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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, John Greenleaf Whittier, Index. (search)
, 108-111, 127, 135, 157, 176, 178; libraries, 34; newspapers, 61; first Quakers in, 84. Boston Transcript, quoted, 90; mentioned, 98, 164. Boutwell, G. S., 97. Bowditch, Dr. Henry I., 78. Bowen, H. C., 143. Brahmo-Somaj, 116. Brainard, J. G. C., 37. Brazil, 100. Bremer, Miss Fredrika, 110. 87 Bright, John, 94, 112; Whittier on, 113. Brown, David Paul, 62. Brown, J. Brownlee, his Thalatta, mentioned, 163. Brown, Capt., John, 78, 79. Brown University, 176. Browning, Elizabeth B., 142,165; her Sonnets from the Portuguese, mentioned, 166. Browning, Robert, 153. Bryant, William C., 37, 156. Burleigh, Charles C., 63. Burlington, N. J., 131. Burns, Robert, 19, 88,109; Whittier compared with, 152. Burroughs, George, 18, 103. Burroughs, Rev., George, 180. Butler, Gen. B. F., 110. Byron, Lord, 33. C. Campbell, Mr., 94. Campbell's restaurant, 83. Canada, 10. Carlisle, J. G., 181. Carlton, Mr., 33. Cartland, Mrs. Gertrude W., quoted, 58, 59
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Americanism in literature. (search)
lusions! There is no baptism of fire; no heat that breeds excess. Yet it is not life that is grown dull, surely; there are as many secrets in every heart, as many skeletons in every closet, as in any elder period of the world's career. It is the interpreters of life who are found wanting, and that not on this soil alone, but throughout the Anglo-Saxon race. It is not just to say, as some one has said, that our language has not in this generation produced a love-song, for it has produced Browning; but was it in England or in Italy that he learned to sound the depths of all human emotion? And it is not to verse alone that this temporary check of ardor applies. It is often said that prose fiction now occupies the place held by the drama during the Elizabethan age. Certainly this modern product shows something of the brilliant profusion of that wondrous flowering of genius; but here the resemblance ends. Where in our imaginative literature does one find the concentrated utterance
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Ought women to learn the alphabet? (search)
had herself learned to read Thucydides, harder Greek than Callimachus, before she was fourteen. And so down to our own day, who knows how many mute, inglorious Minervas may have perished unenlightened, while Margaret Fuller Ossoli and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were being educated like boys. This expression simply means that they had the most solid training which the times afforded. Most persons would instantly take alarm at the very words; that is, they have so little faith in the distinct, sed Anna Darner?-yet Harriet Hosmer and her sisters have climbed far up its steep ascent. Who believed that a poetess could ever be more than an Annot Lyle of the harp, to soothe with sweet melodies the leisure of her lord, until in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's hands the thing became a trumpet? Where are gone the sneers with which army surgeons and parliamentary orators opposed Mr. Sidney Herbert's first proposition to send Florence Nightingale to the Crimea? In how many towns has the curr
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, Sappho. (search)
oats over the scattered lines of a wedding song, for instance, weaving together the phrases and supplying the innuendoes, is enough to rule him out of the class of pure-minded men. But besides this quality of coarseness, he shows a serious want of candor. For though he admits that Sappho first introduced into literature (in her Epithalamia) a dramatic movement, yet he never gives her the benefit of this dramatic attitude except where it suits his own argument. It is as if one were to cite Browning into court and undertake to convict him, on his own confession, of sharing every mental condition he describes. What, then, was this Lesbian school that assembled around Sappho? Mure pronounces it to have been a school of vice. The German professors see in it a school of science. Professor Felton thinks that it may have resembled the Courts of Love in the Middle Ages. But a more reasonable parallel, nearer home, must occur to the minds of those of us who remember Margaret Fuller and
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays, On an old Latin text-book. (search)
tween its covers. Yet those of us whose love of the book was wont to save us from the rod may have felt the thrill of delight predominate; at any rate, there was novelty and the joy of eventful living ; and I remember that the rather stern and aquiline face of our teacher relaxed into mildness for a moment. Both we and our books must have looked very fresh and new to him, though we may all be a little battered now; at least, my New Latin Tutor is. The change undergone by the volume which Browning put in the plum-tree cleft, to be read only by newts and beetles,--With all the binding all of a blister, And great blue spots where the ink has run, And reddish streaks that wink and glister, could hardly exceed what this book shows, when I fish it up from a chest of literary lumber, coeval with itself. It would smell musty, doubtless, to any nose unregulated by a heart; but to me it is redolent of the alder-blossoms of boyish springs, and the aromatic walnut-odor which used in autumn to
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Short studies of American authors, Hawthorne. (search)
his side, and a noble-looking baby-boy in a little wagon which the father was pushing. I remember him as tall, firm, and strong in bearing; his wife looked pensive and dreamy, as she indeed was, then and always; the child was Julian, then known among the neighbors as the Prince. When I passed, Hawthorne lifted upon me his great gray eyes, with a look too keen to seem indifferent, too shy to be sympathetic-and that was all. But it comes back to memory like that one glimpse of Shelley which Browning describes, and which he likens to the day when he found an eagle's feather. Again I met Hawthorne at one of the sessions of a short-lived literary club; and I recall the imperturbable dignity and patience with which he sat through a vexatious discussion, whose details seemed as much dwarfed by his presence as if he had been a statue of Olympian Zeus. After his death I had a brief but intimate acquaintance with that rare person, Mrs. Hawthorne; and with one still more finely organized,
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Short studies of American authors, Poe. (search)
s? Or capriciously still Like the lone albatross Incumbent on night (As she on the air) To keep watch with delight On the harmony there? his voice seemed attenuated to the finest golden thread; the audience became hushed, and, as it were, breathless; there seemed no life in the hall but his; and every syllable was accentuated with such delicacy, and sustained with such sweetness, as I never heard equalled by other lips. When the lyric ended, it was like the ceasing of the gypsy's chant in Browning's Flight of the Duchess; and I remember nothing more, except that in walking back to Cambridge my comrades and I felt that we had been under the spell of some wizard. Indeed, I feel much the same in the retrospect, to this day. The melody did not belong, in this case, to the poet's voice alone: it was already in the words. His verse, when he was willing to give it natural utterance, was like that of Coleridge in rich sweetness, and like that was often impaired by theories of structure
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Short studies of American authors, Helen Jackson. ( H. H. ) (search)
ite credible. To take these various threads of mystery, and weave them into a substantial fame, this passed the power of public admiration. At any rate, an applause so bewildered could heartily be heard across the Atlantic; and it is almost exasperating to find that in England, for instance, where so many feeble American reputations have been revived only to die, there are few critics who know even the name of the woman who has come nearest in our day and tongue to the genius of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and who has made Christina Rossetti and Jean Ingelow appear but second-rate celebrities. When some one asked Emerson a few years since whether he did not think H. H. the best woman-poet on this continent, he answered in his meditative ay, Perhaps we might as well omit the woman, thus placing her, at least in that moment's impulse, at the head of all. He used to cut her poems from the newspapers as they appeared, to carry them about with him, and to read them aloud. His especi
Jula Ward Howe, Reminiscences: 1819-1899, Chapter 7: marriage: tour in Europe (search)
wife from America, and that his mother, on seeing her, had said, She is not so very black. Lady Carlisle was proverbial for her kindliness and good temper, and it was upon this point that the humor of the story turned. I will also mention a dinner given in our honor by John Kenyon, well known as a Maecenas of that period. Miss Sedgwick, in her book of travels, speaks of him as a distinguished conversationalist, much given to hospitality. He is also remembered as a cousin of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The scenes just described still remain quite vivid in my memory, but it would be difficult for me to recount the visits made in those days by my husband and Horace Mann to public institutions of all kinds. I did indeed accompany the two philanthropists in some of their excursions, which included schools, workhouses, prisons, and asylums for the insane. We went one day, in company with Charles Dickens and his wife, to visit the old prison of Bridewell. We found the treadmil
Jula Ward Howe, Reminiscences: 1819-1899, Chapter 15: a woman's peace crusade (search)
Edmund Burke, whose liberalism he considered rather sporadic than chronic, an expression of sentiment called forth by some exceptional emergency, while the eloquent speaker remained a conservative at heart. He did not, as he might have done, explain such inconsistencies on the simple ground of Burke's Irish blood, which gave him genius but not the logic of consistency. Mrs. Seeley was a very amiable and charming woman. I remember that her husband read to me Calverley's clever take-off of Browning, and that we all laughed heartily over it. A morning ramble made me aware of the beauty of the river banks. I attended a Sunday service in King's College Chapel, with its wonderful stone roof. Here also I made the acquaintance of Miss Clough, sister to the poet. She presided at this time over a household composed of young lady students, to whom some of the university courses were open, and who were also allowed to profit by private lessons from some of the professors of the university.
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