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James Russell Lowell, Among my books, Milton. (search)
any form in Milton's poetry before Paradise Lost, and that it is exactly so with the word female Is it any way remarkable that such words as Adam, God, Heaven, Hell, Paradise, Sin, Satan, and Serpent should occur very frequently in Paradise Lost? Would it not rather have been surprising that they should not? Such trifles at best come under the head of what old Warner would have called cumber-minds. It is time to protest against this minute style of editing and commenting great posts. Gulliver's microscopic eye saw on the fair skins of the Brobdignagian maids of honor a mole here and there as broad as a trencher, and we shrink from a cup of the purest Hippocrene after the critic's solar microscope has betrayed to us the grammatical, syntactical, and, above all, hypothetical monsters that sprawl in every drop of it. When a poet has been so much edited as Milton, the temptation of whosoever undertakes a new edition to see what is not to be seen becomes great in proportion as he fin
Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 27. (ed. Reverend J. William Jones), The monument to Mosby's men. (search)
ted by war correspondents as Mosby's men were as purely ideal creations as Blue-Beard and Jack-the-Giant-Killer. Yet the tales told about them made a lasting impression just as the kissing of pilgrims has worn away stones. They were as pure inventions as the fictions of Titus Oates. We all dislike to see our images broken and to part with cherished illusions. It is probable that the gods of mythology, and the legendary heroes of antiquity had a common-place origin. I still love to read Gulliver and the Arabian Nights, and once thought it was impiety to even doubt they were true. A reporter once asked my opinion of Weyler. I answered that I had never read anything worse about Weyler than I had read about myself, and that if Weyler wouldn't believe what he had heard about me, I wouldn't believe what I had heard about him. Weyler, in reply to American criticisms, said that he learned the art of war in the Shenandoah Valley. He didn't learn it from me. But General Grant admits in h
The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 5. (ed. John Greenleaf Whittier), Tales and Sketches (search)
Abigail Becker. He found her with her six children, all thinly clad and barefooted in the bitter cold. She stood there six feet or more of substantial womanhood,—not in her stockings, for she had none,—a veritable daughter of Anak, broad-bosomed, large-limbed, with great, patient blue eyes, whose very smile had a certain pathos, as if one saw in it her hard and weary life-experinence. She might have passed for an amiable giantess, or one of those much-developed maids of honor who tossed Gulliver from hand to hand in the court of Brobdingnag. The thing that most surprised her visitor was the childlike simplicity of the woman, her utter unconsciousness of deserving anything for an action that seemed to her merely a matter of course. When he expressed his admiration with all the warmth of a generous nature, she only opened her wide blue eyes still wider with astonishment. Well, I don't know, she said, slowly, as if pondering the matter for the first time,— I don't know as I did <
Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 25., Old ships and ship-building days of Medford. (search)
10 he demanded that Alexander should stop it. Alexander refused. Then began Napoleon's preparations to invade Russia. Thus the Baltic trade of Massachusetts played an important, if unconscious, part in the chain of events that led Napoleon to Moscow and to St. Helena. Morison. Maritime History of Massachusetts There were a number of Medford ships in the East India trade at this time. The ship Gulliver, built in 1806 by Thatcher Magoun for Joseph Lee, Jr., of Boston, was one. The Gulliver is reported February 13, 1810, at the Vineyard as arriving from Calcutta. Her cargo is not given, but other vessels from that port brought indigo, ginger, and cotton and silk goods. Also, February 23, 1810. Left at Calcutta, October 8, the brig Gipsey, Linzee, to sail in three or four weeks. The Gipsey, also, was built in 809 at the yard of Thatcher Magoun, for Joseph Lee, Jr., of Boston. May 8, 1810. Sailed brig Gipsey, Pulcifer for India; passenger, Capt. George Lee. August 28
The Daily Dispatch: March 18, 1861., [Electronic resource], House of Delegates. (search)
"No man is a Hero to his Valet." It is a very dangerous thing to come too near a famous character. It kills romance, like a frost upon first flowers of spring. No skin is so smooth that it can bear inspection through a microscope. Gulliver might have admired the gigantic proportions of the Bro ags if seen at a safe distance. Little Glumdalditch might have appeared to him the very model of a colossal female. But when he became her pet and plaything, he was sadly disgusted with the animalculæ creeping out and in from her cheeks, and no more visible to those of her own class than worms are upon the cheek of beauty. If we were a great man-- a poet, or a historian, or any of the things that are wont to run men and women mad — we should prefer to live as secluded a life as possible. Certainly we think Shakespeare loses nothing by the twilight, in which his personal entity is enveloped, and we are not sure that Johnson gains much by the full glare of noonday in which his huge fig
The Daily Dispatch: February 13, 1862., [Electronic resource], $10 reward. (search)
g two-thirds of the rank and file of the British army, they fight bravely for a Government which for the last three centuries has oppressed and plundered their native land. They will do the same in Canada, where they have few causes for dissatisfaction, and enjoy rights they could not have in Ireland. But how will it be in Ireland? There is no manner of doubt that the great mass of the Irish people are disloyal; but there is no way in which such disloyalty can find effective action. Gulliver bound was not more powerless. Ireland is bound, disarmed, and paralyzed. America is too far off to give her any aid. Ten thousand men safely landed on her shores, with an hundred thousand stand of arms, might raise a formidable rebellion, but the end would be all the same. --Suppose the country conquered, and held for three months, it would yet be surrounded and reduced. Ireland has nothing to hope from America — too distant, and with too small a naval force. And all this time, you obse
The Daily Dispatch: June 11, 1862., [Electronic resource], List of casualties of the 23d meet. (search)
rought out, that Halleck's dispatches to the War Department at Washington was an unqualified lie, and on a par with those pleasant little fictions he wrote about Shiloh and Island No.10. One admirable point about the Herald is, that it never contradicts, but allows its Manichaean tales to go on from day to days as if the whole country believed them.--Its audacity is perfectly refreshing. Illustrative of the gullibility of the Yankees, we have dim recollections of the "moon hoax," many years ago, which made the reputation of the sun newspaper, then struggling for an existence, and caused the whole country to stand erectis auribus at the newly-discovered wonders. But if that famous canard beats the recent stories of the Herald, or makes a larger draft upon the credulity of the people, it is not evident from our point of view. --Bennett should republish a file of his paper as a second volume of "Gulliver's Travels," or incorporate his "Situation." articles into a book of fancy tales.
The Daily Dispatch: June 27, 1862., [Electronic resource], From Fredericksburg. (search)
cClellan ordered them to be expelled from the army, he showed his miserable jealousy of a genius for Monochasium superior even to his own. To find his most mendacious reports transcended by the exaggerations of a newspaper letter was more than he could bear.--Thus, for example, when he declared that if the battle of Chickahominy had begun two hours earlier he would have been in Richmond by night, he might naturally have felicitated himself upon the production of a lie which the invention of Gulliver would despair of rivalling. And yet, scarcely had he time to flatter himself upon this unapproachable achievement, before a letter appeared in one of the Northern newspapers, in which the writer declared that the rebel troops were actually chased into Richmond at the point of the bayonet! How McClellan must have blushed and sickened at seeing himself thus beaten at the only weapons by which he has distinguished himself during this whole war! Why had he never thought of rounding off his d
The Daily Dispatch: November 1, 1862., [Electronic resource], Further from the North. (search)
o a system and absolutely glory in their shame. And yet nothing is plainer, more self-evident, and undeniable. Because the Yankee lie is not a bungling, palpable lie, thousands swallow it down as a truth; whereas, like all their other inventions, it is ingenious, a perfect counterfeit, the most complete imitation in its minutest details of the genuine currency. A newspaper man who would put in circulation an ordinary lie would be sent at once by Seward to Fort Warren. The habit of lying has become so strong with them that they cannot even describe natural scenery without the aid of fiction. The marvellous representation lately given by one of their newspaper correspondents of Thoroughfare Gap is an instance of their inability to speak the truth on any subject. The people of the Confederacy should always keep this truth before them when reading paragraphs from Yankee newspapers. The "Arabian Nights Entertainments" and "Gulliver's Travels" are veracious narratives in comparison.
The Daily Dispatch: January 28, 1865., [Electronic resource], The Army of Tennessee. (search)
we could have heard six weeks ago what we hear now! A great disappointment, a great misfortune at the best, but not the irreparable calamity that so many imagined. The Army of Tennessee, under such leaders as Johnston or Beauregard, will still, with the blessing of God, retrieve its laurels. There is no reliance on Yankee accounts of the condition of Confederate armies. Such accounts, and all others, from Yankee sources, when transferred to Confederate columns, should be read as so many Gulliver's Travels and adventures of Munchausen. But a lie when put in type seems to have a stronger fascination. We are prone to believe a thing when in print, that we would have no faith in, in manuscript or by word of mouth. We should be careful how we put confidence in all we read. The Devil may, after all, have had something to do with Dr. Faustus. The Army of Tennessee, under proper leadership, will yet vindicate its claims to the gratitude and admiration of the country. Its patient e
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