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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises, chapter 16 (search)
wo and three hundred thousand copies must have been sold. Of the seventh and eighth editions, as the author himself tells us, forty thousand copies were printed apart from the English reprint. The ninth edition, published in 1891, had three hundred and fifty pages more than its predecessor, and the index was increased by more than ten thousand lines. In 1881 Mr. Bartlett published his Shakespeare Phrase-book, and in February, 1889, he retired from his firm to complete his indispensable Shakespeare Concordance, which Macmillan & Co. published at their own risk in London in 1894. All this immense literary work had the direct support and cooperation of Mr. Bartlett's wife, who was the daughter of Sidney Willard, professor of Hebrew in Harvard University, and granddaughter of Joseph Willard, President of Harvard from 1781 to 1804. She inherited from such an ancestry the love of studious labor; and as they had no children, she and her husband could pursue it with the greatest regula
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises, chapter 20 (search)
read, and he brought Letters from New York, and hid it in the great bush of old-fashioned tree-box beside the front door. After the first book, she thought in ecstasy, This, then, is a book, and there are more of them. But she did not find so many as she expected, for she afterwards said to me, When I lost the use of my eyes, it was a comfort to think that there were so few real books that I could easily find one to read me all of them. Afterwards, when she regained her eyes, she read Shakespeare, and thought to herself, Why is any other book needed? She went on talking constantly and saying, in the midst of narrative, things quaint and aphoristic. Is it oblivion or absorption when things pass from our minds? Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it. I find ecstasy in living; the mere sense of living is joy enough. When I asked her if she never felt any want of employment, not going off the grounds and rarely seeing a visitor, she answered, I never thought of
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises, chapter 22 (search)
p, of Boston, long eminent as a lecturer on Shakespeare, was one of these boys. In the summer ofy an American edition of Craik's English of Shakespeare. Between 1867 and I 869, in connection witphysics, in six volumes. In 1870 he edited Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice with such success thatr volumes, besides writing for it a Life of Shakespeare which fills a volume of five hundred and fiplete or partial work he has reprinted. In Shakespeare he has, of course, the highest theme to dwefew among many examples. When we turn to Shakespeare, we find less direct service of this kind rhan the new issue of Mr. Rolfe's volumes of Shakespeare's works. The type is clear, the paper good schoolroom. It has been said that every Shakespeare critic ended with the desire to be ShakespeI prefer to believe, with Andrew Lang, that Shakespeare's plays and poems were written by Shakespeaer to believe, with Andrew Lang, that Shakespeare's plays and poems were written by Shakespeare. [4 more...]
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises, XXIV. a half-century of American literature (1857-1907） (search)
oldly pointed out that we have intellectually grown, as a nation, from the high school of our Revolutionary ancestors to the college; from the college we have grown to the university stage. Now we have grown to a point where we need something beyond the university. What he claims for science is yet more needed in the walks of pure literature, and is there incomparably harder to attain, since it has there to deal with that more subtle and vaster form of mental action which culminates in Shakespeare instead of Newton. This higher effort, which the French Academy alone even attempts,--however it may fail in the accomplished results,--may at least be kept before us as an ideal for American students and writers, even should its demands be reduced to something as simple as those laid down by Coleridge when he announced his ability to inform the dullest writer how he might write an interesting book. Let him, says Coleridge, relate the events of his own life with honesty, not disguising
Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 4, chapter 10 (search)
ne, April 5, 1891, by Mrs. Janet Chase Hoyt; Chaplin's Life of Sumner, pp. 471-479. In one corner, the one farthest from his chamber, was his desk, above which, on a shelf, were kept five books,—Harvey's Shakespeare and Hazlitt's Select British Poets (both bought with college prize-money), Roget's Thesaurus, fickey's Constitution, and the Rules and Usages of the Senate. On his desk, always littered with papers, lay a Bible, the gift of Mr. Seward's daughter. This book, as well as the Shakespeare and the Select British Poets, were found on his desk on the day of his death. Ante. vol. i. p. 57. In a movable bookcase within reach were Webster's and Worcester's dictionaries, Allibone's Dictionary of Authors, and Smith's Classical dictionaries. Near the door of his bedroom, against the wall, was his secretary's desk. During his visit to Europe in 1858-1859 he had secured for himself a costly collection of books, often richly bound, missals, manuscripts and autographs of celebrat
James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley, Chapter 9: from office to office. (search)
r unfortunate, Timothy Wiggins. His connection with the office of a sporting paper procured him occasionally an order for admission to a theatre, which he used. He appeared to have had a natural liking for the drama; all intelligent persons have when they are young; and one of his companions of that day remembers well the intense interest with which he once witnessed the performance of Richard III., at the old Chatham theatre. At the close of the play, he said there was another of Shakespeare's tragedies which he had long wished to see, and that was Hamlet. Soon after writing his letter, the luckless Wiggins, tempted by the prospect of better wages, left the Spirit of the Times, and went back to West's, and worked for some weeks on Prof. Bush's Notes on Genesis, the worst manuscript ever seen in a printing-office. That finished, he returned to the Spirit of the Times, and remained till October, when he went to visit his relatives in New Hampshire. He reached his uncle's f
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Oldport days, with ten heliotype illustrations from views taken in Newport, R. I., expressly for this work., A drift-wood fire. (search)
ot through and through in the sunlight with all manner of blue and golden glistenings, and bearing tiny rows of fringing oars that tremble like a baby's eyelids. There is less of gross substance in them than in any other created thing,--mere water and outline, destined to perish at a touch, but seemingly never touching, for they float secure, finding no conceivable cradle so soft as this awful sea. They are like melodies amid Beethoven's Symphonies, or like the songs that wander through Shakespeare, and that seem things too fragile to risk near Cleopatra's passion and Hamlet's woe. Thus tender is the touch of ocean; and look, how around this piece of oaken timber, twisted and torn and furrowed,--its iron bolts snapped across as if bitten,--there is yet twined a gay garland of ribbon-weed, bearing on its trailing stem a cluster of bright shells, like a mermaid's chatelaine. Thus adorned, we place it on the blaze. As night gathers without, the gale rises. It is a season of uneasy
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Oldport days, with ten heliotype illustrations from views taken in Newport, R. I., expressly for this work., Madam Delia's expectations. (search)
g a period when a serpent fifteen feet long would cease to charm, or she to charm it,and still having a source of pride and prosperity in this triumphant girl. The tent was in its glory on the day of Gerty's return; to be sure, nothing in particular had been washed except the face of Old Bill, but that alone was a marvel compared with which all Election day was feeble, and when you add a paper collar, words can say no more. Monsieur Comstock also had that ten times barbered look which Shakespeare ascribes to Mark Antony, and which has belonged to that hero's successor in the histrionic profession ever since. His chin was unnaturally smooth, his mustache obtrusively perfumed, and nothing but the unchanged dirtiness of his hands still linked him, like Antaeus, with the earth. De Marsan had intended some personal preparation, but had been, as usual, in no hurry, and the appointed moment found him, as usual, in his shirtsleeves. Madam Delia, however, wore a new breastpin and gave
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Oldport days, with ten heliotype illustrations from views taken in Newport, R. I., expressly for this work., Sunshine and Petrarch. (search)
celestial isle, Are now but dust, poor dust, that nothing knows. And yet I live! Myself I grieve and scorn, Left dark without the light I loved in vain, Adrift in tempest on a bark forlorn; Dead is the source of all my amorous strain, Dry is the channel of my thoughts outworn, And my sad harp can sound but notes of pain. And yet I live! What a pause is implied before these words! the drawing of a long breath, immeasurably long; like that vast interval of heart-beats that precedes Shakespeare's Since Cleopatra died. I can think of no other passage in literature that has in it the same wide spaces of emotion. The following sonnet seems to me the most stately and concentrated in the whole volume. It is the sublimity of a despair not to be relieved by utterance. Sonnet 253. Soleasi nel mio cor. Petrarch. She ruled in beauty o'er this heart of mine, A noble lady in a humble home, And now her time for heavenly bliss has come, 'T is I am mortal proved, and she divine.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Oldport days, with ten heliotype illustrations from views taken in Newport, R. I., expressly for this work., Footpaths. (search)
, and the simultaneous blossoms and berries of the gaudy nightshade. Or of those winding tracks that lead here and there among the flat stones of peaceful old graveyards, so entwined with grass and flowers that every spray of sweetbrier seems to tell more of life than all the accumulated epitaphs can tell of death. And when the paths that one has personally traversed are exhausted, memory holds almost as clearly those which the poets have trodden for us, --those innumerable by-ways of Shakespeare, each more real than any high-road in England; or Chaucer's Little path I found Of mintes full and fennell greene; or Spenser's Pathes and alleies wide With footing worne; or the path of Browning's Pippa Down the hillside, up the glen, Love me as I love! or the weary tracks by which Little Nell wandered; or the haunted way in Sydney Dobell's ballad, Ravelstone, Ravelstone, The merry path that leads Down the golden morning hills, And through the silver meads; or the few Americ
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