I was admitted to the Duke of Lerma’s presence, and took part in the embassy. The Duke exhibited great satisfaction at the excellence and number of the pictures, which surely have acquired a certain fair appearance of antiquity (by means of my retouching), in spite even of the damage they had undergone. They are held […]

THE IDLE SINGER Of Heaven or Hell I have no power to sing,I can not ease the burden of your fears,Or make quick-coming death a little thing,Or bring again the pleasure of past years,Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears,Or hope again for aught that I can say,The idle singer of an empty […]

Lacroix told Dore one day, early in his life in Paris, that he should illustrate a new edition of his works in four volumes, and he sent them to him. In a week Lacroix said to Dore, who had called, “Well, have you begun to read my story?” “Oh! I mastered that in no time; […]

The man behind his work was seen through it–sensitive, variously gifted, manly, genial, tender-hearted, simple and unaffected; a lover of animals, children and humanity; and if any one wishes to see at a glance nearly all we have written, let him look at Landseer’s portrait, painted by himself, with a canine connoisseur on either side. […]

To make it people’s interest to advance you, by showing that their business will be better done by you than by any other person, is the only solid foundation of success; the rest is accident. —Reynolds to His Nephew On the curious little river Plym, five miles from Plymouth, is the hamlet of Plympton. It […]

When I meet a laborer on the edge of a field, I stop and look at the man: born amid the grain where he will be reaped, and turning up with his plow the ground of his tomb, mixing his burning sweat with the icy rain of Autumn. The furrow he has just turned is […]

* * * Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one […]

Thus with the yearSeasons return; but not to me returnsDay, or the sweet approach of even or morn,Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose,Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;But cloud instead, and ever-during darkSurrounds me; from the cheerful ways of menCut off, and for the book of knowledge fairPresented with a universal […]

TO JEANNIE Come, let me take thee to my breast,And pledge we ne’er shall sunder;And I shall spurn, as vilest dust,The warld’s wealth and grandeur. And do I hear my Jeannie ownThat equal transports move her?I ask for dearest life, alone,That I may live to love her. Thus in my arms, wi’ a’ thy charms,I […]

Not of the sunlight,Not of the moonlight,Nor of the starlight!O young Mariner,Down to the haven,Call your companions,Launch your vessel,And crowd your canvas,And ere it vanishesOver the margin,After it, follow it,Follow the Gleam. —Merlin The grandfather of Tennyson had two sons, the elder boy, according to Clement Scott, being “both wilful and commonplace.” Now, of course, […]

The stimulus subsided. The paroxysms ended in prostration. Some took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury bench, the Ministers reminded me of those marine landscapes not unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes; not […]

Beneath the blaze of a tropical sun the mountain peaks are the Thrones of Frost, this through the absence of objects to reflect the rays. What no one with us shares, seems scarce our own–we need another to reflect our thoughts. —Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel T. Coleridge was a thinker, and thinkers are so rarely […]

Let no man writeThy epitaph, Emmett; thou shalt not goWithout thy funeral strain! O young and good,And wise, though erring here, thou shalt not goUnhonored or unsung. And better thusBeneath that undiscriminating stroke,Better to fall, than to have lived to mourn,As sure thou wouldst, in misery and remorse,Thine own disastrous triumph * * * *How […]

Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,My bane and antidote, are both before me.This in a moment brings me to an end;But this informs me I shall never die.The soul, secured in her existence, smilesAt the drawn dagger, and defies its point.The stars shall fade away, the sun himselfGrow dim with age, and […]

I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;A palace and a prison on each hand:I saw from out the wave her structures riseAs from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand:A thousand years, their cloudy wings expandAround me, and a dying Glory smilesO’er the far times, when many a subject landLook’d to the winged Lion’s […]

The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of the age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact, he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not authenticated by sufficient testimony. But by judicious selection, rejection and arrangement, he gives to truth those attractions which have been usurped by […]

If ever this nation should produce a genius sufficient to acquire to us the honorable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in this history of art, among the very first of that rising name. —Sir Joshua Reynolds Most biographies are written with intent either to make the […]

See the hovering ships on the wharves! The Dannebrog waves, the workmen sit in circle under the shade at their frugal breakfasts; but foremost stands the principal figure in this picture; it is a boy who cuts with a bold hand the lifelike features in the wooden image for the beakhead of the vessel. It […]

In Leonardo’s “Treatise on Painting,” only one contemporary is named–Sandro Botticelli…. The Pagan and Christian world mingle in the work of Botticelli; but the man himself belonged to an age that is past and gone–an age that flourished long before men recorded history. His best efforts seem to spring out of a heart that forgot […]

The world, perhaps, contains no other example of a genius so universal as Leonardo’s, so creative, so incapable of self- contentment, so athirst for the infinite, so naturally refined, so far in advance of his own and subsequent ages. His pictures express incredible sensibility and mental power; they overflow with unexpressed ideas and emotions. Alongside […]