"Versifier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... functionary and courtier under the severe despot Nicholas I, though, to be sure, he always hated that life. For all his flirting with revolutionarism, he never displayed great originality or depth of thought. He was simply an extraordinarily gifted author, a perfect versifier, a wondrous lyrist, and a delicious raconteur, endowed with a grace, ease and power of expression that delighted even the exacting artistic sense of Turgenev. To him aptly applies the dictum of Socrates: "Not by wisdom do the poets ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... a flower." The glory still came by moments; some of his most thrilling outbursts of song belong to this time. But he built up no more great poems. He was approaching seventy, and it might well seem that if so prolific a versifier was not likely to become silent his poetry was rapidly resolving itself into wastes of theological argument, of grotesque posturing, or intellectualised anecdotage. The Dramatic Idyls of 1879 and 1880 showed that these more serious forebodings were at least ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... in saying that there is nothing in the writings of any former poetaster to equal the silly and conceited jargon of the present versifier? Having favoured us with the emphatic lines in italics, to depict the physical concomitants of Maud's guilt, he again has recourse to asterisks, to veil the mental throes by which her mind is tortured into madness by remorse: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... which, associated with stirring and inspiring music, had long maintained a noxious popularity among the peasantry. Of Burns' immediate contemporaries, the more conspicuous were, John Skinner, Hector Macneill, John Mayne, and Richard Gall. Grave as a pastor, Skinner revelled in drollery as a versifier; Macneill loved sweetness and simplicity; Mayne, with a perception of the ludicrous, was plaintive and sentimental; ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... weaving of them together by any law of dramatic sequence and development. Still, the piece marks an era in the English Drama. In the single article of blank-verse, though having all the monotony of the most regular rhyming versifier, it did more for dramatic improvement than, perhaps, could have been done in a century without that ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... told that Washington was not a man of genius, but a person of excellent common sense, of admirable judgement, of rare virtues! He had no genius, it seems. O no! genius, we must suppose, is the peculiar and shining attribute of some orator, whose tongue can spout patriotic speeches; or some versifier, whose muse can hail Columbia; but not of the man who supported States on his arm, and carried America in his brain. What is genius? Is it worth anything? Is splendid folly the measure of its inspiration? Is wisdom its base and summit?—that which it recedes from, or tends toward? And by what ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... confirm the common theory that Pope's versification was a mere mechanical trick. Without admitting this, it must be admitted that the external characteristics of his manner were easily caught; and that it was not hard for a clever versifier to produce something closely resembling his inferior work, especially when following the same original. But it may be added that Pope's Odyssey was really inferior to the Iliad, both because his declamatory style is more out of place in its romantic narrative, and because he was ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... a refined and peaceful character, contrasting therein the tendencies some might have expected from his muscular development of Christianity. He was a great reader of poetry, but he disliked Scott and Byron, whom he considered flashy and noisy; he maintained that Pope was only a versifier, and that the greatest poet in the language was Wordsworth; he did not care much for the ancient classics; he refused all merit to the French poets; he knew nothing of the Italian, but he dabbled in German, and was inclined to bore one about ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as a poet no one can deny. Perhaps his most striking use of his power as a versifier was in connection with the romantic Spanish background of California history. Such work as "Concepcion de Arguello" is well worth while. In his "Spanish Idylls and Legends" he catches the fine spirit of the period and connects California with a past of charm and beauty. His patriotic verse has both ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... public squares. This giant of learning, who filled the lecture-rooms of Florence with Students of all nations, and whose critical and rhetorical labours marked an epoch in the history of scholarship, was by nature a versifier, and a versifier of the people. He found nothing' easier than to throw aside his professor's mantle and to improvise ballate for women to chant as they danced their rounds upon the Piazza di S. Trinita. The frontispiece to an old edition of ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... famous Virgil. There is a tale, reported by Donatus, that Vergil once anonymously wrote up on the palace gates a distich in praise of Augustus, which, when nobody was found to own it, was claimed by a certain versifier Bathyllus, whom Caesar duly rewarded, A few days later, however, Virgil again set in the same place a quatrain each line of which commenced 'sic vos non vobis...' but was unfinished, and preceeded these by the ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... of parchment with ancient characters for the purpose of imposition, though the fact is clearly ascertained by the testimony of that gentleman! —The reverend commentator argues on this occasion much in the same manner, as a well-known versifier of the present century, the facetious Ned Ward (and he too published a quarto volume of poems). Some biographer, in an account of the lives of the English poets, had said that "he was an ingenious writer, considering his low birth and mode of life, he having for ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... generally—and I think most justly—regarded as a peculiarly melodious versifier: but it must not be supposed that he is rigidly exact in his use of rhyme. The contrary can be proved from the entire body of his poems. Adonais is, in this respect, neither more nor less correct than his other writings. It would hardly ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... one very adverse to him, and at the same time very much in need of him. It was a world from which the spirit of poetry seemed to have fled. There could be no stronger proof of this than the occupation of the throne of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton by the arch-versifier Pope. The Revolution of 1688 was glorious, but unlike the Puritan Revolution which it followed, and in the political sphere partly ratified, it was profoundly prosaic. Spiritual religion, the source of Puritan grandeur and of the poetry of Milton, was almost extinct; there was not much more ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... of your correspondents be so obliging as to give the years of birth of Merrick, the poet and versifier of the Psalms, and of his biographer, Tattersall. The years of their deaths are given respectively 1769 {61} and 1829: but I can nowhere ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... the rest, which I hope I have translated closely enough, and given them the same turn of verse which they had in the original; and this, I may say without vanity, is not the talent of every poet. He who has arrived the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned Sandys, the best versifier of the former age; if I may properly call it by that name, which was the former part of this concluding century. For Spenser and Fairfax both flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; great masters in our language; and who saw much farther into the ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... called Irish was, "during the first half of the eighteenth century, the received pronunciation of the most correct speakers of the day;" and MR. BEDE himself suggests that provincialisms may sometimes modify the rhymes of even so correct a versifier as Tennyson. I hope some of your contributors will have "drunk so deep of the well of English undefiled" as to be competent to address themselves to this point of inquiry. I cannot pretend to do much, being but ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... is less happy; for they are not dictated by nature or by passion, and have neither gallantry nor tenderness. They have the coldness of Cowley, without his wit, the dull exercises of a skilful versifier, resolved at all adventures to write something about Chloe, and trying to be amorous by dint of study. His fictions, therefore, are mythological. Venus, after the example of the Greek epigram, asks when she was ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... pays no attention whatever to public affairs or to business of any kind, and aims at nothing but the reputation of being the best dancer, best versifier, and best drummer in his dominions, it would be impossible to persuade him that any man was ever more fit to reign than he is. Nothing would ever induce him willingly to abdicate even in favour of his own son, much less to make him willingly abdicate in perpetuity in favour of our Government, ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... in gratitude for it, he preferred him to the laurel. Nor can I at present see how he could have made a better choice: We shall have occasion to find, as we enumerate his writings, that he was no inconsiderable versifier, and though perhaps he had not the brightest parts; yet as we hear of no moral blemish imputed to him, and as he was dignified with holy-orders, his grace acted a very generous part, in providing for a man who had conferred an obligation on him. The first rate poets were either of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... later sale we may notice the witty Esprit Flechier, who bought several of the lighter Latin poets, being a fashionable versifier himself and a dilettante in matters of binding and typography. In his account of the High Commission in Auvergne, appointed to examine into charges of feudal tyranny, the Abbe tells us how his reputation as a bibliophile was spread by a certain Pere ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... ever was so silly—to the present day of Kipling's entrancing verse. Shakespeare in his many tributes to the unfortunate young Juliet spoke of the "white wonder" of her hands, and there has probably never lived a versifier who has not, at one time or another, gone into paroxysms of poetry over "lovely fingers," and "dainty palms," and all that. And I don't wonder, do you? for a woman's hand—when it is beautiful—is certainly a most ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... children, however, the best-known volume of the series was Burton's illustrated versification of Bible stories called "The Youth's Divine Pastime." But the subjects chosen by Burton were such as belonged to a very plain-spoken age; and as the versifier was no euphuist in his relation of facts, the result was a remarkable "Pastime for Youth." The literature read by English children was, of course, the same; the little ones of both countries ate of the same tree of knowledge of facts, ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... curious how long the superstition that Waller was the refiner of English verse has prevailed since Dryden first gave it vogue. He was a very poor poet and a purely mechanical versifier. He has lived mainly on the credit of ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... The versifier was rewarded by a shout of laughter, and, spurred by the approval of his friends, he declared he had hit on the mode to which to sing his lines, as he did in a fine, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... stop! Nay, 'tis more irksome far than the recitation of his professional jingle—for to that there must in time come a merciful fitting end, but, as I live, if 'twas my custom to say prayers, I would pray to be delivered from the accursed volubility of a versifier's tongue! And perchance it will not be considered out of my line of duty if I venture to remind my most illustrious and renowned MASTER—" this with a withering sneer,—"that if he has any more remarkable ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... yet, only one corner of Frederic's character. He was well acquainted with all the petty vanities and affectations of the poetaster, but was not aware that these foibles were united with all the talents and vices which lead to success in active life, and that the unlucky versifier who pestered him with reams of middling Alexandrines was the most vigilant, suspicious, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and obscurity, are almost inseparable companions. This is further confirmed in some lines vehemently passionate, in a performance of his called Piers Penniless; which to say nothing of the poetry, are a strong picture of rage, and despair, and part of which as they will shew that he was no mean versifier, shall be quoted by way of specimen. In the abovementioned piece of Piers Penniless, or Supplication to the Devil, he had some reflections on the parentage of Dr. Harvey, his father being a rope-maker of Saffron-Walden. This produced ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... tending the flocks of Mr Laidlaw at Blackhouse, was not wholly derived from his skill as a versifier, and capabilities as a musician, but, among the fairer portion of the creation, was perhaps scarcely less owing to the amenity of his disposition, combined with the handsomeness of his person. As a candidate for the honour of feminine approbation, he was successful alike in the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... unskilful poet, they cannot justly detest me as a bad or ill-natured man. Nay, I shall possibly have the pleasure of repaying those who may be merry at my expense, in their own coin. An ill-conditioned critic is always a more pitiable sort of person than an unsuccessful versifier; and the desire of showing one's own discernment at the expense of one's neighbour, a greatly worse thing than the simple wish, however divorced from the ability, of affording him harmless pleasure. Further, it ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... received with favour at her court was CLEMENT MAROT, the versifier, as characterised by Boileau, of "elegant badinage." His predecessors and early contemporaries in the opening years of the sixteenth century continued the manner of the so-called rhetoriqueurs, who endeavoured to maintain allegory, ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... unapproachable; no poet before or since has evoked out of that instrument so perfect and so varied melodies. When he wrote in English he was seldom more than third-rate; in (p. 073) fact, he was but a common clever versifier. There is but one purely English poem of his which at all approaches the first rank—the lines To Mary ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... appears, by his numbers, to be a versifier; and by his scenery, to be a poet; it therefore only remains that his sentiments discover him to be a just ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... read and delighted in everything Mr. Borrow has yet published ventures to say how great has been his delight in reading Wild Wales. No philologist or linguist, I am yet an untiring walker and versifier: and really I think that few things are pleasanter than to walk and to versify. Also, well do I love good ale, natural drink of the English. If I could envy anything, it is your linguistic faculty, which unlocks to you the hearts of the unknown ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... as savoury morsels of venison or boar are given to more important guests, and ending with the anguish of the mortified spirit, as he sees himself supplanted by a rival of shapelier person, a more ingenious versifier, a cleverer mountebank. The dialogue in which Lucian ironically proves that Parasitic, or the honourable craft of Spunging, has as many of the marks of a genuine art as Rhetoric, Gymnastic, or Music, is a spirited parody of Socratic catechising and Platonic ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... "Entertainment," offered to Lady Derby by her daughter and son-in-law; but the Latinity of his city pageant can scarcely have satisfied the pupil of Buchanan, unless indeed the reputation of King James's tutor as a Latin versifier or master of prosody has been scandalously usurped under the falsest of pretences: a matter on which I am content to accept the verdict of Landor. His contribution to Sir Robert Chester's problematic volume may perhaps claim the singular distinction of being ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... versifier, Alfred de Vigny does not equal the great poets of his time, if they are his superiors in distinction and brilliancy, in richness of vocabulary, freedom of movement, and variety of rhythm, the cause is to be ascribed less to any lack of poetic ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... measure used by old Drayton in the Polyolbion, and one in which a great deal of the earlier English poetry is written. It is very favourite measure of our Russian poet, who has, however, increased, in some degree, its difficulty for an English versifier, by introducing a great number of double terminations. It will be found, indeed, that these double rhymes are as numerous as the single ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... half a dozen speeches meriting quotation. The verse of The Battle of Alcazar is in all points similar to that of Greene's Marlowesque plays, imitating and falling short of the same model. In fact Peele's reputation as a versifier rests almost entirely on the contents of those two plays which most students of his work read, The Arraignment of Paris and David and Bethsabe. Of the first it may be said boldly, without fear of contradiction, that, considered metrically, the verse is unsuited to ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... a strange conglomerate of the unpronounceable, a sad model to set in childhood before one who was himself to be a versifier, and a task in recitation that really merited reward. And I must suppose the old man thought so too, and was either touched or amused by the performance; for he took me in his arms with most unwonted tenderness, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Another versifier of this same generation was John Lydgate, a Benedictine monk, of the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, in Suffolk, a very prolix writer, who composed, among other things, the Story of Thebes, as an ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... No versifier of the present day lends himself so readily to parody as Mr. Kipling. His "Story of Ung" is an excellent satire on ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... poetry is noticeable because he was the first English versifier to adopt the French fashion of writing in couplets, was born in Warwickshire in 1605. He was elected to Parliament at the age of seventeen, and was a member of that body during the greater part of his life. At the beginning of the difficulties between ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... presume to enter into argument with you, and this in relation to a critical paper which I admire in so many ways and am grateful for in some; but is not the poet a different man from the cleverest versifier, and is it not well for the world to be taught the difference? The divineness of poetry is far more to me than either pride of sex or personal pride, and, though willing to acknowledge the lowest breath of the inspiration, I cannot the 'powder and patch.' As powder and ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... tendency was carried in later times to such an extent as to make the quantity of all final vowels after a short syllable bearing the accent indifferent. There were therefore two opposing considerations which met the poet in his capacity of versifier. There was the desire to retain the accent of every- day life, and so make his language easy and natural, and the desire to conform to the true quantity, and so make it strictly correct. In the early poets this struggle of opposing principles ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... versification, but was more erudite than inspired; being almost pure Alexandrine, he is more interesting to the humourist than to the ordinary man. Ovid, gifted with facility and the skill of a prodigious versifier, dexterous descriptist in his Metamorphoses, ingenious and cold in his Art of Love, has found some pathetic notes in his elegies wherein as an exile he weeps over his ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... that his mind was well stored with intellectual wealth. He was, moreover, a finished musician, and played the violin, at that period a rare accomplishment, to perfection. In addition to all these qualifications, he was a skillful versifier, and composed the most beautiful extemporaneous poetry, apparently without an effort. But his disposition was by no means light or devoted to pursuits which worldly-minded persons would consider frivolous. For he ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... gentle-hearted boy and his masters loved him. He early began to compose verses and showed an intense love of poetry. At nineteen he left Port Royal for the college of Harcour, at Paris. When he was twenty-one Louis XIV. was married, and invited every versifier in the kingdom to write in honor of the occasion. Racine was an obscure student and was unknown as a poet. He wrote a poem on the marriage, and it was shown to M. Chapelain, who was the poetical critic of Paris at that time. He thought it showed a good ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... volume from the pen of Mr. Owen Seaman must needs be welcome. He is the most accomplished versifier among all ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... errors of the press, and even the punctuation, as minutely as if he were preparing the book for another edition. He read Plautus, Terence, and Aristophanes four times through at Calcutta; and Euripides thrice. [See the Appendix at the end.] In his copy of Quintus Calaber, (a versifier who is less unknown by the title of Quintus Smyrnaeus,) ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... the truth, a modern versifier Clap'd cheek by jowl With Pope, with Dryden, and with Prior, Would look ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... interested at once. If there was one role in which he fancied himself (and, indeed, there were a good many), it was that of a versifier. His great ambition was to see some of his lines in print, and he had contracted the habit of sending them up to various periodicals, with no result, so far, except the arrival of rejected MSS. at meal-times in embarrassingly long envelopes. Which he blushingly ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... of Romanticism." [4] Brandl is dissatisfied with the term Lake School, or Lakers, commonly given to Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, and proposes instead to call them the Romantic School, Romanticists (Romantiker), surely something of a misnomer when used of an eclectic versifier like Southey, or a poet of nature, moral reflection, and humble life like Wordsworth. Southey, in casting about him for a theme, sometimes became for the nonce and so far as subject goes, a romancer; as in "Joan of Arc" (1799), "Madoc" (1805), and "Roderick the Goth" (1814); ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... testified to some heart so perverted as to desire gold for its own sake. Many wished for power; a strange desire indeed, since it is but another form of slavery. Old people wished for the delights of youth; a fop for a fashionable coat; an idle reader, for a new novel; a versifier, for a rhyme to some stubborn word; a painter, for Titian's secret of coloring; a prince, for a cottage; a republican, for a kingdom and a palace; a libertine, for his neighbor's wife; a man of palate, for green peas; and a poor man, for a crust of bread. The ambitious desires of public men, elsewhere ...
— The Intelligence Office (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were followed within ten years by critics of tastes so varied as the dramatist of domesticity Thomas Heywood, the gallant lyrist Sir John Suckling, the philosophic and 'ever-memorable' John Hales of Eton, and the untiring versifier of the stage and court, Sir William D'Avenant. Before 1640 Hales is said to have triumphantly established, in a public dispute held with men of learning in his rooms at Eton, the proposition that ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Byron's "Don Juan" and Goethe's "Faust," though the influence of each is marked. It has numerous merits and originalities of its own. Inferior as Espronceda is to Byron in wit and to Goethe in depth, he can vie with either as a harmonious versifier. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... Epistles are his most perfect work, and are, indeed, among the most original and polished forms of Roman verse. His Art of Poetry is not a complete theory of poetic art, and is supposed to have been written simply to suggest the difficulties to be met on the way to perfection by a versifier destitute of the poetic genius. The works of Horace were immediately popular, and in the next generation became text-books in ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... arena of letters at three and twenty, after a sickly and melancholy childhood. The Art Poetique and the Lutrin appeared in 1674; the first nine Satires and several of the Epistles had preceded them. Rather a witty, shrewd, and able versifier than a great poet, Boileau displayed in the Lutrin a richness and suppleness of fancy which his other works had not foreshadowed. The broad and cynical buffoonery of Scarron's burlesques had always shocked his severe and pure taste. "Your father was weak enough to read ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Retired to farm in Connecticut, 1912. An enthusiastic sportsman, farmer, and motorist. Single, white, an ardent Republican, a staunch admirer of Mr. Charles Chaplin, an accomplished listener to the violin, a Latin versifier, a connoisseur of roses, a fancier of fox-terriers, a lover of shad-roe and bacon, and a never-swerving champion of woman's suffrage. First short story, "After Many Years," Harper's Magazine, 1910. Author of "Oh, Mary, Be Careful!" Lives in ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... how this fondness for the rhythmical was fostered by the aforesaid parental admiration, and how it was still further increased by the boy's admiration, successively, for Scott and Byron. Certain early friendships held out to the young versifier the prospect of publication, and thus it is that we find him, in his sixteenth year, figuring as a contributor to 'Friendship's Offering and Winter's Wreath: a Christmas and New Year's Present' for 1835. This was the era of the old-fashioned ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... not necessary to dwell upon the other forms of literary composition attempted by Cicero. He was a fluent versifier, and would write 500 verses in one night. Considerable fragments from a juvenile translation of Aratus have been preserved. His later poems upon his own consulship and his exile were soon forgotten except ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Odyssey, the Dunciad, and his Essay on Man. He was well paid for his labors, and lived in a beautiful villa at Twickenham, the friend of Bolingbroke, and the greatest literary star of his age. But he was bitter and satirical, irritable, parsimonious, and vain. As a versifier, he has never been equalled. He died in 1744, in the Romish faith, beloved but by few, and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... in Parian stone, The Rhodian artist,' and so on. It is not only that this is bad in itself; but that it is unworthy of the company in which it is found; that such verses should not have appeared with the name of a good versifier like Lord Lytton. We must take exception, also, in conclusion, to the excess of alliteration. Alliteration is so liable to be abused that we can scarcely be too sparing of it; and yet it is a trick that seems to grow upon the author ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... been a Secretary of State. His gravestone is inscribed with a resounding verse from Tickell's lines to his memory, the only lines by which Tickell himself is now remembered, and which (as I discovered a little while ago) he mainly filched from an obscure versifier of somewhat earlier date. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... indecorous stanzas. Burns deemed Mayne's version an elder production of the Scottish muse, and attempted to modernise the song, but his edition is decidedly inferior. Other four stanzas have been added, by some anonymous versifier, to Mayne's verses, which first appeared in Duncan's "Encyclopaedia of Scottish, English, and Irish Songs," printed at Glasgow in 1836, 2 vols. 12mo. In those stanzas the lover is brought back to Logan braes, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... texture is a crowning beauty, yet in verse it may be dispensed with. You would think that here was a death-blow to all I have been saying; and far from that, it is but a new illustration of the principle involved. For if the versifier is not bound to weave a pattern of his own, it is because another pattern has been formally imposed upon him by the laws of verse. For that is the essence of a prosody. Verse may be rhythmical; it may be merely alliterative; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... your Homer, shook his head, shrugged up his shoulders, and pish'd at every line of it. "One would wonder," says he, "at the strange presumption of some men; Homer is no such easy task as every stripling, every versifier—" He was going on, when my wife called to dinner; "Sir," said I, "will you please to eat a piece of beef with me?" "Mr. Lintot," said he, "I am very sorry you should be at the expense of this great book, I am really concerned on your account." ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... own success in mind when she makes the young poetess, Aurora Leigh, recoil from the fulsome praise of her readers. Browning takes the same attitude in Sordello, contrasting Eglamor, the versifier who servilely conformed to the taste of the mob, with Sordello, the true poet, who despised it. In Popularity, Browning returns to the same theme, of the public's misplaced praises, and in Pacchiarotto he outdoes ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... of the sylvan minstrels, as if she had taken up music only to be in the fashion, or not to be outdone by the robins and thrushes. In other words, she seems to sing from some outward motive, and not from inward joyousness. She is a good versifier, but not a great poet. Vigorous, rapid, copious, not without fine touches, but destitute of any high, serene melody, her performance, like that of Thoreau's squirrel, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... 286: Molokama (more often given as Na Molo-kama). The name applied to a succession of falls made by the stream far up in the mountains. The author has here used a versifier's privilege, compressing this long word into somewhat ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson |
