aim by the reading during its sessions of articles and memoirs, by the collecting of documents and materials relating to the language, songs, and popular legends, as well as by the publication of these works in a Review which appears under the title of [Greek: Neoellenika ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... Longinuses; and Aristotles of our newspapers, we have quite too many geniuses of the loftiest order to render a place among them at all desirable, whether for its hardness of attainment or its seclusion. The highest peak of our Parnassus is, according to these gentlemen, by far the most thickly settled portion of the country, a circumstance which must make it an uncomfortable residence for individuals of a poetical temperament, if love ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Grass of Parnassus Deeds of men: Seekers for a city The white Pacha Midnight, January 25, 1886 Advance, Australia Colonel Burnaby Melville and Coghill Rhodocleia: To Rhodocleia—on her melancholy singing Ave: Clevedon church Twilight on Tweed * Metempsychosis * Lost in Hades * A star in the night * A sunset on yarrow ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... from the attainments which have made them illustrious, virtuosos are for the most part very much like ordinary mortals who have to content themselves at the foot of Parnassus. It has been my privilege to know thirty or more of the most eminent artists, and some have become good personal friends. It is interesting to observe how several very different types of individuals may succeed in winning ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... as "Mother Goose's Melodies" has the dignity of being already an undoubted classic among the most incipient cultivators of literature in the United States. It is a compilation taken mostly from "Gammer Gurton's Garland" or the "Nursery Parnassus," an English child's book about a century old, of which various editions have been published in London, Glasgow, and other places. It is stated in one of its late prefaces that it was originally issued at Stockton in a small twopenny brochure, without date, printed by and for R.Christopher. Sir ...
— Chenodia - The Classic Mother Goose • Jacob Bigelow
... Deemed by the Greeks of old. With some sprouts forth A forest of dense suckers from the root, As elms and cherries; so, too, a pigmy plant, Beneath its mother's mighty shade upshoots The bay-tree of Parnassus. Such the modes Nature imparted first; hence all the race Of forest-trees and shrubs and sacred groves Springs into verdure. Other means there are, Which use by method for itself acquired. One, sliving suckers from ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... name? Good authors damn'd, have their revenge in this, To see what wretches gain the praise they miss. Balbutius, muffled in his sable cloak, Like an old Druid from his hollow oak, As ravens solemn, and as boding, cries, "Ten thousand worlds for the three unities!" Ye doctors sage, who thro' Parnassus teach, Or quit the tub, or practise what you preach. One judges as the weather dictates; right The poem is at noon, and wrong at night: Another judges by a surer gage, An author's principles, or parentage; Since his great ancestors in Flanders fell, The poem doubtless must be written well. Another ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... tried to calm myself. Had I the stuff in me to win and to wear these bays, this stupendous laurel crown?—bays, laurel crown, a distinct souvenir of Parnassus, but there is no modern equivalent, I must strive to invent a new one, in the meantime let me think. True it is that Swinburne was before me with the "Romantiques." The hymn to Proserpine and Dolores are wonderful lyrical versions of Mdlle. de Maupin. In ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... She married—oh! so genteelly!—a young man, very well born, who had wooed her before my father died. He had the villany to remain constant when she had not a farthing, and he was dependent on distant relations, and his own domains in Parnassus. The wretch was a poet! So they married. They spent their honeymoon genteelly, I dare say. His relations cut him. Parnassus paid no rents. He went abroad. Such heart-rending letters from her. They were destitute. How I worked! how ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... seem to admire a mite, unless it is magnified by a Brobdignag microscope! While he is struggling with the force of three empires, he fancies that it adds to his glory to be unbent enough to contend for laurels with the triflers of a French Parnassus! Adieu! Sir. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... are living in an age of division of labor and specialism; and those who, like Robert Franz and Richard Wagner, devote themselves to a single branch of music have a better chance of reaching the summit of Parnassus than those who dissipate their energies in too many directions. Chopin was the pianoforte genius par excellence, and in his field he stands above the greatest of the German composers, whatever their names. Mendelssohn once wrote to his mother that Chopin "produces effects ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... behind him, at one point of his pilgrimage or another, and never expected to see them any more. Full of these remembrances, he came within sight of a lofty mountain, which the people thereabouts told him was called Parnassus. On the slope of Mount Parnassus was the famous Delphi, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... even impossible to decipher, or to guess at, are all the consequences of this error; and two-thirds of the new French books which now appear are made up of those ingredients. It is the new cookery of Parnassus, in which the still is employed instead of the pot and the spit, and where quintessences and extracts ate chiefly used. N. B. The Attic ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... lilies that toil not, neither do they spin, and sometimes bring their perfume and their white robes into a sick man's chamber. Who would harden with work the white fingers of Corysande, or sacrifice one rustle of Lalage's silken skirts? Let the poor starve; I'll have no potatoes on Parnassus. My socialism is not barracks and brown bread, but ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... is probable that only when men weary of hearing how Horace strolled down the Sacred Way and met an intolerable Bore—only then, or perhaps a little earlier, will they cease to hearken how Alexander Pope bade John Searle bar the door at Twickenham against the combined inroad of Bedlam and Parnassus. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... in all things, from conditions of success and methods of "getting work" up to the highest questions of art and the "steps to Parnassus," by which are reached the ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... Stevenson had come over formerly as a surgeon in the British army. He had married in England Miss Anne Henry, of Hampton. Settling in Baltimore, he acquired a large estate, then on the outskirts, now in the center of Baltimore. On Parnassus Hill he built a very spacious and handsome residence. During the Revolutionary War Dr. Stevenson remained loyal to his British training and was an outspoken Tory. The populace of Baltimore were so incensed against him that they mobbed his residence, threatening to destroy ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... chargeable with some breaches of good taste: these however are so few and of such a kind, that they still leave him just our highest authority in the School of Taste. Here, as elsewhere, he is our "canon of Polycletus." So Raphael made a painting of Apollo play the fiddle on Parnassus,—a grosser breach of good taste than any thing Shakespeare ever did. And yet Raphael is the painter of the finest taste in the world!—All which just approves the old proverb, that "no man is wise at all hours": so that we ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... enough to constitute a great poet but enough to make him what he was, a diverting and acute satirist, an agreeable moralist and critic in verse—which his master Horace had been so often—expert, dexterous, and possessing much authority. His Poetic Art for long was the tables of the law of Parnassus, and even now can be read not only with pleasure ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... Sulla, and had to pass through the straits where the enemy was waiting for him. For all these reasons Sulla moved into Boeotia. But Kaphis, who was from my town, evading the barbarians by taking a different route from what they expected, led Hortensius over Parnassus, close by Tithora, which was not at that time so large a city as it is now, but only a fort on a steep rock scarped all round, to which place in time of old the Phokians who fled from Xerxes escaped with their property and were there in ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... is the new Athens! Here Lodovico holds his Parnassus; here rare and excellent artists flock as bees to seek honey from the flowers; here, chief among them all, is the new Apelles whom he has brought from Florence." In the volume of Bellincioni's Sonnets, published soon after his death by the priest Francesco ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... showed us a beautiful view of what is here called Parnassus (Parnasso), the tall bluff mountain up the Gulf, whose snows at sunset glowed like a balass ruby. We left the Morea at 2 A.M. (December 2), and covered the fifty-two miles to Zante before breakfast. There is, and ever has been, something peculiarly sympathetic ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... been thought to bear a greater or less part in the war of the theatres. Among them the most important is a college play, entitled "The Return from Parnassus," dating 1601-02. In it a much-quoted passage makes Burbage, as a character, declare: "Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down; aye and Ben Jonson, too. O that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace, giving the poets ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... wanderings. We have spent much toil and privation to reach here, and now, after two weeks' rambling and musing among the mighty relics of past glory, we turn our faces homeward. The thrilling hope I cherished during the whole pilgrimage—to climb Parnassus and drink from Castaly, under the blue heaven of Greece (both far easier than the steep hill and hidden fount of poesy, I worship afar off)—to sigh for fallen art, beneath the broken friezes of the Parthenon, ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... of public as well as private life were identified with the will of the gods. But that time had passed. Pallas, the ethereal goddess of the Athenians, and the Sun god whose oracles, delivered from the temple between the twin summits of Parnassus, did so much for the Greek nationality, aided in keeping up a lofty ideal of religion; but when the enlightened men of Greece learnt to apply their keen faculty of reasoning to the system of their inherited belief, they ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Parnassus, the seat of the nine Muses (l. 485), the patronesses of the arts and of learning. Sacred and profane literature are beautifully blended in the thoughts of ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... even though it should take them into thousands of unprintable pages. It is infinitely preferable that those who have so far given evidence of nothing better than a fatal fluency in insipid imitation of true lyric poets should fall down a precipice in the attempt to scale the very pinnacles of Parnassus. There is something heroic about the most unmitigated disaster ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... would relate our interviews, and we should appear like those puny conceited witlings in Shenstone's and Hughes's correspondence, who give themselves airs from being in possession of the soil of Parnassus for the time being; as peers are proud because they enjoy the estates of great men who went before them. Mr. Gough is very welcome to see Strawberry-hill, or I would help him to any scraps in my possession that would assist his publications, though he is one of those ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... gaol; I fear them not. I have no land to glut Thy dirty appetite, and make thee strut Nimrod of acres; I'll no speech prepare To court the hopeful cormorant, thine heir. For there's a kingdom at thy beck if thou But kick this dross: Parnassus' flow'ry brow I'll give thee with my Tempe, and to boot That horse which struck a fountain with his foot. A bed of roses I'll provide for thee, And crystal springs shall drop thee melody. The breathing shades we'll haunt, where ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... volumes, and so edited as to be of most service. Palgrave's "Golden Treasury" of the best songs and lyrical poems in the English language was edited with the advice and collaboration of Tennyson. His "Children's Treasury" of lyrical poetry is most attractive. Emerson's Parnassus, and Whittier's "Three Centuries of Song" are excellent collections of the most ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... climbing rose of the States, and on rocky banks in Pennsylvania woods may be found the beautiful wild hydrangea flowers, silvery white or rose-color. Let the young flower-seeker not fail to look for the interesting parnassia, or grass of Parnassus, so named by the learned Dioscodorus more than eighteen hundred years ago, who found it growing on Mount Parnassus. One species of this little plant is abundant in damp fields in Eastern Connecticut and in the Middle ...
— Harper's Young People, July 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Literature, like nobility, runs in the blood. There is the Burney family. There is no end of it or its pretensions. It produces wits, scholars, novelists, musicians, artists in 'numbers numberless.' The name is alone a passport to the Temple of Fame. Those who bear it are free of Parnassus by birthright. The founder of it was himself an historian and a musician, but more of a courtier and man of the world than either. The secret of his success may perhaps be discovered in the following passage, where, in alluding to three eminent performers on different instruments, he says: ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Deucalion was a legendary king of Phythia in Thessaly. According to the legend, a deluge having been sent by Zeus, Deucalion, by advice of his father, built a wooden chest in which he and his wife were saved, landing after nine days on Mt. Parnassus. By them the human race, destroyed in the deluge, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... prepossessed and dazzled with Homeric visions. He told his story well and with detail, combining the recollections of the scholar with the impressions of an artist. The pediment of the Parthenon, the oleanders of the Ilissus, the stream "that runs in rain-time," the naked peak of Parnassus, the green slopes of Helicon, the blue gulf of Argus, the pine forest beside Alpheus, where the ancients worshipped "Death the Gentle"—all of them passed in ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... the middle.—Ver. 168. Delphi, situated on a ridge of Parnassus, was styled the navel of the world, as it was supposed to be situate in the middle of the earth. The story was, that Jupiter, having let go two eagles, or pigeons, at the opposite extremities of the earth, with the view of ascertaining the central spot of it, they met in ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... order. Joseph disturbed the banquet only by entering with new triumphs of Art. Last came a climax-pie, —contents unknown. And when that dish, fit to set before a king, was opened, the poem of our supper was complete. J. B. sailed to the Parnassus where Ude and Vattel feast, forever cooking immortal banquets ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... steps to Norfolk none forbeare, I'm confident thou shalt be welcom'd there, Where that thy autor hee was bred and borne, Though to Parnassus Girles was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... crosses the Cambunian mountains, and extends at first south, and then east to the sea, nearly inclosing Thessaly, and dividing it from the rest of Greece. After throwing out the various spurs of Othrys, OEta, and Corax, it loses itself in those famous haunts of the Muses—the heights of Parnassus and Helicon, in Phocis and Boeotia, In the southern part of Greece are the mountains which intersect the Peloponnesus in almost every part, the principal of which are Scollis, Aroanii, and Taygetus. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Puritans. The Court patronised the actors who performed Masques in palaces and great houses. The wealth and splendid attire of the actors, their acquisition of land and of coats of arms infuriated the sweated playwrights. Envy of the actors appears in the Cambridge "Parnassus" plays of c. 1600-2. In the mouth of Will Kempe, who acted Dogberry in Shakespeare's company, and was in favour, says Heywood, with Queen Elizabeth, the Cambridge authors put this brag: "For Londoners, who of more report than Dick Burbage ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... he is familiar with facts which only occur at a height of ten thousand feet or more above the sea—mountain-sickness and its accompaniments—of which his imaginary comrade Solinus tries to cure him with a sponge dipped in essence. The ascents of Parnassus and Olympus, of which he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... her hero's sudden lapse—from Parnassus to the scullery, from love to the commonplaces of living; but she had schooled herself to bear with him, since patience is a woman's part. Yet her honest blue eyes were not adapted to concealment and, furtively taking ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... sulphur-yellow anemone, the glacial white-and-pink buttercup, the Alpine dryad, the Alpine forget-me-nots and pink primroses, the summer crocus, delicate hare-bells, and many other flowers of goodly size were abundant. The grass of Parnassus and the edelweiss were not yet in flower, but lower down the slopes the Alpine rhododendron was showing its crimson bunches of blossom. It is a pity that the Swiss call this plant "Alpenrose," since there is a true and exquisite ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... in the country of Phocis still raised two peaks above the surrounding waters. It was the great Mount Parnassus. Toward this floated a boat containing Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, and his wife Pyrrha. No man, no woman, had ever been found who surpassed these in righteousness and piety. When, therefore, Jupiter, looking down from heaven ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... juvenile years; and I need hardly say, at this period, how ashamed I am of their author-ship. The monthly and Analytical Reviews did me the kindness of just tolerating them, and of warning me not to commit any future trespass upon the premises of Parnassus. I struck off 500 copies, and was glad to get rid of half of them as waste paper; the remaining half has been partly destroyed by my own hands, and has partly mouldered away in oblivion amidst the dust of Booksellers' shelves. My only ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... trees, was in our sight, the green mountain meadows between literally verifying its name by the brilliance of their sunshiny rich grass, where "God had showered the landscape;" to a fantastic fancy, giving the idea of the quivering of the richest leaf gold on a ground of emerald. The humbler Welsh Parnassus of the painter poet, Grongar Hill, towered also in distance. We traced the pastoral yet noble river, winding away in long meanders, up-flashing silver, through a broad mountain valley, dotted with white farms, rich in various foliage, marked as a map by lines, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... one—although Longfellow belongs more by rights to the water-cart line. The fact is," continued he, fairly started on his hobby, "that Pegasus, the charger of Mount Parnassus, is a most eccentric animal, who can be made to metamorphose himself so completely according to the skill and ability or weakness of his rider, that even Apollo would not recognise him sometimes! When backed ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... by right supreme, With frosted locks adrift, and eyes a-dream, With quick short footfalls, and an arm a-swing, As to some cosmic rhythm heard to ring From Putney to Parnassus, a brief bard. (In stature, not in song!) Though passion-scarred, Porphyrogenitus at least he looks; Haughty as one who rivalry scarce brooks; Unreminiscent now of youthful rage, Almost "respectable," and well-nigh ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... property, education, morality, sanity; yet "white males" vote without these, and women possessing all are denied the right. While different men have different duties, different functions, different spheres, ranging from the heights of Parnassus to the bowels of the earth, why legislate all women into a nutshell? Because a man is a father, must he needs be nothing else? Are lawyers, merchants, tailors, cobblers, bootblacks less skilled in their specialties because they vote? Because some ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... he would have spoken of his friendship with Dante—had that been possible—more glibly than of his friendship with the Duke. Call him a snob if you like, but not the worst kind of snob; a hanger-on, but to the skirts of Art, not Society; a climber, but in the neighbourhood of Parnassus, not Hay Hill. ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... think what likes me best; Or stroll about where'er I list, Nor fear to be run over By sheep, contented to exist Only on grass and clover. In town, as through the throng I steer, Confiding in the Muses, My finest thoughts are drowned in fear Of cabs and omnibuses. I dream I'm on Parnassus hill, With laurels whispering o'er me, When suddenly I feel a chill— What was it passed before me? A lady bowed her gracious head From yonder natty brougham— The windows were as dull as lead, I didn't know her ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... since have critics held so high a place in literature. The world was called upon to worship and do honour to the poet, but chiefly that it might admire the skill of the critic who could name the several sources of his beauties. The critic now ranked higher than a priest at the foot of Mount Parnassus. Homer was lifted to the skies that the critic might stand on a raised pedestal among the Muses. Such seems to be the meaning of the figures on the upper part of the well-known sculpture called the Apotheosis of Homer. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... passed on the poems of this noble minor, it seems we must take them as we find them, and be content; for they are the last we shall ever have from him. He is at best, he says, but an intruder into the groves of Parnassus; he never lived in a garret, like thorough-bred poets; and 'though he once roved a careless mountaineer in the Highlands of Scotland,' he has not of late enjoyed this advantage. Moreover, he expects no profit from his publication; and whether it succeeds or not 'it is highly ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... year 1874 the Norwegian Storthing conferred upon Jonas Lie an annual "poet's salary" of about six hundred dollars. This is supposed to supply a warranty deed to a lot on Parnassus. It removes any possible flaw in the title to immortality. Lie was now lifted into the illustrious triumvirate in which Bjoernson and Ibsen were his predecessors. Great expectations were entertained of his literary ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... real to the imagination. He showed us what a master key it is for unlocking the riddle of the life of the globe. He launched biological science upon a new career and made it worthy of its place in the great trilogy of sciences, astronomy, geology, and biology, of which Tennyson, in his poem "Parnassus," recognized only the first two. Had Tennyson written his poem in our day he would undoubtedly have included biology among his "terrible Muses" that tower above all others, eclipsing the glory of the great poets. Or ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... and seemed to see a slender shape wrapped in a spotted fawn's skin, its head crowned with leaves, joining the throng of those other early worshipers of Dionysus as they beat their weird music among the dark crags of Parnassus—searching for communion with the spiritual beyond in the only way they knew of then to reach it, through a wild ecstasy of emotion. Here was the same impulse, unconscious, instinctive. The probing of ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... Florence, Pisa, Verona, are of consummate beauty; and whatever dislike or contempt may be traceable in the mind of the Greeks for mountain ruggedness, their placing the shrine of Apollo under the cliffs of Delphi, and his throne upon Parnassus, was a testimony to all succeeding time that they themselves attributed the best part of their intellectual inspiration to the power of the hills. Nor would it be difficult to show that every great ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... on one common errand bound, One common fate o'erwhelms; and so, me-seems, A fable have we of our daily round, Who in these groves of learning here are found Climbing Parnassus' slopes. Our aim is one, And one the path by which we strive to soar; Yet, truer still, or ere the prize be won, A common ruin hurls us to our doom. 'Twere best we parted, you and I; so, Fate, Baulked of her double prey, ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... languish, Mute, but to the voice of anguish! Where each old poetic mountain Inspiration breathed around; Every shade and hallow'd fountain Murmur'd deep a solemn sound: Till the sad Nine, in Greece's evil hour Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains. Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power, And coward Vice, that revels in her chains. When Latium had her lofty spirit lost, They sought, O Albion! ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... told how welcome the incense of his songs rendered him to the rustic maidens of Kyle: women are not apt to be won by the charms of verse; they have little sympathy with dreamers on Parnassus, and allow themselves to be influenced by something more substantial than the roses and lilies of the muse. Burns had other claims to their regard then those arising from poetic skill: he was tall, young, good-looking, with dark, bright eyes, and words and wit at ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... association with the expressive homely art of the chapel at Pontesordo and with the half-pagan beauty of Luini's compositions had formed his taste on soberer lines than the fashion of the day affected; and his imagination breathed freely on the heights of the Latin Parnassus. Thus, while his friend Vittorio stormed up and down the quiet rooms, chattering about his horses, boasting of his escapades, or ranting against the tyranny of the Sardinian government, Odo, at the old Count's side, was entering on the great inheritance ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... celebrated fountain of Vaucluse, near this town, where Petrarque composed his works, and established Mount Parnassus. This is the only part of France in which there is an Inquisition, but the Officers seem content with their profits and honours, without ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... his own notes, that oftentimes we fancy we can hear the strains of 'rocky Scio's blind old bard' mingling in the Mantuan's melody. If thus it has been with those who sit highest and fastest on Parnassus—the crowned kings of mind—how has it been with the mere nobility? What are Scott's poetic romances, but blossomings of engrafted scions on that slender shoot from out the main trunk of English poetry—the old border balladry? Campbell's polished elegance of style, and the 'ivory mechanism ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... every candidate for dramatic laurels.[2] But, although during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I, the stage seems to have afforded the principal employment of the poets, there wanted not many, who cultivated, with success, the other departments of Parnassus. It is only necessary to name Spenser, whose magic tale continues to interest us, in despite of the languor of a continued allegory; Drayton, who, though less known, possesses perhaps equal powers of poetry; Beaumont the elder, whose poem on Bosworth Field carries us back to the days ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... type,' designed by Mr. Selwyn Image, which has now been in use for some time, may be regarded as another offshoot of Mr. Morris's theories, and deserves all the praise due to a brave experiment. By permission of the Messrs. Macmillan a page of it, taken from their 'Parnassus' Homer, is here shown, and few modern types will bear comparison with it. That it is not wholly and entirely successful is due to the fact that for so many centuries Greek types have been dominated ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... confide to Ethel their investigation of the Wegg mystery, but in all other matters gave her their full confidence. Together they made excursions to the Falls, to the natural caves on the rocky hill called Mount Parnassus, or rowed on the lake, or walked or drove, as the mood seized them. But mostly they loved the shade of the pines and the broad green beside the quaint mansion Captain Wegg had built, and which now contained all the elements of a modern ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... the two extremes, neither tall nor short, a vivid complexion, rather fair than dark, somewhat stooped in the shoulders, and not very lightfooted: this, I say, is the author of 'Galatea,' 'Don Quixote de la Mancha,' 'The Journey to Parnassus,' which he wrote in imitation of Cesare Caporali Perusino, and other works which are current among the public, and perhaps without the author's name. He is commonly called MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA. He was for many years a soldier, and for ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... case thou didst attempt to climb Parnassus hill: Take time five hundred thousand years and longer, if thou will, Trowest thou to touch the top thereof by standing still? Again work out thy heart, and spend thyself with toil: Take time withal, or else I dare ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... 1635, and in 1636 Charles I and his Queen visited Oxford and were entertained in the newly-finished college. Much bad verse was written on this event, two lines of which as a specimen may be quoted from the quaintly-named poem, "Parnassus Biceps": ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... door, good John! fatigued, I said, Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead. The dog-star rages! nay 'tis past a doubt, All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out: Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land. What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide? They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide; By land, by water, they renew the charge; They stop the chariot, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... greatness of our love! There are delightful libraries more aromatic than stores of spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manners of volumes; there are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars; there are lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of Parnassus; and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all arts and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary world; there Ptolemy measures epicycles and ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... Among them were many marked faces, many fine heads; but, in reading the works of poets, we always fancy them about the age of Apollo himself, and I found with pain some of my favorites quite old, and very unlike the company on Parnassus, as represented by Raphael. Some, however, were venerable, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... was called Anticleia: she was the daughter of King Autolycus, who lived near Parnassus, a mountain on the mainland. This King Autolycus was the most cunning of men. He was a Master Thief, and could steal a man's pillow from under his head, but he does not seem to have been thought worse of for this. The Greeks had a God of Thieves, named Hermes, whom ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... her useful rules indites, When to repress and when indulge our flights. High on Parnassus' top her sons she showed, [94] And pointed out those arduous paths they trod; Held from afar, aloft, the immortal prize, And urged the rest by equal steps to rise. [97] Just precepts thus from great examples given, She drew from them what they derived ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... Yea, but now flashed forth the summons from Parnassus' snowy peak, "Near and far the undiscovered doer of this murder seek!" Now like a sullen bull he roves Through forest brakes and upland groves, And vainly seeks to fly The doom that ever nigh Flits o'er his head, Still ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... the Chevalier Dumesnil made some for Mademoiselle de Launay, who made them in return for him, so that the Bastille was a true Parnassus. There was only Richelieu who dishonored the ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... who's striving Parnassus to climb With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme; He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders, But he can't with that bundle he has on his shoulders; The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching Till he learns the distinction ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... principles which seem to be essential in making any selection either of verse or prose which shall possess broader and more enduring qualities than that of being a mere exhibition of the editor's personal taste. To illustrate my meaning: Emerson's "Parnassus" is extremely interesting as an exposition of the tastes and preferences of a remarkable man of great and original genius. As an anthology it is a failure, for it is of awkward size, is ill arranged and contains selections made without system, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... stranger answered, smiling, "Most folk who have seen us both have marked the likeness." So she knelt down to wash his feet, but Odysseus turned himself as much as he could from the fire, for he feared that she might see the mark of the wound which the boar's tusk had made long ago when he went to Parnassus. But he strove in vain. For presently she saw the scar, and she let go his feet, and the water was spilt upon the ground, as she cried out, "It is Odysseus, and I knew him not until I saw the print of the deadly wound which Autolykus healed by his wondrous power." Then Odysseus ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... elbows, burnished knuckles, And you'll elicit scornful chuckles From Muse and from Mechanic! Selections from the terms of trade Would put, I'm very much afraid, Parnassus in a panic. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... indiscreet revelations of its private life below ground. In fact, 'tuber' as a derivation is disgraceful. On the roots of verbs Philology may be allowed to speak, but on the roots of flowers she must keep silence. We cannot allow her to dig up Parnassus. And, as regards the word being a trisyllable, I am reminded by a great living ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... earth received the wound, And rising streams a ready passage found. Now seas and earth were in confusion lost,— A world of waters, and without a coast. A mountain of tremendous height there stands Betwixt the Athenian and Boeotian lands: Parnassus is its name, whose forky rise Mounts through the clouds, and mates the lofty skies. High on the summit of this dubious cliff, Deucalion, wafting, moored his little skiff: He, with his wife, were only left behind Of perished man; they two were human ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... sending you this piece. I am much hurried at present with my comedy, the 'Clouds of Aristophanes.' I have already finished my translation of the Choephoroe of AEschylus. I dreamt a dream about your being before Parnassus upon your trial for sedition and contumacy. I thought Thalia, Clio, &c. addressed you. Their speeches shall be nonsensified into rhyme, and shall be part of some other scrawl from your ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... to surfeiting With lyric draughts o'ersweet, from rills that rise On Hybla not Parnassus mountain: come With beakers rinsed of the dulcifluous wave Hither, and see a magic miracle Of happiest science, the bland Attic skies True-mirrored by an English well;—no stream Whose heaven-belying surface makes the stars Reel, with its restless idiosyncrasy; But well unstirred, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... OF GRENADIERS (No date).—... "But, Sire, one is n't always perched on the summit of Parnassus; one is a man. There are sicknesses about; I did not bring an athlete's health to these parts; and the scorbutic humor which is eating my life renders me truly, of all that are sick, the sickest. I am absolutely alone from morning till night. My one solace is the necessary ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... virgin-flight to snowclad pinnacles of Parnassus she pours her jubilant songs of hope, faith, love into men's souls and ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... sang his way along, until he came unto a mountain: And I know not surely whether it was called Parnassus, But he climbed it out of sight, and still I heard the voice of ...
— The White Bees • Henry Van Dyke
... married to the Prince of Orange, and Handel was commissioned to write a wedding anthem. He also provided a secular entertainment in the shape of Parnaso in festa, described as a serenata. It was not unlike a masque; Apollo and the Muses appeared in costume on Mount Parnassus, but apparently there was no acting. The music was adapted from Athaliah, which, so far, had only been heard at Oxford. Oratorio was also attempted by Handel's rival; Mrs. Pendarves heard a work of his at Lincoln's Inn Fields in March. "It ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... chief Parnassus be, And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet More oft than to a chamber-melody,— Now blessed you bear onward blessd me To her, where I my heart, safe-left, shall meet; My Muse and I must you of duty greet With thanks and wishes, wishing ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... envious artifices of Heré, the Titans eluded the vigilance of his guardians and tore him to pieces; but Pallas restored the still palpitating heart to his father, who commanded Apollo to bury the dismembered remains upon Parnassus. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... that hold the steep of Parnassus, say, was it ever a bowl like this that old Chiron set before Heracles in the rocky cave of Pholus? Was it nectar like this that beguiled the shepherd to dance and foot it about his folds, the shepherd that dwelt by Anapus, on a time, ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... "organized" for political purposes: but so far as literature is concerned it remains unorganized to-day. We have, as has been constantly observed, no literary capital, like London or Paris, to serve as the seat of centralized authority; no code of literary procedure and conduct; no "lawgivers of Parnassus"; no supreme court of letters, whose judgments are recognized and obeyed. American public opinion asserts itself with singular unanimity and promptness in the field of politics. In literary matters we remain in the stage of anarchic ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Fireweed flames about them against the gray boulders; streams are open, go smoothly about the glacier slips and make deep bluish pools for trout. Pines raise statelier shafts and give themselves room to grow,—gentians, shinleaf, and little grass of Parnassus in their golden checkered shadows; the meadow is white with violets and all outdoors keeps the clock. For example, when the ripples at the ford of the creek raise a clear half tone,—sign that the snow water ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... Barnabe Barnes at Oxford, but of whose life, beyond the facts of its obscurity and seeming misery, little or nothing is known. He left several manuscript plays, of which the present at least, dated 1603[321] at 'Wolves Hill, my Parnassus,' possesses neither interest nor merit. It is an amateurish performance, partly in prose, partly in verse, either blank or rimed in couplets. Where the author adopts verse as a vehicle, his language becomes crabbed and ungrammatical in its ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... his style may be seen in many figures of women playing upon instruments of music, ranged around the walls. One girl at the organ is graceful; another with a tambourine has a sort of Bassarid beauty. But the group of Apollo, Pegasus, and a Muse upon Parnassus is a failure in its meaningless frigidity, while few of these subordinate compositions show power of ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... possesses by anticipation the mines of Peru, a view of which hangs over his head. Upon the table we see "Byshe's Art of Poetry;" for, like the pack-horse, who cannot travel without his bells, he cannot climb the hill of Parnassus without his jingling-book. On the floor lies the "Grub-street Journal," to which valuable repository of genius and taste he is probably a contributor. To show that he is a master of the PROFOUND, and will envelope his subject ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... never did the men there dance to the sound of the bagpipe; but the spot was sacred from the old times: even its name reminded of this, for it was called Delphi! The dark solemn mountains were all covered with snow; the highest, which gleamed the longest in the red light of evening, was Parnassus; the brook which rolled from it near our house was once sacred also. Now the ass sullies it with its feet, but the stream rolls on and on, and becomes clear again. How I can remember every spot in the deep holy solitude! ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... for although a youthful minor poet, he was modest and lovable. Perhaps his Oxford tutorship was sobering. At any rate his head remained unturned by his precocious fame, and to meet these other young men and women—his reverend seniors on the slopes of Parnassus—gave him more pleasure than the receipt of 'royalties'. Not that his publisher afforded him much opportunity of contrasting the two pleasures. The profits of the Muse went to provide this room of old furniture and roses, this beautiful ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... Hock no longer mantle in our glass; but Barclay's beer—nectar of gods and coalheavers—mixed with hippocrene—the Muses' "cold without"—is at present our only beverage. The grouse are by us undisturbed in their bloomy mountain covert. We are now content to climb Parnassus and our garret stairs. The Albany, that sanctuary of erring bachelors, with its guardian beadle, are to us but memories, for we have become the denizens of a roomy attic (ring the top bell twice), and are only saluted by an Hebe of all-work and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... obligation for it to a great predecessor? Chaucer again and again disclaims all boasts of perfection, or pretensions to pre-eminence, as a poet. His Canterbury Pilgrims have in his name to disavow, like Persius, having slept on Mount Parnassus, or possessing "rhetoric" enough to describe a heroine's beauty; and he openly allows that his spirit grows dull as he grows older, and that he finds a difficulty as a translator in matching his rhymes to his French original. He acknowledges ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... deserve we have tried to show. The Irish Judge opens his case by noting an essential distinction between 'Shakspere,' the actor, and 'Shakespeare,' the playwright. The name, referring to the man who was both actor and author, is spelled both 'Shakspeare' and 'Shakespeare' in the 'Returne from Parnassus' (1602).* The 'school of critics' which divides the substance of Shakespeare on the strength of the spelling of a proper name, in the casual times of great Elizabeth, need ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... Spain, in Cervantes' day, had passed the chivalric age, though many relics of it still remained in its legends, songs, and proverbs. Cervantes becomes his own critic in his "Supplement to a Journey to Parnassus," and speaking of his dramas, says: "I should declare them worthy the favor they have received were they not my own." Unfortunately, his comedy of "La Confusa" is among the lost ones. He alludes to it as a ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... by vanity, or fixed her soul on the mere triumphs of "literary reputation". While firm to her own creed, she fully enjoyed the success of those who scramble up—where she bore the standard to the heights of Parnassus; she was never more happy than when introducing some literary "Tyro" to those who could aid or advise a future career. We can speak from experience of the warm interest she took in the Hospital for the cure of Consumption, and the Governesses' Benevolent Institution; during the progress ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... remarkable; and respecting it we are furnished with the greatest body of particulars. The locality of this oracle is said to have been occasioned by the following circumstance. A goat-herd fed his flocks on the acclivity of mount Parnassus. As the animals wandered here and there in pursuit of food, they happened to approach a deep and long chasm which appeared in the rock. From this chasm a vapour issued; and the goats had no sooner inhaled a ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... last three years of our school education,) he showed no mercy to phrase, metaphor, or image, unsupported by a sound sense, or where the same sense might have been conveyed with equal force and dignity in plainer words [3]. Lute, harp, and lyre, Muse, Muses, and inspirations, Pegasus, Parnassus, and Hippocrene were all an abomination to him. In fancy I can almost hear him now, exclaiming "Harp? Harp? Lyre? Pen and ink, boy, you mean! Muse, boy, Muse? Your nurse's daughter, you mean! Pierian spring? Oh aye! the cloister-pump, I suppose!" Nay certain introductions, similes, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... short-windedness, stones, nits, and a pervading sense of the wisdom of rest and be thankful, most of us have little enough sense of the beautiful under these circumstances. The ordinary schoolboy is precisely in this case. He finds Parnassus uncommonly steep, and there is no chance of his having much time or inclination to look about him till he gets to the top. And nine times out of ten he does not get to ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... for Hortensius, a bold and active officer, whom on his way to Sylla with forces from Thessaly, the barbarians awaited in the straits. For these reasons Sylla drew off into Boeotia. Hortensius, meantime, was conducted by Caphis, our countryman, another way unknown to the barbarians, by Parnassus, just under Tithora, which was then not so large a town as it is now, but a mere fort, surrounded by steep precipices, whither the Phocians also, in old time, when flying from the invasion of Xerxes, carried themselves and their goods and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the Jew, at the same time asking the king's pardon for what he called his giddiness. "This great poet is always astride of Parnassus and Rue Quincampoix," said the Marquis of Argenson. Frederick had written him on the 24th of February, 1751, a severe letter, the prelude and precursor of the storms which were to break off before long the intimacy between the king and the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... were Calliope (Heroic Poetry), Clio Euterpe (Music), Erato (Love Poetry), Melpomene (Tragedy), Polyhymnia (Muse of Singing and Rhetoric), Terpsichore (Dancing), Thalia (Comedy), and Urania (Astronomy). Mount Parnassus, Mount Helicon, and the fountains of Castalia and Aganippe were the sacred places of ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... felt that no light had been thrown upon anything. A lady of high rank gave me her views upon the writing of English prose, with the air of one speaking condescendingly from Olympus, which, as we know, was above even Parnassus. In the middle I caught the eye of the great man, who was opposite me; he gave me a mournful smile, and I read his thoughts. When the ladies had withdrawn, my host, with a determined air as of a man above prejudice, started the conversation on rather ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... came, the ancients imagined, from Thrace, in the north, and went first to Jupiter upon Mount Olympus, who made them goddesses. Afterward they went southward, and spread over Greece, making their residence, at last, in a palace upon Mount Parnassus, which will be found upon the map just north of the Gulf of Corinth and west of Boeotia. They were worshiped all over Greece and Italy as the goddesses of music and dancing. In later times particular sciences and arts were assigned to them respectively, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... At the north end every bird that frequents the Central States is to be found. Here grow in profusion many orchids, fringed gentians, cardinal flowers, turtle heads, starry campions, purple gerardias, and grass of Parnassus. In one season I have located here almost every flower named in the botanies as native to these regions and several that I can find in ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Lewis! monk, or bard, Who fain would make Parnassus a church-yard! Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel, bind thy brow, Thy Muse a sprite, Apollo's sexton thou! Whether on ancient tombs thou tak'st thy stand, By gibbering spectres hail'd, thy kindred band; Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page, To please the females of our modest age. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... vote the Laureate's post to fill? Ay! if Parnassus were but Primrose Hill. The Penny Vote puts lion below monkey. 'Tis "Tuppence more, Gents, and up goes ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... ever been a place of peculiar interest to the mystic. Here are to be found all the natural features and objects which gladden the heart and stimulate the imagination of a solo-phallic worshipper. The holy Mt. Parnassus, the fountain of Kastali, the deep cave said to be Pythian, and the remnants of huge sepulchres hewn in the rocks all conspire to make of this spot a perfect abode for the god, or goddess, of fertility. Here, too, is a beautiful lake and near it a sacred fig-tree which has been struck ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... Selden, and Cowley. He talked and wrangled with the wise men of half Europe. He had sat at Richelieu's table and been loaded with honours by Cosmo de Medici. The laurels Hobbes won in the schools he lost on Parnassus. His translation of Homer is tasteless and contemptible. In mathematics, too, he was dismounted by Wallis and others. Personally he had weaknesses. He was afraid of apparitions, he dreaded assassination, and had a fear that Burnet and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Africanus, Ye whose fame's eclips'd by no man's, Publius AEmilianus, Sylla, Marius, Pompey, Caesar, Fabius, dilatory teaser, Coriolanus, and ye Gracchi Who gave so many a foe a black eye, Antony, Lepidus, and Crassus; And you, ye votaries of Parnassus, Virgil, and Horace, and Tibullus, Terence and Juvenal, Catullus, Martial, and all ye wits beside, On Pegasus expert to ride; Numa, good king, surnamed Pampilius, And Tullus, eke 'yclept Hostilius— ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... Mr. Dobell's poems have passages which are musical, vigorous, and peculiar, and hardly in any part can he be justly charged with prolonging an echo. He is not one of the many mocking-birds that infest the groves at the foot of Parnassus. Though portions of his songs be wild, fitful, and incoherent, they gush with the force and feeling of a heart loyal to its intuitions, and thus many strains captivate and keep the tuneful ear. Yet such charming lines make conspicuous the want of that high appreciation ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... three virgin Sisters, who Rejoicing in their wind-outspeeding wings, 740 Their heads with flour snowed over white and new, Sit in a vale round which Parnassus flings Its circling skirts—from these I have learned true Vaticinations of remotest things. My father cared not. Whilst they search out dooms, 745 They sit apart and feed ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... brighter beam, — Descend thou also on my native land, And on some mountain-summit take thy stand; Thence issuing soon a purer font be seen Than charmed Castalia or famed Hippocrene; And there a richer, nobler fane arise, Than on Parnassus met the adoring eyes. And tho', bright goddess, on the far blue hills, That pour their thousand swift pellucid rills Where Warragamba's rage has rent in twain Opposing mountains, thundering to the plain, No child of song has yet invoked thy ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... spent at Saint Paul's School; then he was sent to Cambridge. From there he wrote to his mother, "I am penetrating into the inmost recesses of the Muses; climbing high Olympus, visiting the green pastures of Parnassus, and drinking deep from ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... on him for weeks," was the answer, "so he is probably moulting; this is the time of year. He has a roomy boxstall in the new Augean stable at the foot of Mount Parnassus. You know they have turned the spring of Castaly so that it flows through the stable-yard now, and so it is easy enough to keep ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... half English breed, Thou mongrel of Parnassus, To think tall lines, run up to seed, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... temple's inmost cell, and which no mortal hand dared touch, were seen lying before the temple door, as if Apollo was prepared himself to use them. As the Persians advanced by a rugged path under the steep cliffs of Mount Parnassus, and reached the temple of Athene Pronaea, a dreadful peal of thunder rolled above their affrighted heads, and two great crags, torn from the mountain's flank, came rushing down with deafening sound, and buried many of them beneath their weight. At the same time, from the temple of Athene, ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... 1877.—The modern haunters of Parnassus carve urns of agate and of onyx; but inside the urns what is there?—Ashes. Their work lacks feeling, seriousness, sincerity, and pathos—in a word, soul and moral life. I cannot bring myself to sympathize with such a way of understanding poetry. The talent ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... protesting about something or other,—always starting fantastic schemes ... he's just finished with his Parnassus Palace experiment, which brought him a lot of newspaper notoriety ... which is to me distasteful, extremely distasteful ... yet Baxter," he added hastily, "is a real force ... he can think of more original projects in a given space of time than ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... of evidence would have no weak link, if it were not for a passage in the play, "The Return from Parnassus," acted by the students in St. John's College the same year, 1601. In this there is a dialogue between Shakespeare's fellow-actors, Burbage and Kempe. Speaking of ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... and as if there were no such things in existence as mathematicians, historians, politicians, and political economists, who have built into the upper air of intelligence a pyramid, from the summit of which they see the modern Parnassus far beneath them, and knowing how small a place it occupies in the comprehensiveness of their prospect, smile at the little ambition and the circumscribed perceptions with which the drivelers and mountebanks ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... 'Right Wall.—"Parnassus." Apollo surrounded by the Muses; on his right, Homer, Virgil, and Dante. Below on the right, Sappho, supposed to be addressing Corinna, Petrarch, Propertius, and Anacreon; on the left Pindar and Horace, Sannazzaro, Boccaccio, and others. Beneath this, in grisaille, ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler |
