Note: A Lecture delivered to the Officers of the Royal Artillery, Woolwich, 1872. Gentlemen: When I accepted the honour of lecturing here, I took for granted that so select an audience would expect from me not mere amusement, but somewhat of instruction; or, if that be too ambitious a word for me to use, at […]

Note: An Address given to the Scientific Society of Winchester, 1871. I am not sure that the subject of my address is rightly chosen. I am not sure that I ought not to have postponed a question of mere natural history, to speak to you as scientific men, on the questions of life and death, […]

On Friday, the fifth of April, a noteworthy assemblage gathered round an open vault in a corner of Highgate Cemetery. Some hundreds of persons, closely packed up the steep banks among the trees and shrubs, had found in that grave a common bond of brotherhood. I say, in that grave. They were no sect, clique, […]

Note: This Lecture was given at Chester in 1871. This lecture is intended to be suggestive rather than didactic; to set you thinking and inquiring for yourselves, rather than learning at second-hand from me. Some among my audience, I doubt not, will neither need to be taught by me, nor to be stirred up to […]

Few readers of this magazine probably know anything about “Mystics;” know even what the term means: but as it is plainly connected with the adjective “mystical” they probably suppose it to denote some sort of vague, dreamy, sentimental, and therefore useless and undesirable personage. Nor can we blame them if they do so; for mysticism […]

Introductory Lecture given at Queen’s College, London, 1848. An introductory lecture must, I suppose, be considered as a sort of art-exhibition, or advertisement of the wares hereafter to be furnished by the lecturer. If these, on actual use, should prove to fall far short of the promise conveyed in the programme, hearers must remember that […]

1852. Templeton and I were lounging by the clear limestone stream which crossed his park and wound away round wooded hills toward the distant Severn. A lovelier fishing morning sportsman never saw. A soft gray under-roof of cloud slid on before a soft west wind, and here and there a stray gleam of sunlight shot […]

Introductory Lectures given at Queen’s College, London, 1848. An introductory lecture on English composition is, I think, as much needed as one on any other subject taught in this College. For in the first place, I am not sure whether we all mean the same thing when we speak of English composition; and in the […]

Four faces among the portraits of modern men, great or small, strike us as supremely beautiful; not merely in expression, but in the form and proportion and harmony of features: Shakespeare, Raffaelle, Goethe, Burns. One would expect it to be so; for the mind makes the body, not the body the mind; and the inward […]

The poets, who forty years ago proclaimed their intention of working a revolution in English literature, and who have succeeded in their purpose, recommended especially a more simple and truthful view of nature. The established canons of poetry were to be discarded as artificial; as to the matter, the poet was to represent mere nature […]

THE POETRY OF SACRED AND LEGENDARY ART {a} {a} Fraser’s Magazine, March, 1849.–“Sacred and Legendary Art.” By Mrs. Jameson. 2 vols. London. 1848, Longman and Co. Much attention has been excited this year by the alleged fulfilment of a prophecy that the Papal power was to receive its death-blow–in temporal matters, at least–during the past […]

On reading this little book, {61} and considering all the exaggerated praise and exaggerated blame which have been lavished on it, we could not help falling into many thoughts about the history of English poetry for the last forty years, and about its future destiny. Great poets, even true poets, are becoming more and more […]

{1} This Lecture was given at Harrow in 1873, and in America in 1874. Let us think for a while upon what the Stage was once, in a republic of the past–what it may be again, I sometimes dream, in some republic of the future. In order to do this, let me take you back […]

Over the sea, past Crete, on the Syrian shore to the southward, Dwells in the well-tilled lowland a dark-haired AEthiop people, Skilful with needle and loom, and the arts of the dyer and carver, Skilful, but feeble of heart; for they know not the lords of Olympus, Lovers of men; neither broad-browed Zeus, nor Pallas […]

Hypotheses Hypochondriacae {a} And should she die, her grave should be Upon the bare top of a sunny hill, Among the moorlands of her own fair land, Amid a ring of old and moss-grown stones In gorse and heather all embosomed. There should be no tall stone, no marble tomb Above her gentle corse;–the ponderous […]

In an Illuminated Missal {a} I would have loved: there are no mates in heaven; I would be great: there is no pride in heaven; I would have sung, as doth the nightingale The summer’s night beneath the moone pale, But Saintes hymnes alone in heaven prevail. My love, my song, my skill, my high […]

There stood a low and ivied roof, As gazing rustics tell, In times of chivalry and song ‘Yclept the holy well. Above the ivies’ branchlets gray In glistening clusters shone; While round the base the grass-blades bright And spiry foxglove sprung. The brambles clung in graceful bands, Chequering the old gray stone With shining leaflets, […]

The swevens came up round Harold the Earl, Like motes in the sunnes beam; And over him stood the Weird Lady, In her charmed castle over the sea, Sang ‘Lie thou still and dream.’ ‘Thy steed is dead in his stall, Earl Harold, Since thou hast been with me; The rust has eaten thy harness […]

Ye mountains, on whose torrent-furrowed slopes, And bare and silent brows uplift to heaven, I envied oft the soul which fills your wastes Of pure and stern sublime, and still expanse Unbroken by the petty incidents Of noisy life: Oh hear me once again! Winds, upon whose racked eddies, far aloft, Above the murmur of […]

Twin stars, aloft in ether clear, Around each other roll alway, Within one common atmosphere Of their own mutual light and day. And myriad happy eyes are bent Upon their changeless love alway; As, strengthened by their one intent, They pour the flood of life and day. So we through this world’s waning night May, […]