Collected Works, Volume 7

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Chapman and Hall, 1869
 

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Page 28 - Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing ! That, in the merry months o' spring, Delighted me to hear thee sing, What comes o...
Page 29 - Dweller in yon Dungeon dark, Hangman of Creation, mark ! Who in widow's weeds appears, Laden with unhonoured years, Noosing with care a bursting purse, Baited with many a deadly curse ! Why should we speak of Scots who. hae wi...
Page 50 - ... their time and country, he expressed himself with perfect firmness, but without the least intrusive forwardness ; and when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the same time with modesty. I do not remember any part of his conversation distinctly enough to be quoted ; nor did I ever see him again, except in the street, where he did not recognise me, as I could not expect he should. He was much caressed in Edinburgh : but (considering what literary emoluments...
Page 50 - I never saw a man in company with his superiors in station or information more perfectly free from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment. I was told, but did not observe it, that his address to females was extremely deferential, and always with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous, which engaged their attention particularly. I have heard the late Duchess of Gordon remark this. — I do not know anything I can add to these recollections of forty years since.
Page 49 - Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain — Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops, mingling with the milk he drew, Gave the sad presage of his future years, The child of misery baptized in tears.
Page 295 - Shakspeare, new elucidations of their own human being ; ' new harmonies with the ' infinite structure of the Universe ; concurrences with later ideas, ' affinities with the higher powers and senses of man.
Page 27 - ... in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing! Are we a piece of machinery, which, like the...
Page 318 - Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also. Here, too, nothing follows its spontaneous course, nothing is left to be accomplished by old, natural methods.
Page 13 - ... of the hour. Never in •one instance was it permitted him to grapple with any subject with the full collection of his strength, to fuse and mould it in the concentrated fire of his genius. To try by the strict rules of Art such imperfect fragments, would be at once unprofitable and unfair. Nevertheless, there is something in these poems, marred and defective as they are, which forbids the most fastidious student •of poetry to pass them by. Some sort of enduring quality...
Page 170 - No rolling of drums, no tramp of squadrons, or immeasurable tumult of baggage -wagons, attends its movements : in what obscure and sequestered places may the head be meditating, which is one day to be crowned with more than imperial authority ; for Kings and Emperors will be among its ministering servants ; it will rule not over, but in, all heads, and with these...

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