"Essayist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... imagination seem familiar." It is precisely thus with his own imagination. It eludes the observation of the ordinary reader in the modesty of its truth, in its social and familiar air. His fancy as an Essayist is distinguished by singular delicacy and tenderness; and even his conceits will generally be found to be, as those of his favorite Fuller often are, steeped in human feeling and passion. The fondness he entertained ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "The Spectre Bridegroom"—to mention only three of the thirty-three items of its table of contents—which proved the author to be not only a humorist of the first order, but an accomplished critic, essayist and short-story writer. The publication of this book marked the culmination of his literary career. It is his most characteristic and important work, and on it and his "History," ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... we see here. If it were merely beauty of style for which they were distinguished—if they were remarkable only for rhetorical flourishes—we would not be apt to estimate these flourishes at more than their due value. We would not agree with the doctrines of the essayist on account of the elegance with which they were urged. On the contrary, we would be inclined to disbelief. But when all ornament save that of simplicity is disclaimed—when we are attacked by precision of language, by perfect accuracy of expression, by directness ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... Channing, who has just published a very neat little volume of poems, we feel the necessity of employing the indefinite rather than the definite article. He is a, and by no means the, William Ellery Channing. He is only the son* of the great essayist deceased. . . It may be said in his favor that nobody ever heard of him. Like an honest woman, he has always succeeded in keeping himself from being made the subject of gossip. His book contains about sixty-three things, ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... 7th Leinsters in which I did not spend the Saturday and Sunday on this business—generally in company with the most brilliant speaker, taking all in all, that I have ever heard. Kettle, then a lieutenant in the battalion, was wit, essayist, poet and orator: whether he was most a wit or most an orator might be argued for a night without conclusion; but as talker or as speaker he had few equals. He was the son of a veteran Nationalist, who had taken ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... greater ease, its abundance of social intercourse, its keener taste, its subtler and more delicate courtesy, its flow of conversation, the stately and somewhat tedious prose-writer of days gone by passed into the briefer and nimbler essayist. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... allow to monopolise the name. Cunning is the only resource of the feeble; and why may we not feel for victorious cunning as strong a sympathy as for the bold, downright, open bearing of the strong? That there may be no mistake in the essayist's meaning, that he may drive the nail home into the English understanding, he takes an illustration which shall be familiar to all of us in the characters of Iago and Othello. To our northern thought, the free and noble nature of the Moor is ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... violets I must, with a brutality akin to that which M. Zola himself displays in some of his transitions, pass to very different things, for some time back a well-known English poet and essayist wrote of the present work that it was redolent of pork, onions, and cheese. To one of his sensitive temperament, with a muse strictly nourished on sugar and water, such gross edibles as pork and cheese and onions were peculiarly offensive. That humble plant the onion, employed to flavour wellnigh ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... women of imperfect sanity. It is a small matter that you should protest against some small maladjustment or folly; but it is a great matter that you should be perfectly sane and well-balanced. Now education helps sanity. It shows the proportion of things. An American essayist bids us "keep our eyes on the fixed stars." Education helps us to do this. It helps us to live the life we have to lead on a higher mental and spiritual ...
— Three Addresses to Girls at School • James Maurice Wilson
... Trade was flourishing. Neither had literature fallen behind. Perhaps it had rarely shown a more brilliant galaxy of contemporary names, including those of John Stuart Mill in logic, Herbert Spencer in philosophy, Charles Darwin in natural science, Ruskin in art criticism, Helps as an essayist. And in this year Tennyson brought out his "In Memoriam," and Kingsley his "Alton Lock". It seemed but natural that the earlier lights should be dying out before the later; that Lord Jeffrey, the old king of critics, should pass beyond the sound of reviews; ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... Wordsworth, who was her guest whenever he came up to London. She expressed the warmest admiration for the moral and political, though not all of the religious, writings of our Dr. Channing, whom she pronounced the finest essayist of the time. She also felt a curious interest (which I discovered in many other notable people in England) to learn what she could in regard to our American Indians, and expressed much admiration when I gave her some quotations ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... taken shame to themselves, whether they consider the object of their abuse in his moral or his literary character. For reflect but on the variety and extent of his acquirements! He stands second to no man, either as an historian or as a bibliographer; and when I regard him as a popular essayist,—(for the articles of his compositions in the reviews are, for the greater part, essays on subjects of deep or curious interest rather than criticisms on particular works)—I look in vain for any writer, who has conveyed so much information, from so many and such ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... leader to whom he could look up with confidence. And so he wavered, and half acquiesced in Caesar's triumph, even though he suspected that with that triumph the Rome which he had known and loved would pass away. To us it is as an essayist and as the writer of a multitude of letters to friends, full of miscellaneous information, that Cicero is particularly attractive; there is a gracefulness and refinement and elevation of tone about his writings which cannot fail to incline the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... understands the need of the Government," says an essayist, "we shall travel far." But not at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various
... this brevity of an essayist does seem to warrant his reader in some little indignation. We, the writer, expect to bring over the reader to our opinion—else wherefore do we write? But, within so small a compass of ground, is it reasonable to look for such a result? 'Bear witness to the presumption ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... merit consists in the agreeable pertness and vivacity of his dialogue—Addison, whose fame as a poet greatly exceeded his genius, which was cold and enervate; though he yielded to none in the character of an essayist, either for style or matter—Swift, whose muse seems to have been mere misanthropy; he was a cynic rather than a poet, and his natural dryness and sarcastic severity would have been unpleasing, had not he qualified them, by adopting the extravagant humour of Lueian and Rabelais—Prior, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... John Keats (1795-1834), were worshippers at the shrine of coffee; while Charles Lamb, famous poet, essayist, humorist, and critic, has celebrated in verse the exploit of Captain de Clieu in the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... poet, a dramatist, an essayist, and a novelist, besides writing many political, geographical, and biographical sketches. As a poet, his fame is steadily waning. The tendency at first was to rank him too high, owing to the undeniable charm of many of the poems in the Child's Garden of Verses. The child's view ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Great or Significant Man, to give expression to his cordial feelings and his inspiration. It becomes an obsession with him to communicate to others what he sees in his Idol, his Divinity. Yet it is not Inspiration for his Subject alone that makes the Essayist. Some point that has no marked attraction in itself may be inexpressibly precious to the Author as Material, presenting itself to him with some rare stamps or unexpected feature, that affords a ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... Hamerton gives us particulars, not only of individual, but of super-personal interest. I use the last expression because the idiosyncrasy described is common to most men and women of genius or exceptional talent. The charming essayist then, the art-critic, gifted with so much insight and feeling settled down at Sens we are told, for the purpose of painting 'commission pictures.' His career was to be decided by the brush and not by the pen. The author ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... to trace the stages of that improvement. I will not try to decide in what year servants passed from wistfulness to resentment, or from resentment to exaction. This is not a sociological treatise, it is just an essay; and I claim an essayist's privilege of not groping through the library of the British Museum on the chance of mastering all the details. I confess that I did go there yesterday, thinking I should find in Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb's 'History of Trade Unionism' ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... residents of Tarrytown have been Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, well known to a previous generation for her romantic novels, John Kendrick Bangs, the humorist, and Hamilton Wright Mabie, editor and essayist. Carl Schurz (1829-1906) is buried here in the Sleepy Hollow churchyard. Tarrytown is the trading center of a prosperous agricultural region; it also has about 100 manufacturing establishments with a large output. Just north of Kingsland Point (seen at the left, on the east bank of the river), ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... among theologians, Newton in mathematical science, Locke and Bentley in philosophy and classical learning, Clarendon and Burnet in history, L'Estrange, Butler, Marvell and Dryden in miscellaneous prose, and Temple as an essayist, have all made their mark by prose writings which will endure for all time. But the names which stand out most prominently in popular estimation as authors of great masterpieces in the prose of this period are certainly those of John Bunyan, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... shall gather up, during the week, from the literary and scientific publications of the whole world, the gems of current thought and information, digest them carefully, and pour them forth, in attractive form, for their delectation on Sunday. As a sort of oratorical and poetical reviewer, essayist and rhapsodist, the parson and his church had ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... elocutionist, before he took seriously to writing for the stage. His first really successful play was "Virginius," written for Edmund Kean, transferred to Macready, and produced in 1820. His greatest triumph was "The Hunchback," 1832. Lamb, who met Knowles through William Hazlitt, of Wem, the essayist's father, wrote both the prologue and epilogue for Knowles's play "The ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and goodness of his heart. . . . In no place should I take it upon myself at this time to discourse of his books, of his refined knowledge of character, of his subtle acquaintance with the weaknesses of human nature, of his delightful playfulness as an essayist, of his quaint and touching ballads, of his mastery over the English language. . . . But before me lies all that he had written of his latest story . . . and the pain I have felt in perusing it has not been deeper than the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... had been won mainly in verse. With the appearance in the magazines of A Moosehead Journal, Fireside Travels, and Leaves from My Italian Journal his success as a prose essayist began. Henceforth, and against his will, his prose was a stronger literary force than his poetry. He now gave a course of lectures on the English poets at the Lowell Institute, and during the progress of these lectures he received notice of his appointment ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... intermixed with dialogues, called Friends in Council, and a supplementary volume, somewhat different in plan, which he calls Companions of my Solitude.[1] As the whole of his characteristics as an essayist are displayed with a more perfect effect in these two latter works than in the others, and as they will afford us as much extract as we shall have space for, we propose to confine our remarks to them exclusively. Matter enough, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... festival this year of the Royal Literary Fund, stated that the only literary people who prospered were “the novelist and the gentleman who remembered many people in his reminiscences. The essayist was no longer in favour. He had been killed by fiction and photographs. It was the purpose of the Royal Literary Fund to aid authors who needed assistance, and all who were not novelists did need it.” It seems that ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... politics, they strove towards abstract idealism. They devoted their energies to philosophy, literature, and art. It was then that Tolstoy, Turgenieff, and Dostoyevsky embarked upon their phenomenal careers in fiction. It was then that the impetuous essayist, Byelinsky, with his fiery and eloquent pen, taught the true meaning and objects of literature. Nekrassov soon joined the circles of literary people dominated by the spirit of Byelinsky, and he too drank at the fountain of idealism and imbibed the gospel of altruistic toil for his ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... eighteenth century presents no more distinguished name than that of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer and essayist. His learning was immense; his judgments and criticisms were everywhere regarded with respect; and, above other great men of his time, he was fortunate in having as friend and companion one who produced the best biography that the world ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... course, as a novelist, and an estimate of his work in this field is not in place here. But as an essayist he is also great. The lectures on the "English Humourists," of which the following paper on "Swift" was the first, were the fruit of an intimate knowledge of the time of Queen Anne, and a warm sympathy with its spirit. ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... so he had to grope along his rabbit's burrow almost on hands and knees. To reach his bedroom from the ground, he climbed up the spiral staircase as the visitor does today. The steps are much worn in places, and the boots of the essayist must have had something to do with this, for he probably used the tower more than any other man. The room, nearly circular in shape, with brick floor and small windows, looks to modern eyes more like a prison than a bed-chamber befitting a nobleman. But independently of the great difference ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... are more brilliant than true. An English writer would not dare to make a maxim, involving, perhaps, in two lines, one of the most important of moral truths, without bringing pages to support his dictum. A French essayist leaves it wholly to itself. He tells you neither how he came by his reasons, nor their conclusion, 'le plus fou souvent est le plus satisfait.' Consequently, if less tedious than the English, your reasoners are more dangerous, and ought rather to be considered ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be difficult to find in any age of Irish history a greater pulpit orator than the famous Dominican, Father Tom Burke, or a more delightful essayist than Father Joseph Farrell; and who has depicted Irish clerical life more faithfully than the late Canon Sheehan, whose fame as a novelist has crossed continents and oceans? O'Connell was a great orator as well as a great political ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... has been heaped upon us. Poetry and religion and the essay and the sermon are all alike, in that they are addressed to what can be taken for granted in men—to sum-totals of experience—the power of seeing sum-totals. They are addressed to generalising minds. The essayist of the highest rank induces conviction by playing upon the power of generalisation, by arousing the associations and experiences that have formed the principles of his reader's mind. He makes his appeal to ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... he was engaged in journalistic work in Mexico, having been co-founder, in 1906, of 'El Diario' in the City of Mexico. Since that time he has been a voluminous contributor to magazines and has published books in many fields, since he is poet, essayist, critic, and satirist. As a poet his best-known work is in "The Shadow-Eater", 1915. Among his other volumes are "The Chameleon", "Forty Immortals", "Edelweiss and Mandragora", and "Counsels of Imperfection", translated into French by Remy ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... thing, perhaps, is greatly said, yet there is no great occasion for the saying of it; a fine reticence is observed, but it is, after all, an easy reticence, with none of the dramatic splendours of reticence on the rack. In the midst of his pleasant confidences the essayist is brought up short by the question, "Why must you still be talking?" Even the passionate lyric feels the need of external authorisation, and some of the finest of lyrical poems, like the Willow Song of Desdemona, or Wordsworth's Solitary Reaper, are cast in ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... way for the seekers after enlightenment in future generations. On the ideas of the master, his successors built up their conceptions of the Jewish people. Abraham Mapu, the father of the historical novel in Hebrew, drew his inspiration from the "Guide", and in our days the well-known essayist Ahad ha-'Am has seized upon certain of Krochmal's principles, notably the importance to be attached to the spiritual element in the life of the Jewish people. [Footnote: R. Brainin, in his biography of Mapu, ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... course, the business of the essayist to select; but in the present case there is little to choose. He tells of invitations to dinner, accepted, evaded, or refused; but he does not always tell who were there, what he thought of them, or what they had to eat. Dinner ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... politician and statesman, Chesterfield's fame rests on his short but brilliant administration of Ireland. As an author he was a clever essayist and epigrammatist. But he stands or falls by the Letters to his Son, first published by Stanhope's widow in 1774, and the Letters to his Godson (1890). The Letters are brilliantly written—full of elegant wisdom, of keen ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... style in his speeches and public documents. It was criticised as labored and that of an essayist. I asked him, after he had retired to private life, how he had acquired it. He said his father was a clergyman and he had been educated by him largely at home. His father was very particular about his compositions and his English, so ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... is that Boswell is known to the mass of readers who have never cared to know more of 'Corsica Boswell' than what they can gather from the lively picture of Macaulay. There he is known only as it were in the gross, to which indeed, as Johnson said of Milton, the undramatic nature of the essayist's mind was rather prone, careless as it was or incapable of the finer shades of character. Yet, as we know, he was not the solitary masker or mummer in this extraordinary carnival, which seems not creditable to the taste of its promoters, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... rented the famous Lanfranchi Palace in Pisa and became Shelley's neighbor, often entertaining him and a group of English friends, among whom were Edward Trelawny, the Boswell of Shelley's last days, and Leigh Hunt, biographer and essayist. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... weddings in Westminster at the present day, I should be much obliged to any of your readers who can throw any light on the observation of the Essayist, as above cited. What ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... VOLPONE dates from 1605, and the TEMPEST from 1610-1613, there has been no systematic attempt to apply the clue chronologically. Still, it has been recognised or surmised by a series of writers that the influence of the essayist on the dramatist went further than the passage in question. John Sterling, writing on Montaigne in 1838 (when Sir Frederick Madden's pamphlet on the autograph of Shakspere in a copy of Florio had called special attention to the Essays), remarked that "on ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Emerson was there, very late from the ministry, known better as poet, philosopher and essayist; and James Freeman Clarke, talented writer and preacher; and faithful and independent Rev. Cyrus A. Bartol. Rev. Theodore Parker, son of a Lexington hero, doughty, bold and brave, on whose head fell ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... sextodecimo^, octodecimo^. encyclopedia; encompilation^. [collection of books] library, bibliotheca^. press &c (publication) 531. [complete description] definitive work, treatise, comprehensive treatise (dissertation) 595. [person who writes a book] writer, author, litterateur [Fr.], essayist, journalism; pen, scribbler, the scribbling race; literary hack, Grub-street writer; writer for the press, gentleman of the press, representative of the press; adjective jerker^, diaskeaust^, ghost, hack writer, ink slinger; publicist; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... claim that as they are governed by the laws they have a right to a voice in making them. Many of the ablest women of this country hold that belief, and of all our noble statesmen, not one has advanced an answer to this demand—reasonable, if it does come from women. A French essayist held that as women are a part of society, they have a right to be judges of its members, assist in making its laws, and condemn and punish transgressors. They have their influence, but that is not so effective ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... deceased, the clever and beautiful daughter of the first Populist governor of Kansas, was a well-known essayist and short story writer. For many years she was one of the editors ...
— Kansas Women in Literature • Nettie Garmer Barker
... from the Book of Lamentations, and a Protestant from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress than from the Second Epistle of John; but neither would think of inserting these books in the Canon. He who finds as much religious inspiration in some modern poet or essayist as in a book of the Bible, may be correctly reporting his own experience; but he is confusing the purpose of the Bible if he suggests the substitution of these later prophets for those of ancient Israel. The Bible is the spiritually selected record of a particular Self-disclosure ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... interpretation is obviously impossible. All the more insistently does this heterogeneous picture of American life demand the impartial interpretation of the historian, the imaginative transcription of the novelist. Humorist and moralist, preacher and mob orator and social essayist, shop-talk and talk over the tea-cup or over the pipe, and the far more illuminating instruction of events, are fashioning day by day the infinitely delicate processes of our national self-assessment. Scholars like Mr. Henry Adams or Mr. James ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Mr. Patchett Martin. Some of them are not very satisfactory. 'Formerly of West Australia, now residing at Boston, U.S. Has published several volumes of poetry,' is a ludicrously inadequate account of such a man as John Boyle O'Reilly, while in 'poet, essayist, critic, and journalist, one of the most prominent figures in literary London,' few will recognise ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... genius, whether making for good or for ill, that are missed by this analyst, and, moreover, both the lights and shadows are justly distributed... He seeks to show you the color of a man's mind, and it is evidence of his validity as an essayist that straightway he interests you in the color of his own. He is an impressionist in criticism... Such an essayist is Mr. Huneker, a foe to dulness who is also a man of brains."—Royal Cortissoz in New ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... Library has recently, as it is said, made an acquisition of great value and interest. The books, and better still the notes, of Montaigne, the essayist, have been bought up at the not very exorbitant price of thirty-six thousand francs. The volumes are the beautiful editions of the sixteenth century—the age of great scholars and of printers, like the Estiennes, who were at once men of learning and of taste. It is almost certain that ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... need not neglect it, but you may study it wrongly. You may be affectedly self- conscious, you may imitate the ingenious persons who carefully avoid the natural word, the spontaneous phrase, and employ some other set of terms which can hardly be construed. You may use, like a young essayist whom I have lovingly observed, a proportion of eighty adjectives to every sixty- five other words of all denominations. You may hunt for odd words, and thrust them into the wrong places, as where you say that a man's nose is "beetling," that ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... standards those who still venture into this pleasant and now so neglected field. Such are the rigors of triumphant gentleness. Still—and he would have been the first to recognize the fact—it is rather unfair to demand of every essayist the revelation of a personality like Lamb's. Fundamentally, all literature, even naturalistic drama, is the revelation of a personality, a point of view. But it is the peculiar flavor of the essay that it reveals an author through his chat about himself, his friends, his memories ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... had one virtue—an honest respect for letters that made him in opening manhood seek the friendship of Hume, at a later date solicit a pension for Dr. Johnson, and after his elevation to the woolsack overwhelm Gibbon with hospitable civilities. Eldon was an Oxford Essayist in his young, the compiler of 'The Anecdote Book' in his old days; and though he cannot be commended for literary tastes, or sympathy with men of letters, he was one of the many great lawyers who found pleasure in the conversation of Samuel ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... century begins an era of amusing and animated letter-writing. The classic and somewhat elaborate style of the preceding age falls into disuse; the essayist draws gradually back into a department of his own; the new school reflects, as is natural, the general tendency of English literature toward a livelier and more varied movement, with a wider range of subjects and sympathies. ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... essayist was laid to rest, but it was not until many years had come and gone that a statue in his honor was placed in the Poets' Corner. This, says Lord Macaulay, himself a great writer, was "a mark of national respect due to the unsullied statesman, to the accomplished scholar, to the master ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... given by the poet-errant of this his second sally in quest of adventures. We cannot but think it was here and there touched up a little with the fanciful pen of the future essayist, with a view to amuse his mother and soften her vexation; but even in these respects it is valuable as showing the early play of his humor, and his happy knack of extracting sweets from that worldly experience which to others yields ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... sculptor, the two Milners, Adam Walker, John Foster, Wilson the ornithologist, Dr. Livingstone the missionary traveller, and Tannahill the poet. Shoemakers have given us Sir Cloudesley Shovel the great Admiral, Sturgeon the electrician, Samuel Drew the essayist, Gifford the editor of the 'Quarterly Review,' Bloomfield the poet, and William Carey the missionary; whilst Morrison, another laborious missionary, was a maker of shoe-lasts. Within the last few years, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... close together, and turned from us so that the westering light could fall upon their books. Fred Esquillant was to be a great scholar and to do my father infinite credit when he went to the university. For me I was only a reader of English, a scribbler of verses in that language, a paltry essayist, with no sense of the mathematics and no more than an average classic. Therefore in the school I was a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... from college. The manner in which he got his material was remarkable, but to the literature he came as by birthright, through his father, Richard Henry Dana the elder, then a well-known poet; novelist, and essayist. He was born in Cambridge in 1815, growing up in the intellectual atmosphere of that university town, and in due course of time entering Harvard College, where his father and grandfather before him had been trained in law and letters. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... flow of inspiration through the whole of the Old Testament, the essayist does not admit its universality. Here, also, the new apologetic demands ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... with mock deference. "Make way for the great prize essayist, gentlemen!" he said. "The modern Macaulay ...
— Frank's Campaign - or the Farm and the Camp • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... College, a physician in regular practice in Boston, and professor of anatomy at Harvard College—this position he held from 1847 to 1882. He was nearly fifty before he became widely known as a writer, when "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" was published. He was successful as essayist, novelist, poet, a kindly wit playing through much of his work. His best-known poems are "Old Ironsides," "The Chambered Nautilus," "The One-hoss Shay," "The Last Leaf," and "The ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... probably covered more pages than Balzac's, this is the first time Sub-Rosa has really "turned author." The charm and penetration of the result suggest that his readers will never allow him to turn back again. He is a born essayist, but he has, in addition, the breadth and generosity that journalism alone can give a man. The combination gives a kind of golden gossip—criticism without acrimony, fooling without folly. The work contains sixteen pictures ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... savour odious to these "fascinating creatures." They have, says the reverend author, what one would not expect, many light toyish books (novels and plays, doubtless), others on Rosycrucian subjects, and of an abstruse mystical character; but they have no Bibles or works of devotion. The essayist fails not to mention the elf-arrow heads, which have something of the subtlety of thunderbolts, and can mortally wound the vital parts without breaking the skin. These wounds, he says, he has himself observed ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... inadequately here in America, but simply to avow the difficulty of my task of apology. The bourgeoisie is equally suspect among radicals, reactionaries, and artists. My middling rich are nothing other than what an European essayist would quite brazenly call the haute bourgeoisie. It is quite a comprehensive class, made up chiefly of professional men, moderately successful merchants, manufacturers, and bankers with their ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... collector—and a most staunch collector was Mr Inglis. He used to say that he was one of the most ignorant of men, and the more he collected the more he found that out. No doubt, if he had kept entirely to one science, he would have been more skilled therein; but he said he liked that idea of a famous essayist, who compared a man who devoted himself entirely to one thing, to a tree that sent forth a tremendously great bough in one direction, while the rest of the tree was composed of wretched little twigs. He considered it better to have a little knowledge ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... venture to hope that neither are you drowned, nor my sister's leg broken, nor a celebrated professor and essayist 'in a high fever wi' pulling any of you ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is no such thing as conversation except between two persons; and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walter Savage Landor said something of the same sort. Shelley was distinctly a tete-a-tete talker, as Mr. Benson, the present-day essayist, in some of his intimate discourses, proclaims himself to be. But Burke and Browning, the best conversationalists in the history of the Anglo-Saxon race, like all the famous women of the French salon, from Mme. Roland to Mme. de Stael, kept pace with any number of interlocutors on any ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... of Darwin and the other pioneers of the nineteenth century. As a child, I happened to spend most of my waking hours with an uncle who was a great collector of the books written by Montaigne, the great French essayist of the sixteenth century. Because I was born in Rotterdam and educated in the city of Gouda, I ran continually across Erasmus and for some unknown reason this great exponent of tolerance took hold of my intolerant ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Hawthorne, Charles A. Dana (1819-1897), afterward editor of the New York Sun, George Ripley, in later times distinguished as the literary critic of the New York Tribune, and GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS (1824-1892), who became a well-known essayist, magazine editor, and civil service reformer. The original pioneers numbered about twenty; but the membership increased to nearly one hundred and fifty. Brook Farm had an influence, however, that could not be measured by the number of its inmates. In one year ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... pieces of narrative prose in the language. That great mind would have worked in any form which his age had favoured. He is a novelist by accident. As an Elizabethan he would have been a great dramatist; under Queen Anne a great essayist. But whatever medium he worked in, he must equally have thrown the image of a great brain and ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... English essayist, poet and man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison, later dean of Lichfield, was born at his father's rectory of Milston in Wiltshire, on the 1st of May 1672. After having passed through several schools, the last of which was the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... appeal to the public, and to ask them to agree with me against my friends. It is not only that Cicero has touched all matters of interest to men, and has given a new grace to all that he has touched; that as an orator, a rhetorician, an essayist, and a correspondent he was supreme; that as a statesman he was honest, as an advocate fearless, and as a governor pure; that he was a man whose intellectual part always dominated that of the body; that in taste he was excellent, in thought ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... present time connected with the city either by birth or long association are, Henry Sydnor Harrison, Mary Johnston, Ellen Glasgow, Marion Harland, Kate Langley Bosher, James Branch Cabell, Edward Peple, dramatist, J.H. Whitty, biographer of Poe, and Colonel W. Gordon McCabe, soldier, historian, essayist, and local character—a gentleman upon whose shoulders such imported expressions as litterateur, bon viveur, and raconteur alight as naturally as doves on ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... essay of Mr. Benson's, last night,—and one bit comes to me now," he said. "The essay opens with an old French proverb, 'To make one's self beloved is the best way to be useful.' Then the essayist goes on to say that this is one of the deep sayings which young men, and even young women, ignore; which middle-aged folk hear with a certain troubled surprise? and which old people discover to be true, and think, with ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... Massachusetts, stands a square, three-story colonial dwelling house, sheltered by pines and great English elms and surrounded by flowering shrubs. In this home, for many years known as Elmwood, the great American poet and essayist was born February 22, 1819, and it was here that he lived during the greater part of his life. In the woods and meadows that lay about Elmwood in the poet's childhood he spent much time, for he liked especially to be out-of-doors; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... hardly any law established for criticism which has not been overthrown as often as the French government. Upon one point—namely, that a critic should judge an author solely by his work, and never by anything known of him personally—we think no one will disagree with our essayist. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... doors from Antwerp, whence I started. I have fought it through under the worst weather I ever saw in France; I have been wet through nearly every day of travel since the second (inclusive); besides this, I have had to fight against pretty mouldy health; so that, on the whole, the essayist and reviewer has shown, I think, some pluck. Four days ago I was not a hundred miles from being miserably drowned, to the immense regret of a large circle of friends and the permanent impoverishment of British Essayism and Reviewery. My boat culbutted ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... preference to the claims of money. The moneyed man is ever the friend of Majesty,—but the brilliant man of letters is left out in the cold. Yet it is the man of letters who chronicles the age, and who will do so, we may be sure, according to his own experience. As the King treats the essayist, the romancist or the historian, so will these recording ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... anatomy perched on the top of a hand-organ, to whom Tom Folio was wont to give a bite of his apple; and the brown-legged little Neapolitan who was always nearly certain of a copper when this multi-millionaire strolled through the slums on a Saturday afternoon—Saturday probably being the essayist's pay-day. The withered woman of the peanut-stand on the corner over against Faneuil Hall Market knew him for a friend, as did also the blind lead-pencil merchant, whom Tom Folio, on occasions, safely piloted across the stormy ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... or twelve years, and had learned their language and customs. He remembered several of their songs of war and love, and translated them to gratify the insatiable thirst for knowledge of the famous essayist. The refrain of one of them, supposed to be addressed to one of those beautiful serpents of the tropical ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... apprehension of the flavour bestowed by the man; and having him, he had made them conscious of their deficiency. His cook, M. Dehors, pupil of the great Godefroy, was not the only French cook in the county; but his cousin and secretary, the rising scholar, the elegant essayist, was an unparalleled decoration; of his kind, of course. Personally, we laugh at him; you had better not, unless you are fain to show that the higher world of polite literature is unknown to you. Sir Willoughby ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the characteristics of Elia, one essentially an essayist, and of the true family of Montaigne, "never judging," as he says, "system-wise of things, but fastening on particulars;" saying all things as it were on chance occasion only, and by way of pastime, yet succeeding thus, "glimpse-wise," ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Beowulf, or the nameless lyrists of the fourteenth century, or Chaucer, or Spenser, and so with the rest, la mort n'y mord. But it is as a writer of prose that Stevenson must be remembered. If he is not the master British essayist of the later nineteenth century, I really cannot imagine who is to be preferred to him. His vivacity, vitality, his original reflections on life, his personal and fascinating style, claim for him the crown. Nobody, perhaps, places him beside Lamb, and he would not ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... impediment, but by the anger with which they began to sputter at one another, on the supposition that each was mocking his neighbor. A short-hand writer, behind the scenes, was employed to take down the conversation, which, says the witty essayist, was easily done, inasmuch as one of the gentlemen was a quarter of an hour in saying "that the ducks and green peas were very good," and another almost an equal time in assenting to it. At the conclusion, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... artfully, intending to proceed by a gentle transition from Charlotte's love affairs to her own; but the conversation was drifting away from the subject into a discussion upon literature, and the brilliant young essayist whose first adventurous flights seemed grand as the soaring of Theban eagle to this tender and admiring watcher of ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... too much to their friends. Especially after the friends are dead. "The cream of the joke is," as our lively essayist remarks, "that the dead do not dream of your sufferings on ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... English essayist, studied at Oxford, became Fellow of Magdalen, was a Whig in politics, held a succession of Government appointments, resigned the last for a large pension; was pre-eminent among English writers for the purity and elegance of his style, had an abiding, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Walt Whitman as poet and person (a subject to which he returned in 1896 with his Whitman: a Study), he began in 1871, with Wake-Robin, a series of books on birds, flowers and rural scenes which has made him the successor of Thoreau as a popular essayist en the plants and animals environing human life. His later writings showed a more philosophic mood and a greater disposition towards literary or meditative allusion than their predecessors, but the general theme and method remained the same. His chief books, in addition to Wake-Robin, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... among the customers at the cafe there were two American officers, one being Brigadier-General Duff, a brother of Andrew Halliday, the dramatic author and essayist, whose real patronymic was also Duff. My father knew Halliday through their mutual friends Henry Mayhew and the Broughs. The other American officer was Major-General William Babcook Hazen, whose name will be found occasionally mentioned in that popular record of President Garfield's career, ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... the shrine. They had noticed everything that doesn't matter about the high and holy ones—how they looked, spoke, dressed, behaved. It was awfully clever, some of it; one of the women imitated Legard the essayist down to the ground—the way he pontificates, you know—but nothing else. They were simply interested in the great men, and not interested in what make the great men different from other people, but simply in their resemblance to other people. Even great ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... authors that have been so much admired have exercised so little influence. The reason for this is not far to seek. His style defies imitation, and he would have been the last man to endeavour to win disciples to his opinions. Another essayist who belongs to the same group of writers as Coleridge and Lamb is Thomas de Quincey. He wrote both for Blackwood's and for the London Magazine, in the latter of which appeared in 1821 his best known work, the Confessions ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... from the top of the tower by a choir of boys. Magdalen has its park and gardens, and Addison's Walk—a pathway extending for considerable distance between an avenue of fine trees beside a clear little river—is reputed to have been a haunt of the great essayist when a student at the University. Next to Magdalen, the most celebrated colleges are New College, Christ Church and Merton. At the first of these Cecil Rhodes was a student, and the great promoter must have had a warm feeling for the University, since his bequest has thrown open ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... brilliant schoolmate and friend at last felt themselves justified in their faith. The artist that sent this unframed picture to be hung in a corner of the literary gallery was equal to larger tasks. There was but one voice in the circle that surrounded the young essayist. He must redeem his pledge, he can and will redeem it, if he will only follow the bent of his genius and grapple with the heroic labor ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... homes, Saturday of each week. On coming together we chose a presiding officer for the evening, who called the meeting to order, and introduced the essayist. That finished, he asked each member, in turn, what he or she had read or thought on the subject, and if any had criticisms to make on the essay. Everyone was expected to contribute something. Much information was thus gained, and many spicy ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... fortune to join the Chit-Chat Club, which had been formed three years before on very simple lines. A few high-minded young lawyers interested in serious matters, but alive to good-fellowship, dined together once a month and discussed an essay that one of them had written. The essayist of one meeting presided at the next. A secretary-treasurer was the only officer. Originally the papers alternated between literature and political economy, but as time went on all restrictions were removed, although by usage politics and religion are shunned. The membership has always ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... essayists really amuse me. They are, as a rule, more witty than humorous, and generally they make one self-conscious, being self-conscious themselves. There are a hundred different types of the essayist. Each of us has his favourite bore among them. Once I found all the prose works of a fine poet and friend of mine, Aubrey de Vere, on the shelves of a constant reader. "Why?" I asked. "The result of a severe sense of duty!" ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... in the world, and that is probably the truth; but he is also a charming and attractive story-teller, an alert romancer, a clever and penetrating observer, a philosopher without pretensions, and therefore all the more profound, and finally, a brilliant essayist." ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... associates how a strong man could break even such a firmly established tradition as that no one who amounted to anything could be elected to a fashionable club in New York. Once at the Federal Club old Galloway quoted with approval some essayist's remark that every clever human being was looking after and holding above the waves at least fifteen of his weaker fellows. Norman smiled satirically round at the complacently nodding circle of gray heads and white heads. "My observation has been," said he, "that every clever chap is ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... his positions out like Wycliffe; he was a suggestive essayist rather than a constructive philosopher; and, radical though he was in some of his views, he held firm to what he regarded as the fundamental articles of the Christian faith. He believed in the redemptive value of ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... then, to find Gay eulogizing Captain Steele as "the greatest scholar and best casuist of any man in England," an essayist whose writings "have set all our wits and men of letters on a new way of thinking." Swift's reaction is well known. "Dr. Freind was with me," he writes to Stella on May 14th, "and pulled out a two-penny pamphlet just published, ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... an attitude to which all will not resign themselves. If a knot cannot be unravelled, their one idea of what to do is to cut it; if evil cannot be explained, it can at any rate be denied. Thus we find a distinguished living essayist, with a large constituency of cultured ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... attempts a complete treatment. Indeed, many longish books, like Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship and Ruskin's Modern Painters, are, in spirit, rather literary essays than formal treatises. The most popular essayist and historian of his time was Thomas Babington Macaulay, (1800-1859), an active and versatile man, who won splendid success in many fields of labor. He was prominent in public life as one of the leading orators and writers of the Whig party. He sat many times in the House of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... silence of study reigned in a modest cabinet of a large house near the Palais de justice. A bronze lamp, of a gothic shape, struggling with the coming day, threw its red light upon a mass of papers and books which covered a large table; it lighted the bust of L'Hopital, that of Montaigne the essayist, the President de Thou, ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... the fascinating essayist, Mallock, has written the best of all apologies for theism. I cannot imagine a better one. He, however, makes no more attempt than Sir Oliver Lodge does to establish Christianity, or any other supernaturalistic interpretations ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... French Protestant pastor and moral essayist, was born in 1851 in Alsace. He is at present rector of the Reformed Church in Fontenay-Lous-Bois, in the Department of Seine. He received a comprehensive education at the universities of Paris, Strasburg and Goettingen, and after undertaking many cures ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... merit: they have no originality or force of thought, no striking felicity of presentation, no depth of emotion. Throughout nine volumes we have alighted on no passage which impressed us as worth extracting, and placing among the "beauties," of evangelical writers, such as Robert Hall, Foster the Essayist, or Isaac Taylor. Everywhere there is commonplace cleverness, nowhere a spark of rare thought, of lofty sentiment, or pathetic tenderness. We feel ourselves in company with a voluble retail talker, whose language is exuberant but not exact, and to whom ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... conducted its operations. Here, in one room, with almost primitive simplicity were gathered all who performed the duties of the establishment. "I looked into the great hall where the bank is kept," says the graceful essayist of the day, "and was not a little pleased to see the directors, secretaries, and clerks, with all the other members of that wealthy Corporation, ranged in their several stations according to the parts they hold in that just and regular economy." The secretaries and clerks altogether numbered ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... habits are quite regular,—I said; for I remembered that the distinguished essayist was too fond of his brandy and water, and I confess that the thought was not pleasant to me of following Dr. Johnson's advice, with the slight variation of giving my days and my nights to trying on the ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... historian, who is a kind of inferior realist, has something like the same steadiness in the market, but the prices he can command are much lower, and the two branches of the novelist's trade are not to be compared in a business way. As for the essayist, the poet, the traveller, the popular scientist, they are nowhere in the competition for the favor of readers. The reviewer, indeed, has a pretty steady call for his work, but I fancy the reviewers ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... essayist, in speaking of the "obituary method of appreciation," says that we feel a slight sense of impropriety and insecurity in contemporary plaudits. "Wait till he is well dead, and four or five decades of daisies have bloomed over him, says the world; ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... been before the public as essayist, poet, pianist and composer for twenty years. He had given himself without stint to almost every musical enterprise of Germany, and his sympathy was ever on tap for every needy and aspiring genius. You may give your purse—he who takes it takes trash—but to give your life's blood ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... players in some American theatres, spoke of Lady Gregory as "the greatest living Irishwoman." She is certainly a remarkable enough writer to put a generous critic a little off his balance. Equal mistress in comedy and tragedy, essayist, gatherer of the humours of folk-lore, imaginative translator of heroic literature, venturesome translator of Moliere, she has contributed a greater variety of grotesque and beautiful things to Anglo-Irish literature than any ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... early poets of this century; an historical or a biographical article by Alison; or one of Professor Wilson's sketches in his "Recreations of Christopher North." But be most desirous of reading that brilliant essayist, and that most impressive of contributors to the "Edinburgh Review,"— Macaulay. I wish you would read his articles which have special reference to literature, perhaps in this order: Moore's "Life of Byron," "Mme. D'Arblay," "Goldsmith," "Samuel Johnson," "Addison," ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... mind, these realities of the past have a deep and ever-growing interest. The later periods of the Colony, the period of the Revolution and the period immediately following, are increasingly fertile in materials for the historian, the essayist, and the novelist. To bring out into clearer light, to present in forms adapted to the mass of readers, and to arouse a more lively interest in this history, especially the romantic element of it, is ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... was taken, that the dark cloud would sink away to the southwest, to Central America perhaps, from whence the slave population would find an exodus across the water to Africa; and of twenty members present, seventeen agreed with the essayist. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... of style and keenness of reasoning unsurpassed in the association. His "Dr. Burgess, Propagandist" is an amateur classic. Edgar Ralph Cheyney is an extreme radical, but is none the less a masterful essayist. His articles take a very high rank both for thoughtfulness and for diction. A third writer of unusual power and analytical depth is Arthur W. Ashby, whose essays on the varied aspects of Nature command our serious attention. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... quoted from Addison's diary of a retired tradesman in the Spectator of 1712. The periodical publications of a generation or so later paid the great essayist the flattery of imitation in this respect as in others. In the Connoisseur of George Colman and Bonnell Thornton, for instance, there is, in 1754, the description of a citizen's Sunday. The good man, having sent his family ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... O., and educated in the public schools of Cleveland, where he graduated. Prevented by delicate health from a college education, he has nevertheless, by wide reading, broadened himself into culture, and is an essayist of much skill. His musical education began in 1876, at Cincinnati, where his teacher, Otto Singer, encouraged him to make music his profession. In 1880 he was in Berlin, where he studied for several years under Kiel, Scharwenka, Moskowski, and ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... monopolies assured us that it was in that direction, and in that alone, we were to look for the cheapening of books. Now, nothing of this sort is at all pretended. On the contrary, we are here told of the extreme impropriety of a system which makes it necessary for a New England essayist to accept a single dollar for a volume that under other circumstances would sell for half a guinea; of the wrong to such essayists that results from the issue of cheap "periodicals made up of selections from the reviews and magazines ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... though nothing could be farther from him than creeds and doctrines, and the whole ecclesiastical formalism. There is an atmosphere of sanctity about him that we do not feel about any other poet and essayist of his time. His poems are the fruit of Oriental mysticism and bardic fervor grafted upon the shrewd, parsimonious, New England puritanic stock. The stress and wild, uncertain melody of his poetry is like that of the wind-harp. No writing surpasses his in the extent to which it takes ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... panorama of the coffee-house. Perhaps nothing contributed more importantly to the gossip of the latter than did the mention of quiet Addison himself after the night in April, 1713, which witnessed the triumph of "Cato." The essayist had always possessed, like many other literary men, a secret longing to be the author of a prosperous tragedy, and in his earlier days made bold to submit a play to the inspection of Dryden. The poet read it with polite interest, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... Essayist, Charles Lamb will be remembered, in years to come, with Rabelais and Montaigne, with Sir Thomas Browne, with Steele, and with Addison. He unites many of the finest characteristics of these several writers. He has wisdom and wit of the highest order, exquisite humor, ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... said Savin. 'All that is mortal of the great essayist is being borne to the grave: in fact, the cold and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... essayist relied upon a lost manuscript which was named "A Bolg Solair" (the great treasure.) That designation seems to be a version of a name commonly given by collectors of Scotch and Irish popular lore to their manuscripts. The name seems rather to mean "rubbish bag." The idea was probably taken from ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... pity that Paul Bourget should have written "Outre Mer," thoroughly creditable book though it is. Mr. Bourget is a novelist, and he should not content himself with being an essayist, there are far too many of them in the world already. He can develop strong characters, invent strong situations, he can write the truth and he should not drift into penning opinions and platitudes. When God has made a man a creator, ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... literature; not of words, but of phrases. A student meeting with an unfamiliar combination of characters can turn to its pages and find every passage given, in sufficient fullness, where the phrase in question has been used by poet, historian, or essayist. ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... the point of sailing. "I am too hurried to see my friends, but did not like to go without some good-byes, so I write them." On the whole, as in the case of most comedies, there was little amusement for the actual performers. A great essayist has defined laughter as a "feeling of superiority in the laugher over the object laughed at." If this is correct, it makes all humor despicable. Certainly much coarseness, meanness and cruelty are every day tolerated, because of the comic covering ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... of pathetic wisdom in the saying which might well weigh down the blithest spirit. It had occurred to him in connection with an old essay of Hazlitt's, which he had been reading, on the comparative methods of English and French painters in their work. The essayist held, almost literally, that the French pictures were better because the French painters had taken more pains, and taken especial pains in the least interesting parts of their pictures. He was dealing more specifically with copying, but his words ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... was proposed in the form of a question, "Are live hedges to be recommended either for utility or ornament, and if they are, what plants are most suitable?" The answer to this question was given from the experiments of the essayist during the last forty years. The deciduous plants tried were the buckthorn, Osage orange, honey-locust, privet and barberry. The evergreens were the Norway spruce, hemlock, ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... learn to run is to run, the way to learn to swim is to swim. The way to learn to develop will-power is by the actual exercise of will-power in the business of life. "The man that exercises his will," says an English essayist, "makes it a stronger and more effective force in proportion to the extent to which such exercise is intelligently and perseveringly maintained." The forth-putting of will-power is a means of strengthening will-power. The will becomes strong by exercise. To stick to a thing till you ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... women alike accept this notion; the serious essayist and philosopher, as well as the novelist and paragrapher, reflect it in their pages. The force of inertia acts in the domain of psychics as well as physics; any idea pushed into the popular mind with considerable force will keep on going until some opposing force—or ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... in THE WORLD: 'We may find it hard to realise that Max may become a classic, but I see no other essayist who seems to have more chance of it.... There is no question of "reserved places" on Parnassus, but it is my individual conviction that where La Bruye're and Addison and Stevenson are, there Max will be.... It is perhaps his final charm as an ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... But the essayist continues:—'It seems as if it were the season for vain things when the hurtful oppress us; in a time when doing ill is common, to do nothing but what signifies nothing is a kind of commendation. 'Tis my comfort that I shall ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... the young essayist's pen. It is to be feared that in roving among those shelves in Great Russell-street he showed himself something of a freebooter, taking his "bien" wherever it was to be found; but did not Moliere frankly acknowledge the same practice? Mr. Hawkehurst wrote about anything and ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Farmer's Letters." Crevecoeur was that unknown author; and Hazlitt said further of him that he rendered, in his own vividly characteristic manner, "not only the objects, but the feelings, of a new country." Great is the essayist's relish for passages descriptive of "a battle between two snakes," of "the dazzling, almost invisible flutter of the humming- bird's wing," of the manners of "the Nantucket people, their frank simplicity, and festive rejoicings ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... president of The Watch and Ward Society; one of the directors and executive committee of the American Peace Society; director of the Massachusetts Peace Society; president of The American Institute of Instruction; translator, annotator, and essayist of The Book of ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... have lingered long enough in the Lobby. Let us take our places in the Speaker's Gallery,—for the essayist has hardly less power than, according to Sydney Smith, has the novelist, and a few strokes of the pen shall show you what many have in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... amicable co-operation, with an eye to the truth. By it you should rise from the lower or competitive, to the higher or communistic attitude. There may be a loss of energy, but there is a gain in the manner of applying it. The essayist should set himself to ascertain the truth upon a subject; he should not be anxious to make a case. The listeners, in the same spirit, should welcome all his suggestions, help him out where he is in difficulties, be indulgent to his failings, endeavour to see good in everything. If ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... tremendous energy, and a gentle spirit. He had lived for a time in Wheeling, Virginia, where the horrors, inseparable from slavery, impressed him very much as the system in the British West Indies had impressed Zachary Macaulay, father of the distinguished essayist and historian; and, like Macaulay, he ever after devoted his time and his abilities to the generous task of rousing his countrymen to a full sense of the cruelties practised ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... under the same roof with them?' He added that the cat had contributed more to harmony than any other animal; as we are not only beholden to her for this wind instrument, but for our string music in general." The essayist, however, is disposed to hold that the catcall is originally a piece of English music. "Its resemblance to the voice of some of our British songsters, as well as the use of it, which is peculiar to our nation, confirms me in this opinion." He mentions that the catcall ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Coming closer he saw the name, "Pipesville," printed on the door, and knew that this must be the "summer home," as it was called, of San Francisco's beloved minstrel, Stephen Massett, otherwise "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville," singer, player, essayist and creator of those wondrous one-man concerts dear to all ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Part II, text appears to be missing between "hard" and "brought" in the sentence "The school-teacher is giving you a pretty hard brought the school-children in for chorus singing, secured an able orator, and the best essayist in town." ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... correspondent, "an unusual interest taken in the two literary societies, and once a year a challenge is passed between them, to meet in an open literary contest upon an appointed evening, usually that preceding the close of the second session. The contestors are a Debater, an Orator, an Essayist, and a Declaimer, elected from each society by the majority, some time previous to their public appearance. An umpire and two associate judges, selected either by the societies or by the contestors themselves, preside over the performances, and award the honors to those whom they deem ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... under all circumstances. It has been said that in his poems we feel the essayist; but perhaps even more we recognize the poet in his essays. So too in his conversation at table and in the parlor, there was something that reminded one of the lecturer: when he appeared on the platform before his audience he was always the plain country ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... the somewhat limited space of a chapter to give the full attention that should be given to such a brilliant and original essayist (which is not always an ipso facto of brilliant essayists) as Chesterton. Essayists are of all men extremely elastic. Occasionally they are dull and prosy, very often they are obscure, quite often they are wearisome. The only criticism which applies ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... on this passage, in explanation, adds, that "Montaigne in his Essays supposes his cat thought him a fool for losing his time in playing with her;" but, under favor, this is a misinterpretation of the essayist's sentiments, and something like a libel on the capacity of both himself and cat. Montaigne's words are: "When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert each other with our play. If I have my hour to begin or refuse, so also has she ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Park on the west bank, is the home of John Burroughs, our sweetest essayist, the nineteenth century's "White of Selborne." Judge Barnard of Poughkeepsie, once said to the author of this handbook, "The best writer America has produced after Hawthorne is John Burroughs; I wish I could see him." It ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... Flora's kingdom? The Dutch roses, tulips, and other flowers, like the naval architecture of the Low Countries, have a certain breadth of beam and bluntness of prow that makes them differ from the same fragrant family of France. Has any learned essayist ever attempted to draw philosophical deductions from these aspects of the vegetable world, as showing ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... them for the part afterwards played in the trials. This statement has been repeated by so many recent writers as to become a commonplace of accepted history; it would seem, however, that the representation depends on the invention of a modern essayist, who transferred to the colonial period ideas derived from his acquaintance with the phenomena of contemporary spiritualistic seances, and that the habit of "trying projects," no doubt universal in colonial times, had nothing to do with ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... giggled violently. The essayist, though very red, made a brave effort to ignore the highly indecorous interruption, and so ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott
... the classic school of criminology regards all thieves as THE thief, all murderers as THE murderer, and the human shape disappears in the mind of the legislator, while it re-appears before the judge. Before the essayist and legislator, the criminal is a sort of moving dummy, on whose hack the judge may paste an article of the penal code. If you leave out of consideration the established cases of exceptional and rare human psychology mentioned ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri |
