Does Fortune Favor Fools? by Samuel Taylor Coleridge “Does Fortune favor fools? Or how do you explain the origin of the proverb, which, differently worded, is to be found in all the languages of Europe?” This proverb admits of various explanations, according to the moods of mind in which it is used. It may arise […]
Classic Articles on Writing
A Review of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by James Russell Lowell
THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH The introduction and acclimatization of the hexameter upon English soil has been an affair of more than two centuries. The attempt was first systematically made during the reign of Elizabeth, but the metre remained a feeble exotic that scarcely burgeoned under glass. Gabriel Harvey,—a kind of Don Adriano de Armado,—whose […]
Books Which Have Influenced Me by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Editor has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for his correspondents, the question put appearing at first so innocent, truly cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance and review that the writer awakes to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of autobiography, or, perhaps worse, upon a chapter in […]
What is Art by Ralph Waldo Emerson
What is Art by Ralph Waldo Emerson ART. GIVE to barrows trays and pans Grace and glimmer of romance, Bring the moonlight into noon Hid in gleaming piles of stone; On the city’s paved street Plant gardens lined with lilac sweet, Let spouting fountains cool the air, Singing in the sun-baked square. Let statue, picture, […]
A Preface to My Husband’s Poetry by Mary Shelley
TO THE VOLUME OF POSTHUMOUS POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1824. In nobil sangue vita umile e queta, Ed in alto intelletto un puro core Frutto senile in sul giovenil fibre, E in aspetto pensoso anima lieta.—PETRARCA. It had been my wish, on presenting the public with the Posthumous Poems of Mr. Shelley, to have accompanied them […]
The Philosophy of Composition by Edgar Allan Poe
Charles Dickens, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an examination I once made of the mechanism of Barnaby Rudge, says—”By the way, are you aware that Godwin wrote his Caleb Williams backwards? He first involved his hero in a web of difficulties, forming the second volume, and then, for the first, cast […]
What I Think of Leo Tolstoy by William Dean Howells
What I Think of Leo Tolstoy by William Dean Howells I come now, though not quite in the order of time, to the noblest of all these enthusiasms—namely, my devotion for the writings of Leo Tolstoy. I should wish to speak of him with his own incomparable truth, yet I do not know how to […]
CRIME AND EDUCATION by Charles Dickens
I offer no apology for entreating the attention of the readers of The Daily News to an effort which has been making for some three years and a half, and which is making now, to introduce among the most miserable and neglected outcasts in London, some knowledge of the commonest principles of morality and religion; […]
My Thoughts on Walt Whitman by Willa Cather
My Thoughts on Walt Whitman by Willa Cather Speaking of monuments reminds one that there is more talk about a monument to Walt Whitman, “the good, gray poet.” Just why the adjective good is always applied to Whitman it is difficult to discover, probably because people who could not understand him at all took it […]
IN DEFENSE OF BOOKS by John Milton
IN DEFENSE OF BOOKS by John Milton I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors. For books are not absolutely dead things, […]
DEATH OF EDGAR A. POE by N. P. Willis
Nathaniel Parker Willis was the most famous and well-paid magazine writers of his time. He worked with Edar Allan Poe
What I Think of These Three Writers by Edgar Allen Poe
What I Think of These Three Writers by Edgar Allen Poe OF WILLIS, BRYANT, HALLECK, AND MACAULAY Whatever may be thought of Mr. Willis’s talents, there can be no doubt about the fact that, both as an author and as a man, he has made a good deal of noise in the world—at least for […]
POETRY AND PAINTING COMPARED by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
The first person who compared painting and poetry with one another was a man of refined feeling, who became aware of a similar effect produced upon himself by both arts. He felt both represent what is absent as if it were present, and appearance as if it were reality; that both deceived, and that the […]
POETRY AND NATIONALITY by James Russell Lowell
POETRY AND NATIONALITY[1] by James Russell Lowell This article first appeared in the North American Review in 1868 One of the dreams of our earlier horoscope-mongers was, that a poet should come out of the West, fashioned on a scale somewhat proportioned to our geographical pretensions. Our rivers, forests, mountains, cataracts, prairies, and inland seas […]
WHAT LIFE MEANS TO ME by Jack London
I was born in the working-class. Early I discovered enthusiasm, ambition, and ideals; and to satisfy these became the problem of my child-life. My environment was crude and rough and raw. I had no outlook, but an uplook rather. My place in society was at the bottom. Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness, […]