CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Importance of a study of Scott's critical and scholarly work—Connection between his creative work and his criticism—Chronological view of his literary career. Scott's critical work has become inconspicuous because of his predominant fame as an imaginative writer; but what it loses on this account it perhaps gains in the special interest attaching to criticism... more...

CHAPTER I EARLY YEARS Robert Hart began his romantic life in simple circumstances. He was born on the 20th day of February, 1835, in a little white house with green shutters on Dungannon Street, in the small Irish town of Portadown, County Armagh, and was the eldest of twelve children. His mother, a daughter of Mr. John Edgar, of Ballybreagh, must have been a delightful woman, all tenderness and... more...

The First Hour When I was actually experiencing the thrill, it came delightfully, however, blended with a threat that proclaimed the imminent consequence of dismay. I appreciated the coming of the thrill, as a rare and unexpected “dramatic moment.” I savoured and enjoyed it as a real adventure suddenly presented in the midst of the common business of life. I imaginatively transplanted the scene... more...

CHAPTER I JOHN HAS AN ADVENTURE The day had been very hot even for the Transvaal, where the days still know how to be hot in the autumn, although the neck of the summer is broken—especially when the thunderstorms hold off for a week or two, as they do occasionally. Even the succulent blue lilies—a variety of the agapanthus which is so familiar to us in English greenhouses—hung their long... more...

APPRECIATION AND INTRODUCTION The Religio Medici is a universally recognised English classic.  And the Urn-Burial, the Christian Morals, and the Letter to a Friend are all quite worthy to take their stand beside the Religio Medici.  Sir Thomas Browne made several other contributions to English literature besides these masterpieces; but it is on the Religio Medici, and on what Sir Thomas himself calls... more...

INTRODUCTION As yet the only woman winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the prize awarded to Kipling, Maeterlinck, and Hauptmann, is the Swedish author of this book, "Jerusalem." The Swedish Academy, in recognizing Miss Selma Lagerlöf, declared that they did so "for reason of the noble idealism, the wealth of imagination, the soulful quality of style, which characterize her... more...

Sir Mortimer I   ut if we return not from our adventure," ended Sir Mortimer, "if the sea claims us, and upon his sandy floor, amid his Armida gardens, the silver-singing mermaiden marvel at that wreckage which was once a tall ship and at those bones which once were animate,--if strange islands know our resting-place, sunk for evermore in huge and most unkindly forests,--if, being but pawns in... more...

CHAPTER I. OF THE LINEAGE AND CONDITION OF SIR JOHN CONSTANTINE. "I have laboured to make a covenant with myself, that affection may not press upon judgment: for I suppose there is no man, that hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness, but his affection stands to a continuance of a noble name and house, and would take hold of a twig or twine-thread to uphold it: and yet time hath his... more...

NOTICE It has been constantly observed by writers of travels that to gain credence for any of the strange incidents of their journeys, they have been compelled to omit many of the most eventful passages of their lives. "The gentlemen," and still more the ladies, "who live at home at ease" take, indeed, but little account of those adventures which are the daily lot of more precarious... more...

James Young Simpson, who will ever be remembered as the discoverer of the pain-annulling power of chloroform, was born in the year 1811, at a period when there was room for a hero in the practice of the healing art in the British Islands. It is true that in the seventeenth century Harvey had laid bare the great fact of the circulation of the blood and the practical Thomas Sydenham had swept aside the... more...