He becomes impatient of any rulings
not his, and says in effect, if not in so many words: "I am Sir Oracle,
and when I ope my lips let no dog bark." When the critic reaches this
exalted frame of mind his slight usefulness is gone.
AFTER a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and
signs it with a rainbow.
I LIKE to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every
detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the
desire to use its own wings. The partly draped statue has a charm which
the nude lacks. Who would have those marble folds slip from the raised
knee of the Venus of Melos? Hawthorne knew how to make his lovely
thought lovelier by sometimes half veiling it.
I HAVE just tested the nib of a new pen on a slight fancy which Herrick
has handled twice in the "Hesperides." The fancy, however, is not
Herrick's; it is as old as poetry and the exaggeration of lovers, and I
have the same privilege as another to try my fortune with it:
UP ROOS THE SONNE, AND UP ROOS EMELYE CHAUCER
When some hand has partly drawn The cloudy curtains of her bed, And my
lady's golden head Glimmers in the dusk like dawn, Then methinks is day
begun.
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