"Pindaric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the poets, he may be fairly suspected of glancing at Dryden, who was his kinsman, and whose prefaces and translation of Virgil he ridicules in the "Tale of a Tub." Dryden is reported to have said of him, "Cousin Swift is no poet." The Dean began his literary career by Pindaric odes to Athenian Societies and the like,—perhaps the greatest mistake as to his own powers of which an author was ever guilty. It was very likely that he would send these to his relative, already distinguished, for his ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... little time with poetical tippets, handkerchiefs, snuff-boxes, and the like female ornaments. I shall therefore conclude with a word of advice to those admirable English authors who call themselves Pindaric writers, that they would apply themselves to this kind of wit without loss of time, as being provided better than any other poets with verses of ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... genius, have from a mistaken theory deluded both themselves and others in the opposite extreme. I once read to a company of sensible and well-educated women the introductory period of Cowley's preface to his "Pindaric Odes," written in imitation of the style and manner of the odes of Pindar. "If," (says Cowley), "a man should undertake to translate Pindar, word for word, it would be thought that one madman had translated another as may appear, when he, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of Sir Thomas Giffard, Bart., of County Kildare, the favourite sister of Sir William Temple, had been described by Swift in early pindaric verses as "wise and great." Afterwards he was to call her "an old beast" (Journal, Nov. 11, 1710). Their quarrel arose, towards the close of 1709, out of a difference with regard to the publication of Sir William Temple's Works. On the appearance of vol. v. Lady Giffard ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... of Deborah and Barak; David's Lamentations over Saul and Jonathan; a Pindaric Poem; and the Prayer of Solomon at the Dedication of the Temple, 4to., by E. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... Besides a Pindaric Ode to Shakespeare, to be found in my Miscellaneous Poems, wherein many of his characters are touched upon, I wrote the following ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... invention, and eloquence. For fifty years, England was pronounced to have worn herself out by the prolific brilliancy of the half century before; like a precocious infant, to have anticipated her powers, and ensured their premature decay; like the Boeotians, to have had her Pindaric period, and thenceforward to have paid for its raptures and renown by perpetual darkness; or like the Israelites in Egypt, to be condemned to drudgery for life, sunk into an intellectual slave-caste;—when in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... in the same year in the "Atlantic Monthly," is more dithyrambic in its measure and of a more Pindaric elevation than the plain song ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... distinguish this branch of the Ode from the Hymn which was composed in heroic measure[52], and from the Pindaric Ode (as it is commonly called) to which the dithyrambique or more diversified stanza was particularly appropriated. Of the shorter Ode therefore it may be said ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... published, not only because the honour, distinct from superstition, given to the saints offends several of our people; but also because Pope Urbin is commended in it. He is an excellent Poet, as appears from his elegant Pindaric odes. God grant he may be able to unite Christians, who are too much divided, in ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... annihilated them altogether, to fit them for other habits and modes of life. Among them he saw the soul of Nero tortured in other ways, and pierced with red-hot nails. And the artificers having taken it in hand and converted it into the semblance of a Pindaric viper, which gets its way to life by gnawing through its mother's womb, a great light, he said, suddenly shone, and a voice came out of the light, ordering them to change it into something milder, so they devised of it ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... phantasy, and that the particular verses are placed dramatically in the mouth of a proclaimed Eleutheromane, or maniac for liberty.[203] Diderot was not likely to foresee that what he designed for an illustration of the frenzy of the Pindaric dithyramb, would so soon be mistaken for a short ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... a big Pindaric sort of poetry about a plunging mass of cattle. And just as truly there is a sort of Theocritus poetry about sheep. Only in the latter case, the poetical vanishing point is farther away for me than is the case with cattle. I think I couldn't write very ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... soul of King Henry," said the Queen, "this is either moonstruck madness or very knavery!—Seest thou, Raleigh, thy friend is far too Pindaric for this presence. Have him away, and make us quit of him, or it shall be the worse for him; for his flights are too unbridled for any place but Parnassus, or Saint Luke's Hospital. But come back instantly thyself, when he is placed under fitting ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... may arrogate nothing to myself, I must acknowledge that Virgil in Latin and Spenser in English have been my masters. Spenser has also given me the boldness to make use sometimes of his Alexandrine line, which we call, though improperly, the Pindaric, because Mr. Cowley has often employed it in his odes. It adds a certain majesty to the verse when it is used with judgment, and stops the sense from overflowing into another line. Formerly the French, like us and ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden |
