| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: said, his immortal works refute him. He had not only poetical,
but dramatic genius; and his "Emilia Galotti" has kept the stage
until to-day. Nevertheless, he knew well what he meant when he
said that he was more of a critic than a poet. His genius was
mainly of the critical order; and his great work, "Nathan the
Wise," was certainly constructed rather than created. It was
intended to convey a doctrine, and was carefully shaped for the
purpose. And when we have pronounced it the greatest of all poems
that have been written for a set purpose, and admit of being
expressed in a definite formula, we have classified it with
sufficient accuracy.
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: and the old Roman, EHEU! I have no doubt we should die of shame
and grief at the indignities offered us by age, if it were not that
we see so many others as badly or worse off than ourselves. We
always compare ourselves with our contemporaries.
[I was interrupted in my reading just here. Before I began at the
next breakfast, I read them these verses; - I hope you will like
them, and get a useful lesson from them.]
THE LAST BLOSSOM.
Though young no more, we still would dream
Of beauty's dear deluding wiles;
The leagues of life to graybeards seem
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: Paris, and strove to reclaim her to his chilly fold. Frightened by the
exhortations of this priest, a man of about eight-and-thirty, who
brought with him, into the circle of the enlightened and tolerant
Paris clergy, the bitter provincial catholicism and the inflexible
bigotry which fetter timid souls with endless exactions, Madame de
Granville did penance and returned from her Jansenist errors.
It would be tiresome to describe minutely all the circumstances which
insensibly brought disaster on this household; it will be enough to
relate the simple facts without giving them in strict order of time.
The first misunderstanding between the young couple was, however, a
serious one.
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