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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, Atlantic Essays. You can also browse the collection for Shakespeare or search for Shakespeare in all documents.

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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, A plea for culture. (search)
splendor through the glass of Hawthorne. Every form of human life is romantic; every age may become classic. Lamentations, doubts, discouragements, all are wasted things. Everything is here, between these Atlantic and Pacific shores, save only the perfected utterance that comes with years. Between Shakespeare in his cradle and Shakespeare in Hamlet there was needed but an interval of time, and the same sublime condition is all that lies between the America of toil and the America of art. splendor through the glass of Hawthorne. Every form of human life is romantic; every age may become classic. Lamentations, doubts, discouragements, all are wasted things. Everything is here, between these Atlantic and Pacific shores, save only the perfected utterance that comes with years. Between Shakespeare in his cradle and Shakespeare in Hamlet there was needed but an interval of time, and the same sublime condition is all that lies between the America of toil and the America of art.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Literature as an art. (search)
esources of mere words is the poem of The Eve of St. Agnes. But thus to be crowned monarch of the sunset, to trust one's self with full daring in these realms of glory, demands such a balance of endowments as no one in English literature save Shakespeare has attained. In choosing words, it is to be remembered that there is not a really poor one in any language; each had originally some vivid meaning, but most of them have been worn smooth by passing from hand to hand, and hence the infiniter wrong. Goethe wrote to Schiller, We make money by our poor books. The impression is somehow conveyed to the young, that there exists somewhere a circle of cultivated minds, gifted with discernment, who can distinguish at a glance between Shakespeare and Tupper. One may doubt the existence of any such contemporary tribunal. Certainly there is none such in America. Provided an author says something noticeable, and obeys the ordinary rules of grammar and spelling, his immediate public as
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Americanism in literature. (search)
as they pass by! Turn now to recent fiction. Dickens's people are amusing and lovable, no doubt; Thackeray's are wicked and witty; but how under-sized they look, and how they loiter on the mere surfaces of life, compared, I will not say with Shakespeare's, but even with Chapman's and Webster's men. Set aside Hawthorne in America, with perhaps Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot in England, and there would scarcely be a fact in prose literature to show that we modern Anglo-Saxons regard a profout; we are busy with our railroads, perfecting the vast alimentary canal by which the nation assimilates raw immigrants at the rate of half a million a year. We are not yet producing, we are digesting: food now, literary composition by and by: Shakespeare did not write Hamlet at the dinner-table. It is of course impossible to explain this to foreigners, and they still talk of convincing, while we talk of dining. For one, I cannot dispense with the society which we call uncultivated. Democr
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, A letter to a young contributor. (search)
aim to immortality is made, so it is easy to see that a phrase may outweigh a library. Keats heads the catalogue of things real with sun, moon, and passages of Shakespeare ; and Keats himself has left behind him winged wonders of expression that were not surpassed by Shakespeare, nor by any one else who ever dared touch the EnglisShakespeare, nor by any one else who ever dared touch the English tongue. There may be phrases which shall be palaces to dwell in, treasure-houses to explore; a single word may be a window from which one may perceive all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them. Oftentimes a word shall speak what accumulated volumes have labored in vain to utter: there may be years of crowded passion i into the fading fame of the unread Camoens. The long magnificence of Italian culture has left us only I Quattro Poeti, the Four Poets. The difference between Shakespeare and his contemporaries is not that he is read twice, ten times, a hundred times as much as they: it is an absolute difference; he is read, and they are only pri
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, The Greek goddesses. (search)
e a host of later traditions, mostly foreign to the Greek mind, generally tending toward the trivial and the prosaic. Shakespeare in French does not more instantly cease to be Shakespeare, than the great ideals vacate their shrines when Latinized. Shakespeare, than the great ideals vacate their shrines when Latinized. Jeanne d'arc, in the hands of Voltaire, suffers hardly more defamation of character than the Greek goddesses under the treatment of Lempriere. Now that this defilement is being cleared away, we begin to see how much of the stateliness of polythenting in grand pictures of ideal womanhood. Spenser's impersonations, while pure and high, are vague and impalpable. Shakespeare's women seem at best far inferior, in compass and variety, to Shakespeare's men; and if Ruskin glorifies them sublimeShakespeare's men; and if Ruskin glorifies them sublimely on the one side, Thackeray on the other side professes to find in them the justification of his own. Goethe paints carefully a few varieties, avoiding the largest and noblest types. . Where among all these delineations is there a woman who walks
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Sappho. (search)
ve me from anguish, give me all I ask for, Gifts at thy hand; and thine shall be the glory, Sacred protector! It is safe to say that there is not a lyrical poem in Greek literature, nor in any other, which has, by its artistic structure, inspired more enthusiasm than this. Is it autobiographical? The German critics, true to their national instincts, hint that she may have written some of her verses in her character of pedagogue, as exercises in different forms of verse. It is as if Shakespeare had written his sonnet, Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? only to show young Southampton where the rhymes came in. Still more difficult is it to determine the same question — autobiographical or dramatic?-in case of the fragment next in length to this poem. It has been well ingrafted into English literature through the translation of Ambrose Philips, as follows:-- To a beloved woman. Blest as the immortal gods is he, The youth who fondly sits by thee, And hears and sees thee, a