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George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor (ed. George Hillard) 73 3 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature 56 4 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 1, Colonial and Revolutionary Literature: Early National Literature: Part I (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 51 1 Browse Search
Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 1 46 4 Browse Search
George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor (ed. George Hillard) 43 7 Browse Search
Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis: Ex-President of the Confederate States of America, A Memoir by his Wife, Volume 1 43 1 Browse Search
Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 2 40 2 Browse Search
Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 9. (ed. Reverend J. William Jones) 38 2 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life 32 2 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises 31 1 Browse Search
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Browsing named entities in Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life. You can also browse the collection for Walter Scott or search for Walter Scott in all documents.

Your search returned 17 results in 6 document sections:

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life, Chapter 4: a world outside of science (search)
nus, as the gnats or the mosquitoes, would have been enough, he thought, for the life-work of a judicious man. We smile at this as extravagance, and yet we have, by the direct confession of the great leader of modern science, the noble and large-minded Darwin, an instance of almost complete atrophy of one whole side of the mind at the very time when its scientific action was at its highest point. Up to the age of thirty, Darwin tells us, he took intense delight in poetry --Milton, Byron, Scott, Wordsworth, and Shelley-while he read Shakespeare with supreme enjoyment. Pictures and music also gave him much pleasure. But at sixty-seven he writes that for many years he cannot endure to read a line of poetry ; that he has lately tried Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated him; and that he has almost lost all taste for pictures and music. This he records, not with satisfaction, but with great regret ; I. e, by his son, Am. ed. pp. 30, 81. he would gladl
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life, Chapter 7: a very moral and nice book (search)
pected. It seems that, he having rashly undertaken the enterprise of editing the novels of Sir Walter Scott, it occurred to him very properly that it might be well to read them; and as The Betrothed ished the same enterprise by the age of fourteen. At any rate, the editor of the new edition of Scott's novels has achieved it, and is prepared to pronounce, of his own knowledge, that he finds The have been born an Australian, or even an American. Even these humbler beings can at least read Scott. The present writer counts it among the joys of his life that he remembers the actual birth of l and nice book. What enhances the zest of the affair is that, while Mr. Lang thus leaves his Scott thus insufficiently read, he yet holds his neighbor of the Tweed as a rod over the head of any l a dime novelist without protests of amazement and assurances that he is the lineal successor of Scott, and that to have left unread a single story of Haggard's is to have fallen short of the highest
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life, Chapter 10: Favorites of a day (search)
light, or by one saying, like Fletcher of Saltoun with his I care not who makes the laws of a people, so I can make its ballads, than to achieve such evanescent splendors as this? It is not more than sixty years since Maria Edgeworth rivalled Scott in English and American popularity, and Scott's publisher, James Ballantyne, says that he could most gratify the author of Waverley when he could say: Positively this is equal to Miss Edgeworth. Fifty years ago Frederika Bremer's works were in EScott's publisher, James Ballantyne, says that he could most gratify the author of Waverley when he could say: Positively this is equal to Miss Edgeworth. Fifty years ago Frederika Bremer's works were in English--speaking countries the object of such enthusiasm that publishers quarrelled for the right to reproduce them in English, and old friendships were sundered by the competition to translate them. At that time all young men who wished for a brilliant social career still took for their models either Pelham or Vivian Grey,; and I remember that a man of fine intellect, who had worked in a factory till he was eighteen, once told me that he had met with no intellectual influence to be compared w
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life, Chapter 17: English and American gentlemen (search)
o the author is to be found in the lately published letters of Sir Walter Scott. They are delightful in all respects but one--the absolute sedone shows how ingrain it is. To the chief of his clan, especially, Scott poses as the humble minstrel for whom it is honor enough to sit in ow by the very different tone of Burns; but the facility with which Scott fell into it shows the strength of the feudal tradition; while the ttitude of Trollope and Besant shows that it still survives. But Scott's letters are of especial value for this: that they absolutely defecracy of birth and one of wealth. No one can read these letters of Scott's and imagine for an instant an American man of genius as writing ibe there, nor would it be possible to put it on. It would not, like Scott's tone, be spontaneous, unaffected, and in that point of view almosent the very organization and structure of society. It was because Scott was personally a man of high tone that this deferential attitude is
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life, Chapter 18: the future of polite society (search)
ttle further, affirms that the Twelve Apostles of Christianity, although apparently humble fishermen, were undoubtedly gentlemen of high blood, in temporary poverty, but entitled to bear coat armour. Many of them, he is satisfied, were descended from that worthy conqueror Judas Maccabaeus. But the truth is that the distinction between a newly enriched family and a family descended even from Judas Maccabaeus is a mere matter of a century or two. Every family has sprung, as Lord Murray in Scott's Monastery says, from one mean man --taking the word mean only in the sense of humility of station. He usually raised himself largely by the aid of wealth, and often by qualities held in their day disreputable. In a country of hereditary aristocracy it is rare to dwell much on the first step taken by the mean man ; people often admit very frankly that his elevation came from the trickery of some courtier or from some woman's disgrace. What they urge in favor of the system is that aristo
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life, Chapter 27: the antidote to money (search)
t, and then the rest is silence. Apart from this, the American wealth must transplant itself to get peculiar and exclusive social enjoyments. This fact is a great compliment to America. People who have no visible imagination in any other direction are always ready to be imaginative in their reverence for an hereditary class; and do not see that it is and must be in all but a very small proportion of cases the mere embodiment and perpetuation of wealth. All families, says Lord Murray in Scott's Monastery, have sprung from one mean man. There occurred a promotion, sometimes the result of great services, but oftener of magnificent bribes, great frauds, or a woman's shame-all these being measurable in money. In the English titled classes we see a constant transfer of untitled riches, if used for the right political party, into ennobled wealth. It is largely a more gilded and veneered Tammany. Witness the mattercourse comment of the London Spectator on the honors bestowed by the