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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.) 114 0 Browse Search
James Russell Lowell, Among my books 80 0 Browse Search
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing) 50 0 Browse Search
George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor (ed. George Hillard) 46 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises 38 0 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 2 (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 32 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature 30 0 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays 28 0 Browse Search
Frank Preston Stearns, Cambridge Sketches 28 0 Browse Search
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight) 20 0 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 Shakespeare or search for Shakespeare in all documents.

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life, Chapter 4: a world outside of science (search)
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 gladly have it otherwise, but cannot. It is simply ty the mere force of patient will. Keats, in one of his fine letters, classifies the universe, and begins boldly with things real, as sun, moon, and passages of Shakespeare. Sun and moon lie within the domain of science; and at this moment the astronomers are following out that extraordinary discovery which has revealed in the bri
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life, Chapter 8: local fiction (search)
, it is the less educated classes which are more easily drawn, though not necessarily or always the most worth drawing. Hence we are acquiring a gallery of rustic groups spread over the continent, while the traditions of polish and refinement are ignored either for want of personal experience or of skill. Unluckily, the writer who has succeeded with village life always wishes to deal with more artificial society. It is as inevitable as the yearning of every good amateur comedian to act Shakespeare. Bret Harte and his successor, Hamlin Garland, handle admirably the types they knew in early life, but the moment they attempt to delineate a highly bred woman the curtain rises on a creaking doll in starched petticoats. Few, indeed, of our authors can venture to portray, what would seem not so impossible, an every-day gentleman or lady. But Miss Jewett can produce types of the old New England gentry, dwelling perhaps in the quietest of country towns, yet incapable of any act which is
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life, Chapter 10: Favorites of a day (search)
In these various ways a man sometimes escapes, perhaps forever, from the personal renown that should seemingly be his. Even if he gains this, how limited it is, at the best! Strictly speaking, there is no literary fame worth envying, save Shakespeare's-and Shakespeare's amounted to this, that Addison wrote An Account of the Greatest English Poets in which his name does not appear; and that, of the people one meets in the streets of any city, the majority will not even have heard of him. HoShakespeare's amounted to this, that Addison wrote An Account of the Greatest English Poets in which his name does not appear; and that, of the people one meets in the streets of any city, the majority will not even have heard of him. How many thousand never heard the name Of Sidney or of Spenser, and their books; And yet brave fellows, and presume of fame, And think to bear down all the world with looks. Happy is that author, if such there be, who, although his renown be as small as that of Thoreau in his lifetime, does not greatly concern himself about it, being so occupied with some great thought or hope for man that his own renown is a matter of slight importance. It is for this that Whittier always expressed thanks to t
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life, Chapter 30: our criticism of foreign visitors (search)
e, a mingling of filial affection and jealousy. In the popular Chicago tale of Sweet Clover a young girl says, sadly, I wonder if I shall ever go East; to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, I should like them to be something beside names to me-but what an idea! This is essentially the feeling with which other Americans look towards Europe. It is when the ties of literary association begin to form that older and newer communities come to be more on an equality. We go to England to hear Shakespeare's lark sing at heaven's gate; and Thomas Hughes came to America to hear Lowell's bobolink. These ties again are formed very slowly, and the colonial spirit still lingers so much among us that a very little English reputation goes farther in the United States than a much higher American fame in England. Yet here we are sometimes startled with the discovery that we are also interesting to our elder cousins, as well as our elder cousins to us. Twenty-five years ago the present writer, visi
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life, Chapter 31: the prejudice in favor of retiracy (search)
t he gave, and pleads earnestly that all of his life except what he puts in print may be recognized as his own. Hawthorne, Emerson, Whittier, and many others have claimed a similar shelter. Longfellow confessed to a dislike to seeing his name in print. Swift, while seeming defiant of the world, read family prayers in secret in his household-in a crypt, as Thackeray said — that they might not be talked about; not only retiring to the Scriptural closet, but taking his whole family there. Shakespeare, while engaged in the most conspicuous of all professions, yet kept his personality so well concealed that there are those who doubt to this day whether he wrote the plays which bear his name, and no one has yet conjectured why he left only his second-best bedstead to his wife. Charles Lamb, when asked for personal details, could remember nothing notable in his own career except that he once caught a flying swallow in his hand. Campbell, the poet, was so shy that on receiving a complim