"Critic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Bedad! here's the Belle Savage kissing the Saracen's Head;" on which an impertinent roar of laughter sprang up in the pit, breaking out with fitful explosions during the remainder of the performance. As the wag in Mr. Sheridan's amusing Critic admirably says about the morning guns, the playwrights were not content with one of them, but must fire two or three; so with this wretched pothouse joke of the Belle Savage (the ignorant people not knowing that Pocahontas herself was the very Belle Sauvage ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "A novel," said the Critic, "is the most highly developed type of literature. Therefore, it is the fittest to survive. This is a theory. And ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... this poet continued to be popular during at least the first four centuries of our era. No inference adverse to his repute can fairly be drawn from the fact that no mention of him occurs in the extant work of any Attic writer. The only definite estimate of him by an ancient critic occurs in the treatise [Greek: Peri Hupsous] commonly translated "On the Sublime," but meaning rather, "On the Sources of Elevation in Style"; a work ambiguously ascribed to Cassius Longinus (circ. A.D. 260), but more probably due to some writer of the first century of our era. In chapter ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... and vulgarity, prince of ephemerals and idol of the unelect"—as a Chicago critic chortles—is dead. It is true. He is dead, dead and buried. And a fluttering, chirping host of men, little men and unseeing men, have heaped him over with the uncut leaves of Kim, wrapped him in Stalky & Co., for winding sheet, and for headstone reared ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... estimates of certain situations are masterpieces of picturesque concision. "Why did I stop and sign the preliminaries of Leoben? Because I played vingt-et-un and was satisfied with twenty." His insight into (dramatic) character is that of the most sagacious critic. "The 'Mahomet' of Voltaire is neither a prophet nor an Arab, only an impostor graduated out of the Ecole Polytechnique."—"Madame de Genlis tries to define virtue as if she were the discoverer of it."—(On Madame de Stael): "This woman teaches ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to the existing knowledge of the facts in Washington's career would have but little result beyond the multiplication of printed pages. The antiquarian, the historian, and the critic have exhausted every source, and the most minute details have been and still are the subject of endless writing and constant discussion. Every house he ever lived in has been drawn and painted; every portrait, and statue, and medal has been catalogued and ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... European and Inter-oceanic Asphalte Paving Company, and having signed a contract to supply them for seventeen years with the best Pine Pitch on favourable terms, I have not the slightest interest to subserve in writing this letter, which I think any quite impartial critic will allow, curtly, but honestly, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... kid," said Hetty, poising her knife, "is it as bad art as that? I ain't a critic; but I thought it kind of brightened up the room. Of course, a manicure-painter could tell it was a bum picture in a minute. I'll take it down if you say so. I wish to the holy Saint Potluck ...
— Options • O. Henry
... again and again that the most severe critic of the unmarried mother is the unmarried mother, and I have many a time wondered at the fact. Now I know the explanation; it is the familiar Projection of a Reproach. Meg feels guilty because of her three children, but her guilt is repressed, driven ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... although my impression may be worth a little more; neither do I consider the General's antecedents as bearing very decided testimony to his practical soldiership. A thorough knowledge of the science of war seems to be conceded to him; he is allowed to be a good military critic; but all this is possible without his possessing any positive qualities of a great general, just as a literary critic may show the profoundest acquaintance with the principles of epic poetry without being able to produce a single stanza of an epic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... interesting, and romantic as his own; an inseparable sharer of all his thoughts, and staunch companion of all his adventures; the most open-hearted of friends to all who loved him, the most shrewd and stimulating critic of his work; and in sickness ... the most devoted ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... never forgot that in every heretic he saw a brother Christian; in every infidel he saw a brother man. He greatly admired Drouen de Sacramentis, and Boranga's Theology. Tournely he preferred much to his antagonist Billouart. He thought Houbigant too bold a critic, and objected some novelties to the Hebraizing friars of the Rue St. Honore. He believed the letters of Ganganelli, with the exception of two or three at most, to be spurious. Their spuriousness has been ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... the mane? That's Tom Day, the dramatic critic of a dozen papers. A terrible Philistine. Lucky for Shakspeare he didn't ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... in a popular and attractive form.... Will be of great use to all who are in any way interested in coal mining."—Scottish Critic. ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... Proclamation. The author, in considering the relations of the commanding general to the administration, praises the former and blames the latter; and, in commending the campaign, shows himself a poor master of the art of war, and in some respects an indifferent critic of practical military operations. The Count of Paris wrote these chapters in 1874.—twelve years after the events, and with ample testimony at his command. It is strange that he could not reach the conclusion, then and now commonly held, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... in no small degree, though curiously enough entirely disclaiming the quality, the gift of presenting the essential personality of the sitter, that which a critic has called the power of "realizing an individuality." This is seen most clearly in his portraits of men, and naturally in the portraits of the men he knew best, ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... Augustine says in the same book: "Perchance by reason of the blood some keener critic will press us and say; If the blood was" in the body of Christ when He rose, "why not the rheum?" that is, the phlegm; "why not also the yellow gall?" that is, the gall proper; "and why not the black gall?" that is, the bile, "with which four ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... in Tuebingen, afterward famous as biblical critic and church-historian, said of Strauss' book, that through it was revealed in startling fashion to that generation of scholars, how little real knowledge they had of the problem which the Gospels present. To Baur it was clear that if advance was to be made beyond Strauss' negative ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... excellent prose work has won more of popular favour than their verse, which notwithstanding is of high quality. Such was the "unsubduable old Roman," Walter Savage Landor, a contemporary of Byron and Wordsworth, who long outlived them, dying in 1864. Such—to bring two extremes together—are the critic and poet Matthew Arnold, the poet and theologian John Henry Newman. Intimately associated in our thought with the latter, who has enriched our devotional poetry with one touching hymn, is Keble, the singer par excellence of the "Catholic revival," and the most widely successful religious ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... in 1840, and received his musical education in the Conservatory at Milan, where he studied for nine years. In 1866 he became a musical critic for several Italian papers, and about the same time wrote several poems of more than ordinary merit. Both in literature and music his taste was diversified; and he combined the two talents in a remarkable degree in his opera of "Mephistopheles," the only work by which he is ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... distinguished but inferior man, having a pardonable fondness for ugliness. A great critic like Cousin is ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... own which may have escaped my correction will be dwelt on, by enthusiasts for the Prophet, as if they are the main elements of this book, and disqualify me as a critic of Knox's "History." At least any such errors on my part are involuntary and unconscious. In Knox's defence we must remember that he never saw his "History" in print. But he kept it by him for many years, obviously re-reading, for he certainly retouched it, ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... sort of reason which banishes the affections is incapable of filling their place. These public affections, combined with manners, are required sometimes as supplements, sometimes as correctives, always as aids to law. The precept given by a wise man, as well as a great critic, for the construction of poems, is equally true as to states:—"Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto." There ought to be a system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... bird opened the concert with a brilliant solo by way of overture, which was duly reported by the musical critic in the shape of a chalk line on the table. The length of the effusion did not matter; a long aria, or a brilliant but spasmodic cadenza, each counted one, and one only. The Bermondsey bird, heedless of the issue at stake, devoted ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... imbecility and in your more expansive moments a high adventure of immeasurable possibilities, you are straitened between cold despairs and immense hopes, you will readily forgive this irreverent, self-confident critic-journalist any crude things he may have said in his haste for sake of his flashes of perception, his happily descriptive phrases, his inspiring anticipations, his uncalculating candour, and above all his generous ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... the spirit of their founders. But they were also responsible for the insanely logical pretensions which characterise the Church's policy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and it was with reason that Wycliffe, the greatest medieval critic of the sacerdotal theory, attacked the Mendicant Orders as typifying all that was worst in the hierarchy ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... critic should understand how to write. And though every writer is not bound to show himself in the capacity of critic, every writing critic is bound to show himself capable of being ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... and a man who has it not in cookery, must want it in literature. Fried sole and potatoes!! If I had written a volume, whose merit was in elegance, I would not show it to such a man!—but he might be an admirable critic upon 'Cobbett's Register,' or 'Every Man his ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... for; he at once advanced the rates. People bought successive issues to gaze upon this monumental record of extravagance. A singular idea, which, however, brought further fortune to the paper, was advanced by an astute critic at the Eureka Saloon. "My opinion, gentlemen, is that the whole blamed thing is a bluff! There ain't no Mr. Dimmidge; there ain't no Mrs. Dimmidge; there ain't no desertion! The whole rotten thing is an ADVERTISEMENT ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... him, looked and passed, but knew him not, And critics scoffed and deemed him not a seer. He lives, and scoff and critic are forgot; We feel his presence ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... disquisitions, colloquies, and Greek dialogs. But to-day we have no rank; we are all first scholars. The hero in his laurels sits next to the divine rustling in the dry garlands of his doctorate. The poet in his crown of bays, the critic, in his wreath of ivy, clasp each other's hands, members of the same happy family. This is the birthday feast for every one of us whose forehead has been sprinkled from the font inscribed "Christo et Ecclesioe." We have no badges but our diplomas, ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... audience, composed of the authoress and the reader, blinding perhaps both to not a little that was neither brilliant nor poetic. The lady wept at the sound of her own verses from the lips of one who was to her in the position of the hero toward the heroine; and the lover, critic as he was, could not but be touched when he saw her weep at passages suggesting his relation to her; so that, when they found the hand of the one resting in that of the other, it did not seem strange to either. When suddenly the lady snatched ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... little book plainly bound and modestly entitled Songs and Sonnets. After reading this with ever-growing surprise and delight, Rose never had another doubt about the writer's being a poet, for though she was no critic, she had read the best authors and knew what was good. Unpretentious as it was, this had the true ring, and its very simplicity showed conscious power for, unlike so many first attempts, the book was not full of "My Lady," neither did it ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... stranger than this talk on the dark road with the girl who, too, should be naturally opposed to him. In fact, here at this very spot and at their first meeting she had announced herself as a critic and an enemy. He could smile over that now; she herself probably did smile at the recollection. Yet she was calmly discussing his situation without ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... unfavourable critic was the erring captain himself. He sent a peremptory summons to Mr. Wilks to attend at Equator Lodge, and the moment he set eyes upon that piece of probity embarked upon such a vilification of his personal defects and character as ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... thought of many things I might have told you, but I could not bear to be eloquent and poetical. It is a mockery thus to play the artist with life, and dip the brush in one's own heart's blood. One would fain be no more artist, or philosopher, or lover, or critic, but a soul ever rushing forth in tides of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Scotticism. An Englishman reads and writes a large book, and wears a great (not a big or bag) coat.' When Boswell came to publish The Life of Johnson, he took the opportunity to justify himself, though he did not care to refer directly to his anonymous critic. This explanation I discovered too late to insert in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... subjected to treatment which left him insane. His insanity takes the form of harmless delusion, and the absurdity of his ways and talk enables the author to lighten the sombreness without weakening the moral, in a way that ought to win all boys to his side."—The Critic. ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... Really, not? Oh, you should. He's so wonderful, so convincing, so unlike all others. You must come with me next Sunday," and thus gradually he gathered round him in his remote church a band of faithful women, drawn from the West End by the fame of his unconventional eloquence. A not too fastidious critic might, perhaps, have been startled by a note of vulgarity in his references to sacred events, as well as by the tone of easy and intimate familiarity with which he spoke of those whose names are generally mentioned with bated breath, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... of his life there were two sides to his character. Private grief, much disappointment, and a long solitary existence, contributed to make him a melancholy philosopher, and a sometimes austere critic of a selfish world, but beneath this crust were a genial and generous disposition that did not disdain the lighter side of human nature, a heart too full of kindness to cherish wrath for long, and an almost boyish love of fun that could scarcely be repressed. If this was the individual in his ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... there were but few to criticise, as the office of critic was one fraught with far too much danger to be alluring. In maintaining their authority the leaders stopped at nothing, and the heads of the recalcitrant were apt to part with amazing suddenness from their bodies ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... A critic rose from the busy company and departed, to add lustre to his paper and a nail in the coffin of the only really ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... these very ordinary faculties. Yet, as I listened to his voice that mingled with the rustle of the poplars overhead, and watched his eager face and gestures, it came to me dimly that a man's mistakes may be due to his attempting bigger things than his little critic ever dreamed perhaps. And gradually I shared the vision that this unrhyming poet by my side had somehow lived out ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... needn't frown. You are strangely mistaken in him. I know you hate his brutal frankness, and he is anything but a Christian, but we are old college chums, and he's the clearest-headed personal friend I have. I need his advice about my fight with Van Meter. Overman is a venomous critic of my Social dreams. I've often wondered at your dislike of him, when he so thoroughly echoes ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... perhaps significant that a German critic has of late reminded us that the one test which the most authoritative and dramatic portrayal of the Day of Judgment offers, is the social test. The stern questions are not in regard to personal and family relations, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... and cadence; prose highly wrought, and yet singularly surprising one at times with, so to say, sudden innocencies, artless and instinctive beneath all its sedulous art. It is no longer necessary, as I hinted above, to fight the battle of this prose. Whether it appeal to one not, no critic worth attention any longer disparages it as mere ornate and perfumed verbiage, the elaborate mannerism of a writer hiding the poverty of his thought beneath a pretentious raiment of decorated expression. It is understood ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... this interest must be futile or mischievous is to deny the will of man in one of the chief of human activities; but it often is denied by those who do not understand how it can be applied to art. We cannot make artists directly; no government office can determine their training; still less can any critic tell them how they ought to practise their art. But we can all aim at a state of society in which they will be encouraged to do their best, and at a state of mind in which we ourselves shall learn to know good from bad and to prefer the good. At present ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... how easy a topic it is to dwell on the faults of departed greatness. By a revolution in the state, the fawning sycophant of yesterday is converted into the austere critic of the present hour. But steady, independent minds, when they have an object of so serious a concern to mankind as government under their contemplation, will disdain to assume the part of satirists and declaimers. They will judge of human institutions as they do of human characters. ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... Critic.—"The faddists have produced some extraordinary things in the way of literature, but nothing more freakish has made its appearance in the ...
— The Purple Cow! • Gelett Burgess
... critic he shook his head (Thornycroft's, where they began to row): "Hung over the stretcher" was what he said, And "missed the beginning," and ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... wound is made, ... I can only accept them AS OPINIONS, to which the greatest weight should be attached, AND NOT AS STATEMENTS OF ABSOLUTE FACT so far as specific instances are concerned." This is exactly the attitude for any critic of vivisection to take. A distinguished physician, testifying before the Commissioners, declared that it was entirely possible to keep a dog in a state of anaesthesia for a week, if necessary. Experimentation in this direction, in all probability would prove the ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... by the representations of the British envoy, marched on Herat, and the siege was opened on November 23d, 1837. Durand, a capable critic, declares that the strength of the place, the resolution of the besiegers, the skill of their Russian military advisers, and the gallantry of the besieged, were alike objects of much exaggeration. 'The siege was from first to ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... to come oneself or to bring a dear one to Christ's feet seems a supremely absurd waste of energy to a cynical critic, who feels no need of anything that Christ can give. It looks rather different to the paralytic on his couch, and to the friends ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... arrangements had already been made. The duty of the Chancellor under the circumstances was to consider any promise to be given to Austria from the standpoint of German interests, and to keep watch on the method of its fulfilment. The Chancellor, says his critic, did not hesitate to accept the decision of the Emperor, apparently imagining that Austria's position as a Great Power was already shaken and would collapse unless she could insist on being compensated at the expense of the greedy ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... life. In his separation of the utterance of whole truths from insistance upon accidents of detail, Reynolds was right, because he guarded the expression of his view with careful definitions of its limits. In the same way Boileau was right, as a critic of Literature, in demanding everywhere good sense, in condemning the paste brilliants of a style then in decay, and fixing attention upon the masterly simplicity of Roman poets in the time of Augustus. Critics ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... inspection of the drawings, in which Mr. Fairfax showed himself deeply interested. His own manipulative powers were of the smallest, but he was an excellent critic. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... him, he sent the letter first to his old instructor, the principal of the Brienne school. And the instructor—even though he, perhaps, agreed with this boy-critic—saw how foolish and hurtful for Napoleon's interest it would be to send such a surprising letter; and he promptly suppressed it. But the letter still exists; and a curious epistle it is for a fifteen-year-old boy to write. Here is ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... was one of the best I ever knew. I never knew a better. It is with unfeigned gratitude that I remember my obligations to him, and I know I speak for thousands. As a critic, he was discriminating and quietly suggestive, guided by a taste that was nearly immaculate. His scholarship was unobtrusive, and his manner without ostentation. He made no pretense of knowledge, but it was always sufficient, always fresh, always sound. The range of his thought was broad. His ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... and shrewd conjecture of the future from the course of the present. The possibility of prophecy, therefore, is limited by the possibility of human foresight. Reasoning from this false position, the critic first assumes that Isaiah cannot have been the author of the last part of the book which bears his name, and then proceeds to find arguments against its genuineness. To meet him we must plant our feet firmly on the great historic ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... to Ivanhoe, by Sir ARTHUR S. SULLIVAN, Mus. Doc. From what our Musical Critic has seen of the score, he is able to wink his eye wisely but not too well, and to hint that as Mr. Guppy says, "There are chords"; and to make these chords in combination, the strings are admirably ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... that Rembrandt was "untaught," and Donnelly said the same of Shakespeare, and each critic gives this as a reason why the man could not have done a sublime performance. Yet since "Hamlet" was never equaled, who could have taught its author how? And since Rembrandt at his best was never surpassed, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... innocent of original ideas as a Mexican fice of feathers. He gets down on the muddy pave and wrangles with the "locus" preachers. He's a theological shyster lawyer who takes advantage of technicalities. He is not a philosopher—he's emphatically "a critic fly." He examines the Christian cult inch by inch, just as Gulliver did the cuticle of the Brobdingnagian maid who sat him astride her nipple. He never contemplates the tout ensemble. He learns absolutely nothing from the cumulative wisdom of the world. He doesn't ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... in verse, and some in what we could not distinctly say whether it was verse or prose; but we have invariably found that the common formula of retort was that adopted by Mr. Tennyson against his northern critic, namely, that the author ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... to take. It might indeed be argued that the defects of his great qualities, the over-ideality, the haste, the incoherence, and the want of grasp on narrative, are glaringly apparent in these early works. But while this is true, the qualities themselves are absent. A cautious critic will only find food in "Zastrozzi" and "St. Irvyne" for wondering how such flowers and fruits of genius could have lain concealed within a germ apparently so barren. There is even less of the real Shelley discernible in these ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... The judge spoke freely what he thought, Twas wholly not unto his taste, he said, And that, to please a practised eye, Far less of art should be displayed. The painter failed not to reply, And though the critic blamed with skill, Was of the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Indian tribes, and was warmly praised for his freshness, his novelty, and his hardy originality. The people of France and Germany delighted in this soldier-writer. "There was not a word in his books which a school-boy could not safely read aloud to his mother and sisters." So says a late English critic, to which another adds, that if he has somewhat gone out of fashion of late years, the more's the pity for the school-boy of the period. What Defoe is in Robinson Crusoe—realistic idyl of island solitude—that, in his ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... my cigarette case to him. Like his late critic, Pete availed himself of two, though he had not the excuse of a pipe to be filled. One he coyly tucked above his left ear and one he lighted. Then he sat gracefully back upon his heels and drew smoke into his innermost recesses, a shrunken little ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... play was a failure. After the first act, many left the theatre; at the end of the second, most of the others started out. A cynical critic as he rose from his aisle seat raised ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... The Final Critic of the craft, As stage tradition tells; And yet—perhaps 'twill only be The jester with ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... published (as is well known) a 4to volume that in some respects is the very worst 4to now extant in the world—viz., a critical edition of the. "Paradise Lost." I observe, in the "Edinburgh Review," (July, 1851, No. 191, p. 15,) that a learned critic supposes Bentley to have meant this edition as a "practical jest." Not at all. Neither could the critic have fancied such a possibility, if he had taken the trouble (which I did many a year back) to examine ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... indications in the Introductions of certain discussions that had arisen over his conception and treatment, and surely few readers would like to miss from the volume the clever and humorous apology for his own method which the poet advances in the Introduction to the third canto. William Erskine, refined critic and life-long friend, is asked to be patient and generous while the poet proceeds in his ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... hair, which, from being light in her youth, had become chestnut, and which she wore curled very plainly, and with much powder, admirably set off her face, in which the most rigid critic could only have desired a little less rouge, and the most fastidious sculptor a little more fineness in ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... convinced of his ability as a preacher or his popularity as a lecturer. It was said of him that "he was an orator from the beginning:" that his first public address "was like Charles Lamb's roast pig, good throughout, no part better or worse than another." "His delivery," says a candid and scholarly critic, "was rather earnest than passionate. He had a deep, strange, rich voice, which he knew how to use. His eyes were extraordinary, living sermons, a peculiar shake and nod of the head giving the impression of deep-settled ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... secure his favorites, numerously and easily, if he but pay attention to give his work the exact tinge of the "couleur locale" which predominates in the spot where his plot is laid; but because the eye of the critic has become familiar with such unworthy productions as these, it must scan with more eager justice any pages which are a happy exception to this miserable reality; it must not hesitate to discern whether ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... reigning humour was the question: to render his reasoning efficacious, the critic must take care not to make it unpalatable. And here the general taste seemed to be in direct opposition to our reason and experience; for we had not yet (even in the case of young Betty, with the aggregate authority of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... author is well estimated by the millions of copies of his books that have been sold. This is also the greatest testimonial that can be given to the merit of his work. The great heart of the reading public is an unprejudiced critic. "Is not the greatest voice the one to which the greatest number of hearts ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... circumstances of the war were abnormal. From one point of view it was a civil war; from another it was a rebellion, and from a third it was a war between two rival military powers, each of whom desired to become supreme in South Africa. What the military critic has to consider is not so much how these circumstances arose, or whether they could have been changed or avoided by any political action on the part of Great Britain, but the degree in which the conditions imposed by them upon the British Army must be taken into account ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... that the poet may labor according to an ideal— that the critic may judge from ideas, but that mere executive art is subject to contingencies, and depends for effect on the occasion. Managers will be obstinate; actors are bent on display—the audience is inattentive and unruly. Their object is relaxation, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... in his waistcoat pockets, the critic hunted into one corner a solitary half-crown, and having caught it between his finger and thumb, he gave it to Mrs. ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sank a little. He had read a certain amount of poetry at school, and once he had won a prize of three shillings and sixpence for the last line of a Limerick in a competition in a weekly paper; but he was self-critic enough to know that poetry was not his long suit. Still there was a library on board the ship, and no doubt it would be possible to borrow the works of some standard bard and bone them up from time to ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... in and out at one another's houses; and I am therefore in a position to declare that Mrs. Erskine, having escaped by her marriage from the vile caste in which she was relatively poor and artificially unhappy and ill-conditioned, is now, as the pretty wife of an art-critic, relatively rich, as well as pleasant, active, and in sound health. Her chief trouble, as far as I can judge, is the impossibility of shaking off her distinguished relatives, who furtively quit their abject splendor to drop in ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... The arm-chair critic, reviewing a situation calmly and at his ease, is apt to make too small allowances for the effect of hurry and excitement on the human mind. He is cool and detached. He sees exactly what ought to have been done, and by what simple means catastrophe ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... Rome are authenticated, the case is not the same with its virtues. An able critic has shown that nothing is more problematic than the history of the three or four first ages of that city. As the confusions of the state increased, so do the confusions in its story. The empire had masters, whose names are only known from medals. It is uncertain ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... article in question is a Boston gentleman whose [10] thought is appreciated by many liberals. Patience, ob- servation, intellectual culture, reading, writing, exten- sive travel, and twenty years in the pulpit, have equipped him as a critic who knows whereof he speaks. His allu- sion to Christian Science in the following paragraph, [15] glows in the shadow of darkling criticism like a mid- night sun. Its manly honesty follows like a benediction after prayer, and ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... exertions offered a chance of escape, but the courage of the girl appears when earthly hope is most dim and faint. The sweet unconsciousness of this early picture has hardly been surpassed by any subsequent work. "Naturalness and the charm of composition," says a French critic, "are the secrets of Scheffer's success in these early pictures, to which may be added a third,—the distinction of the type of his faces, and especially of his female heads,—a kind of suave and melancholy ideal, which gave so new a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... his work, in short, according as he can say, "This has expressed what I meant it to convey." But the reader, who is not in the secret of the author's original design, usually views the work through a different medium; and is perhaps in this the wiser critic of the two: for the book that wanders the most from the idea which originated it may often be better than that which is rigidly limited to the unfolding and denouement of a single conception. If we accept this solution, we may be enabled ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... attending to what they were saying, with a faculty which belongs to that age. Opinions were divided as to Bice's beauty. The simpler members of the party, Lucy and Jock, admired her least; but such a competent critic as Lady Randolph, who understood what was effective, had a great opinion and even respect for her, as of one whose capabilities were very great indeed, and who might "go far," as she had herself said. As there was so much difference of opinion it is only right that ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... but I can't. Whatever else you may be fitted for, you aren't fitted to be a novelist.' Mr. Walpole was grieved. Perhaps he was unaware, then, that a similar experience had happened to Joseph Conrad. I am unable to judge the schoolmaster's fitness to be a critic, because I have not read The Wooden Horse. Walpole once promised to send me a copy so that I might come to some conclusion as to the schoolmaster, but he did not send it. Soon after this deplorable incident, Walpole met Charles Marriott, a novelist of a remarkable distinction. ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... lapse of some five-and-twenty years since I first met with it. But the place which it holds in my critical judgment and in my private affections has hardly altered at all since the first reading. I like it as a reader perhaps rather more than I esteem it as a critic; but even as a critic, and allowing fully for the personal equation, I think that it deserves a far higher place than ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... to an end in ill- health and low spirits—certain to be insulted by a base and prostitute gang of lurking assassins who stab in the dark, and whose poisoned daggers he had already experienced. Ritson himself was a fairly venomous critic, and the "Ritsonian" style has become proverbial. Nowadays authors do not usually die of criticism, not even susceptible poets. Critics can still be severe enough, but they are just and generous, and never descend to that scurrilous personal ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... see as she saw. Vis-a-vis with her, and consequently with myself, was Adonais, a celebrated author, and person of the beau monde. On his left, Dalton, always mysteriously elegant and dangerously witty. Denslow and Jeffrey Lethal, the critic, completed our circle. The ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... agreeing to suspend them. One was proved guilty, the other committed suicide. It was subsequently shown that one of the men had been an agent of the Burkes in raising India stock. (Dilke's "Papers of a Critic," ii-, p. 333—"Dict. Nat Biography": art Burke.) Paine, in his letter to the Attorney-General (IV. of this volume), charged that Burke had been a "masked pensioner" ten years. The date corresponds with a secret arrangement made in 1782 with ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... know a letter: All unacquainted with each classic rule, We feel we've need enough to go to school; And trembling stand, afraid to come before ye, And of the Schoolfellows to tell the story. Yet need this be? I see no critic here; No surly newspaper have we to fear; Our scenery may be bad, but this is certain, Bright decorations are before the curtain, Under whose influence, you may well believe, We do not sigh for Stanfield, grieve ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... the most delightful bits of character work ever seen on the Casino stage," observed the stage critic of the "Sun." "It is a bit of quiet, unassuming drollery which warms like good wine. Evidently the part was not intended to take precedence, as Miss Madenda is not often on the stage, but the audience, with the characteristic perversity of such bodies, selected for itself. The little ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... a politician of a peculiarly bold and decided stamp, when boldness was necessary for the utterance of the truth; and as a poet and prose-writer of a singularly-genial and amiable character. As the chief founder and critic of the Examiner, he would doubtless occupy a high place in literary history, but as the author of "Rimini" he is entitled to a more enduring and enviable fame. This will always stand at the head of his works: but his "Indicator," his "London Journal," his "Jar ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... that he had once been pointed out to him in a railway station, therefore he was emboldened to ask his correspondent to ask his Publisher, to get at the Editor of the Times, and recommend him, SAUNDERS, as Musical Critic, or Sub-editor, or Society Reporter. Nor did SAUNDERS neglect Professorships, and vacant Chairs. His testimonials went in for all of them. He was equally ready and qualified to be Professor of Greek, Metaphysics, Etruscan, Chemistry, or the Use ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... MARIANOELO (c. 1490-1544), Italian critic, was born at Aquila, in the kingdom of Naples. He was a great favourite with Charles V., at whose court he resided for thirty-three years, and by whom he was employed on various foreign missions. To a perfect knowledge ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... particulars. The others, who would have been hard put to it to give any explanation and were disconcerted by Christophe, referred him to the musician of the company, Theophile Goujart, the great musical critic, who began at once to talk of sevenths and ninths. Goujart knew music much as ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... happiness, their misery, their love and friendships, their peculiarities, their power, their gentleness, their patience, their pride,—which Miss Robinson has not touched upon with conscientiousness and sympathy."—The Critic. ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... where nothing could burn him, fall upon him, or chase him, "playing" respectfully with his new dime, came one of slightly superior years and criminal instincts demanding to inspect the treasure. The privilege was readily accorded, to arouse only contempt. The piece was too small. The critic himself had a bigger ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... followed. Americans are so familiar with the European traveler who arrives and makes up his opinion over night in regard to men, morals, and manners in the Western world and have so often been the victim of this self-confident critic, that they ought not to repeat the same blunder in dealing with other peoples. [Footnote: The Outlook, ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... we are to regard as pure metaphor. Our friend 'Snooks,' at least, found that out; for, instead of re-viewing—i. e., viewing again and again his book, they pronounced it to be decidedly bad without any examination whatever. A 'critic' we all recognize in his character of judge or umpire; but is it that he always possesses discrimination—has he always insight (for these are the primary ideas attaching themselves to [Greek: krino], whence [Greek: kritikos] comes)—does he divide between the merely arbitrary and incidental, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... contains the impressions of the writer upon events in Tuscany of which she was a witness. "From a window," the critic may demur. She bows to the objection in the very title of her work. No continuous narrative nor exposition of political philosophy is attempted by her. It is a simple story of personal impressions, whose only value is in the intensity with which they were received, as proving her warm ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... his own marriage he had violated one of the first of the laws of his class, and by his unfailing fidelity to his wife continued to resist it), superstitious rather than religious, an immense admirer of the Kaiser, and a decidedly hostile critic of our own country—such was the general impression made on one British ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... rising hope" of the "stern and unbending Tories," and the whole tone of Macaulay's essay—a criticism of Gladstone's first serious attempt at authorship, his book on the relations between church and state—shows that the critic treats the author as a young man of undoubted mark and position ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... was first published in 1668, with the separately printed edition of Boileau's ninth satire; in the same year it was included in a collected edition of the satires. It was occasioned, evidently, by a critic's complaint that the modern satirist, departing from ancient practice, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... a predilection which won him a mention without honor in Johnson's life of Pope (Lives of the Poets, ed. Birkbeck Hill, III, 227). Even the heroic couplets of his poem on "Poetry" aim rather at pseudo-Pindaric diffuseness than at epigrammatic concentration of statement. As a critic Cobb deserves attention in spite of his mediocrity, or even because of it. He helps to fill out the picture of the literary London of his time, and his opinions and tastes provide valuable side-lights on such greater men as Dennis, Addison, and Pope. "Of Poetry" belongs to the prolific literary ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb
... critic bold enough to place even the finest of these exquisite productions on the same level as Le Jeune Homme au Gant and L'Homme en Noir of the Louvre, the Ippolito de' Medici, the Bella di Tiziano, the Aretino of the Pitti, the Charles V. at the Battle of Muehlberg ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... solid justification of his cause. Perhaps it is not altogether unwholesome that our national withers don't entirely escape wringing. We are a little guilty, but much less guilty than our arch-opponent; so thinks this sober and wide-eyed critic.... Certainly, and the more significantly since it is without direction or intention of the writer, one sees behind all the tragedy of these dark weeks and of the long months and years to come the sinister picture of a man of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... Ideologists. Of recent German speculation he was probably quite ignorant. I find indeed that Place had called his attention to the account of Kant, published by Wirgman in the Encyclopaedia Londinensis 1817. Mill about the same time tells Place that he has begun to read The Critic of Pure Reason. 'I see clearly enough,' he says, 'what poor Kant would be about, but it would require some time to give an account of him.' He wishes (December 6, 1817) that he had time to write a book which ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... critics, as they are birds of prey, have ever a natural inclination to carrion: and though such poor writers as I are but beggars, no beggar is so poor but he can keep a cur, and no author is so beggarly but he can keep a critic. I am far from thinking the attacks of such people any honour or dishonour even to me, much less to Mr. Dryden. I agree with you that whatever lesser wits have arisen since his death are but like stars appearing when the sun is set, that twinkle only in ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... I—me—Mr. Bernard Effingwell Dreux, the prominent cotillion leader, the second-hand dealer, the art critic and amateur detective. I unearthed the notorious and dreaded Sicilian desperado in his lair, and now he's cooling his heels in the parish prison along ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... search for new truth; hence you cannot complain if the fierce light which you have taught the world to turn full and fair upon cults and creeds, should be employed to discern the false logic of the great critic himself. ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... are now as dead as their owners are recorded, and the most trivial points noted. Opposite Brompton Square there was once a street called Michael's Grove, after its builder, Michael Novosielski, architect of the Royal Italian Opera House. In 1835 Douglas Jerrold, critic and dramatist, lived here, and whilst here was visited by Dickens. Ovington Square covers the ground where once stood Brompton Grove, where several well-known people had houses; among them was the editor (William Jerdan) of the Literary Gazette, who was visited ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... "Moonlight Sonata". A trained musical critic would probably have found much to cavil at in his rendering of the piece, but it was undoubtedly good for a public school player. Of course he was encored. The gallery would have encored him if he had played with one finger, three mistakes to ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... yet, strictly speaking, his genius was mathematical, rather than theological. In this respect he resembled that famed American of whom he professed himself a disciple—Jonathan Edwards. Of the latter it is stated by no less a critic than the author of the Eclipse of Faith (Henry Rogers), that he was born a mathematician. Chalmers, however, was a master of all science, and it would have been difficult for even a specialist to have taken him at an advantage. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... by a critic of those days, in a review ascribed to Mrs. Barbauld, as unnatural and absurd. I admire the genius of Mrs. Barbauld, and am certain that, had her education been favourable to imaginative influences, no female of her day would ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... full of grace with every movement. Her quick, firm, elastic step was Youth personified: a charming maiden, she, of twenty summers. The artistic outlines of her plump arms and shoulders, beautifully modelled bust, throat and neck, so admirably proportioned, would have satisfied the most carping critic; poet or painter, he would have pronounced them a dream of perfect symmetry. Her queenly shaped head, so gracefully poised, like a clear cut cameo, was a poem of intellectual development on lines of rarest beauty. Her thick, glossy hair of dark chestnut brown, fine as spun ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... him to relinquish his mask, that they might the better appreciate his exquisite oratory and delight in the music of his voice. In much later years, however, "obliquity of vision" has been found to be no obstacle to success upon the stage. Talma squinted, and a dramatic critic, writing in 1825, noted it as a strange fact that "our three light comedians, Elliston, Jones, and Browne," each suffered from "what is called a cast in ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... forgotten," said Mr Bunker, with even more than his usual politeness, "that such an admirable music-hall critic was listening to me. I must apologise ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... One critic good-humouredly exclaims, "We have a full attendance of thegns and cnehts, but we should have liked much better our old friends and approved good masters thanes and knights." Nothing could be more apposite for my justification than the instances ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the bitterest critic of Honora for her descent from the higher to the lesser life, but she loved the girl too well even to look displeasure. Having come to believe that Arthur would be hers alone forever, she regarded Honora's decision as a mistake. The whole world rejoiced at the union of these ideal ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... drawing-room he had been wont to shine with the double radiance of artist and critic. Here he had talked pictures with the fashionable painters of the day; music with men and women of resonant name. The accomplished hostess was ever ready with that smile she bestowed only upon a few favourites, and her daughter—well, ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... or a little more blame, and he would have suspected himself of genius; as it was, he was content to stand distinguished from the ruck of the popular and the respectable by virtue of that imagination which his critic had allowed to him. He was not a great painter, and he knew it; but he was a brilliantly clever one, and he knew that also, and in the fact and his intimate knowledge of it lay the secret of his success. He kept a cool head on his shoulders, and thus his position and the personal dignity ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... Quintilian, in his list of Roman orators, has neither mentioned Maternus, nor Marcus Aper. The Dialogue, for that reason, seems to be improperly ascribed to him: men who figure so much in the enquiry concerning oratory, would not have been omitted by the critic who thought their ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... for instance, repetitions of grasses in "fitting-up," which proves how little can be done with dried things, and how much better it would be to replace them by modelled foliage (mentioned in Chapter XIV). [Footnote: One would-be critic wrote to the papers condemning the whole arrangement, because, in one of the cases, one plant was about a foot nearer the water or a yard nearer to another plant than it should be! The same wiseacre, or his friend, wrote quite an article upon some supposed ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... design'd is drawn to the Life, and the Reader is left uncertain, whether the Character, that lies before him, is an Effect of Art, or a real Appearance of Nature.—A Master-Piece of this Kind, requires the Hand of one who is a Critic in Men and Manners, a Critic in Thoughts, ...
— A Critical Essay on Characteristic-Writings - From his translation of The Moral Characters of Theophrastus (1725) • Henry Gally
... politics, law, or medicine, subjects which some novel writers have ventured on rather too boldly, and have treated, perhaps, with more brilliancy than accuracy. But with ships and sailors she felt herself at home, or at least could always trust to a brotherly critic to keep her right. I believe that no flaw has ever been found in her seamanship either in 'Mansfield Park' ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... listening to the other Composer's new Opera, "originality breeds contempt." So a little bit here, and a little bit there, here a bit, and there a bit, and everywhere a bit, gets rid of all superfluity in the Composer's brain, and saves the listening critic much trouble. Then his next Opera—Ah!—that ought to be all genuinely new and original Sparkling BEMBERG Cabinet. "Elaine," observed a lady critic, "is graceful and airy"—which, in the lady's presence, the present listener was ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 103, July 16, 1892 • Various
... rewarded by the discovery of the excel lent "cut" of such a craft, taken from M. Blundeville's "New and Necessarie Treatise of Navigation," published early in the seventeenth century. Appearing in a work of so high character, published by so competent a navigator and critic, and (approximately) in the very time of the Pilgrim "exodus," there can be no doubt that it quite correctly, if roughly and insufficiently, depicts the outlines, rig, and general cast of a vessel of the MAY-FLOWER type and ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... little. He had read a certain amount of poetry at school, and once he had won a prize of three shillings and sixpence for the last line of a limerick in a competition in a weekly paper, but he was self-critic enough to know that poetry was not his long suit. Still there was a library on board ship and no doubt it would be possible to borrow the works of some standard poet and bone them up from ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse |
