| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: all beauty, summit and crown of discretion, treasure house of grace,
depositary of virtue, and finally, ideal of all that is good,
honourable, and delectable in this world! What is thy grace doing now?
Art thou, perchance, mindful of thy enslaved knight who of his own
free will hath exposed himself to so great perils, and all to serve
thee? Give me tidings of her, oh luminary of the three faces!
Perhaps at this moment, envious of hers, thou art regarding her,
either as she paces to and fro some gallery of her sumptuous
palaces, or leans over some balcony, meditating how, whilst preserving
her purity and greatness, she may mitigate the tortures this
wretched heart of mine endures for her sake, what glory should
Don Quixote |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: request of my audience. Least of all, perhaps, ought I to have presumed
to publish them, as I have done, at Cambridge, where any inaccuracy or
sciolism (and that such defects exist in these pages, I cannot but fear)
would be instantly detected, and severely censured: but nevertheless,
it seemed to me that Cambridge was the fittest place in which they could
see the light, because to Cambridge I mainly owe what little right
method or sound thought may be found in them, or indeed, in anything
which I have ever written. In the heyday of youthful greediness and
ambition, when the mind, dazzled by the vastness and variety of the
universe, must needs know everything, or rather know about everything,
at once and on the spot, too many are apt, as I have been in past years,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sarrasine by Honore de Balzac: which illustrated the extreme violence of his temper. When the supper
became a debauch, the guests began to sing, inspired by the Peralta
and the Pedro-Ximenes. There were fascinating duets, Calabrian
ballads, Spanish /sequidillas/, and Neapolitan /canzonettes/.
Drunkenness was in all eyes, in the music, in the hearts and voices of
the guests. There was a sudden overflow of bewitching vivacity, of
cordial unconstraint, of Italian good nature, of which no words can
convey an idea to those who know only the evening parties of Paris,
the routs of London, or the clubs of Vienna. Jests and words of love
flew from side to side like bullets in a battle, amid laughter,
impieties, invocations to the Blessed Virgin or the /Bambino/. One man
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