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James Parton, Horace Greeley, T. W. Higginson, J. S. C. Abbott, E. M. Hoppin, William Winter, Theodore Tilton, Fanny Fern, Grace Greenwood, Mrs. E. C. Stanton, Women of the age; being natives of the lives and deeds of the most prominent women of the present gentlemen 32 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 30 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book 24 0 Browse Search
Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe, Florence Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, in two volumes, with portraits and other illustrations: volume 1 20 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays 20 0 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3 (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 16 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Margaret Fuller Ossoli 16 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson 14 0 Browse Search
Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches 12 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Olde Cambridge 10 0 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book. You can also browse the collection for Robert Browning or search for Robert Browning in all documents.

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, II (search)
English literature—that is, all literature more than a century or two old—is common to the two countries. All contemporary literature cannot yet be judged, because it is contemporary. The time may come when not a line of current English poetry may remain except the four quatrains hung up in St. Margaret's Church and when the Matthew Arnold of Macaulay's imaginary New Zealand may find with surprise that Whittier and Lowell produced something more worthy of that accidental immortality than Browning or Tennyson. The time may come when a careful study of even the despised American newspapers may reveal them to have been in one respect nearer to a high civilization than any of their European compeers; since the leading American literary journals criticise their own contributors with the utmost freedom, while there does not seem to be a journal in London or Paris that even attempts that courageous candor. To dwell merely on the faults and follies of a nascent nation is idle; vitality i
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, VI (search)
n of letters. After this a French paper, reprinting a similar English list, added comments on the names, like this: Robert Browning, the Scotch poet. There is probably no better manual of universal knowledge than the great French dictionary of LarCollege librarians, they often say in return, Have you looked in Larousse?Now, when one looks in Larousse to see who Robert Browning was, one finds the statement that the genius of Browning is more analogous to that of his American contemporaries EmBrowning is more analogous to that of his American contemporaries Emerton, Wendell Holmes, and Bigelow than to that of any English poet (celle de n'importe quel poete anglais.) This transformation of Emerson into Emerton, and of Lowell, probably, to Bigelow, is hardly more extraordinary than to link together three such dissimilar poets, and compare Browning to all three of them, or, indeed, to either of the three. Yet it gives us the high-water mark of what contemporaneous posterity has to offer. The criticism of another nation can, no doubt, offer some advan
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, X (search)
certainly admit that the equation of fame may require many years for its solution. Fuller says in his Holy State that learning hath gained most by those books on which the printers have lost; and if this is true of learning, it is far truer of that incalculable and often perplexing gift called genius. Young Americans write back from London that they wish they had gone there in the palmy days of literary society—in the days when Dickens and Thackeray were yet alive, and when Tennyson and Browning were in their prime, instead of waiting until the present period, when Rider Haggard and Oscar Wilde are regarded, they say, as serious and important authors. But just so men looked back in longing from that earlier day to the period of Scott and Wordsworth, and so farther and farther and farther. It is easy for older men to recall when Thackeray and Dickens were in some measure obscured by now forgotten contemporaries, like Harrison Ainsworth and G. P. R. James, and when one was gravely
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, XI (search)
perish with prize poems and Commencement orations, if one can only determine in advance which is the single and felicitous offspring possessing that precise quality which the physicians name viability —the capacity to keep itself alive. Happily, this is not so difficult as one might suppose. It often takes a great while to determine the comparative merit of authors,— indeed, the newspapers are just now saying that the late Mr. Tupper had a larger income from the sales of his works than Browning, Tennyson, and Lowell jointly received,—but it does not take so long to determine which among an author's works are the best; and it is probable that the Descent of Neptune in the Iliad, and the Vision of Helen in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, and Sappho's famous ode, and the Birds of Aristophanes, and the Hylas of Theocritus, and the Sparrow of Catullus, and the De Arte Poetica of Horace were early recognized as being the same distinct masterpieces that we now find them. It is the traditio<
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, XV (search)
though some of them certainly die hard. The same necessity for a joke invades other quiet enjoyments and harmless occupations, as the study of Shakespeare or Browning. It has happened to me to look in at several different Browning clubs, first and last; but the club of the newspaper humorist I never have happened to encounteBrowning clubs, first and last; but the club of the newspaper humorist I never have happened to encounter—that club which is as vague and misty and wordy as that other creation of the American imagination, the Limekiln Club of colored philosophers. On the contrary, such Browning clubs as I have happened to look in upon have had the sobriety and reasonableness which are essential to the study of a poet who, although often recondite Browning clubs as I have happened to look in upon have had the sobriety and reasonableness which are essential to the study of a poet who, although often recondite and difficult, is never vague. Yet you may go to the meeting of such a club and be struck with the good-sense and moderation of every word that is uttered; no matter; the report in the next day's newspaper —if reporters are admitted—will put in all the folly and adulation that the meeting wisely left out, and this because the rep<
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, XXIII (search)
knowledge than when he went there, but with less power of felicitous expression. But Greece and Rome have still unexhausted lessons, and so have Persia and Arabia; these last, indeed, wreathe their weapons with too many roses, but they carry true nevertheless. Dante not only created his own conceptions, but almost the very language in which he wrote; and what was his power of expression we can judge best by seeing in how few lines he can put vividly before us some theme which Tennyson or Browning afterward hammers out into a long poem. In English literature there seemed to be developing, in the time of Addison, something of that steady, even, felicitous power which makes French prose so remarkable; but it has passed, since his day, possibly from excess of vigor, into a prolonged series of experiments. Johnson experimentalized in one direction, Coleridge in another; Landor, Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, in other directions still; and the net result is an uncertain type of style, whic
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, The new world and the new book, Index (search)
Beaconsfield, Lord, 110, 167, 179, 180. Beecher, H. W., 60. Besant, Walter, 74. Bigelow, 54. Billings, Josh, 59. Black, William, 202. Blaine, J. G., 110. Blake, William, 218. Bonaparte, Napoleon, 28, 52, 109, 188, 234. Book catalogue, a Westminster Abbey, 152. Boston, the, of Emerson's day, 62. Boyesen, H. H., 144, 171. Bremer, Fredrika, 57. Bridaine, Jacques, 215. Brougham, Henry, 224. Brown, Charles Brockden, 51. Brown, John, 16, 155. Brown, J. Brownlee, 104. Browning, Robert, 25, 54, 55, 98, 196. Bryant, W. C., 100, 147. Bryce, James, 120, 167, 211. Bulwer, see Lytton. Buntline, Ned, 199, 200. Burroughs, John, 114. Burton, Robert, 114. Byron, Lord, 178, 195, 217. C. Cable, G. W., 11, 67. Cabot, J. E., 175. Calderon, Serafin, 229, 232. Carlyle, Thomas, 37, 56, 197, 206, 217. Casanova, Jacques, 41. Catullus, 99. Cervantes, Miguel de, 229. Champlain, Samuel de, 192. Channing, E. T., 94 Channing, Walter, 214. Channing, W. E., 46, 66,