Edward Young's "Conjectures on Original Composition" in England and GermanyF. C. Stechert Company, Incorporated, 1917 - 127 pages |
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Addison admiration Alten ancient authors Aristotle beauties blank verse Cato Cibber Colley Cibber creative power Demosthenes Dichter divine dramatic Dryden edition Edward Young Empfindung English enthusiasm excellence Fairy Queen fame faults Feuer fire Geist Gellert Genius and Writings Germany Geschmack give glory Hamann heart Herder Homer human ideas Iliad imagination imitation immortal inspiration invention Joseph Warton judgment Kants Lehre kind können Kunst language learning Lehre vom Genie Leonard Welsted Lessing letter literary criticism literary rules literature Longinus Milton mind modern muss nature noble Observations Original Composition passages passions perfect Pindar poem poesy poet poetic poetry praise Preface Prometheus quotes Regeln renown rime says Schlapp Schleswigsche Schleswigsche Literaturbriefe schönen Shakespeare Sir William Temple soul speaks Spect Spingarn spirit sublime talents Theophilus Cibber Thomas Warton thought translation treatise true genius unsere verse VIII virtue weniger Winkelmann Writings of Pope Young Young's Conjectures Young's essay
Popular passages
Page 82 - Great wits sometimes may gloriously offend, And rise to faults true critics dare not mend; From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part, And snatch a grace beyond the reach of art, Which, without passing thro' the judgment, gains The heart, and all its end at once attains.
Page 94 - But as he is convinced that the fashion of moralizing in verse, has been carried 'too far^ and as he looks upon invention and imagination to be the chief faculties of a poet...
Page 88 - It furnishes art with all her materials, and without it judgment itself can at best but " steal wisely : " for art is only like a prudent steward that lives on managing the riches of nature.' Whatever praises may be given to works of judgment, there is not even a single beauty in them to which the invention...
Page 78 - In short, our souls are at present delightfully lost and bewildered in a pleasing delusion, and we •walk about like the enchanted hero in a romance, who sees beautiful castles, woods, and meadows; and at the same time hears the warbling of birds, and the purling of streams; but, upon the finishing of some secret spell, the fantastic scene breaks up, and the disconsolate knight finds himself on a barren heath, or in a solitary desert.
Page 116 - Of genius there are two species, an earlier and a later; or call them infantine and adult. An adult genius comes out of nature's hand, as Pallas out of Jove's head, at full growth and mature: Shakespeare's genius was of this kind: on the contrary, Swift stumbled at the threshold, and set out for distinction on feeble knees.
Page 102 - From the same fiery temper proceeds the loftiness of his expressions and the perpetual torrent of his verse, where the barrenness of his subject does not too much constrain the quickness of his fancy.
Page 89 - We cannot indeed have a single image in the fancy that did not make its first entrance through the sight; but we have the power of retaining, altering and compounding those images, which we have once received, into all the varieties of picture and vision that are most agreeable to the imagination ; for by this faculty a man in a dungeon is capable of entertaining himself with scenes and landscapes more beautiful than any that can be found in the whole compass of nature.
Page 98 - The loves of Dido and ^Eneas are only copies of what has passed between other persons. Adam and Eve, before the fall, are a different species from that of mankind, who are descended from them ; and none but a poet of the most unbounded invention, and the most exquisite judgment, could have filled their conversation and behaviour with so many apt circumstances during their state of innocence.
Page 104 - Among all the Poets of this Kind our English are much the best, by what I have yet seen, whether it be that we abound with more Stories of this Nature, or that the Genius of our Country is fitter for this sort of Poetry.
Page 45 - Imitations are of two kinds; one of nature, one of authors: The first we call Originals, and confine the term Imitation to the second.