Web Counter says you are visitor
number
| Style | Always flexible and harmonious, usually decorated and luminous; but ever liable to youth's unripeness and inequality; commonly easy and vigorous; occasionally, running into trivial conceits and remote comparisons; now stately or animated; now cramped or irksome; here direct, here overloaded, as of a nimble wit that must regard an object under all its forms, delighting in endless excursions, and perhaps somewhat too studious of display. |
| Rank | Less potent and comprehensive than other spirits of his age, but more beautiful and engaging than any ... a soldier, a gentleman, and a gifted writer, whose vigor, variety and idiom in prose mark a decided advance. Largely conspicuous in life, his merits are apt to be lost on the modern reader in consequence of their bedizened dress; for, though his thoughts were noble and his feeling genuine, his fancy was artificial, and tended incessantly to lift his rhetoric on stilts. He will always maintain, however, a high place as an aesthetic critic, nor an inconsiderable one as a sonneteer. Into what final mould his powers would have run, to what heights they might have attained, had they not been cut off so prematurely, is a matter for speculation. |
| Character | So rare a union of attractions is difficult of definition. 'He hath
had,' was the simple testimonial of a friend, 'as great love in this life,
and as many tears for his death, as ever any had.' His conception of chivalry
-- 'high-erected thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy' -- is the fitting
description of his own manliness, and the charm that made him the idol
of court and camp. Scholarly, aspiring, brilliant, ingenuous, brave, and
gentle.
The closing scenes of his life display the crowning qualities of his character, -- magnanimity and seriousness. On the field of carnage, mortally wounded, and perishing of thirst, a cup of water is brought to him; but as it touches his fevered lips he sees by his side a soldier still more desperately hurt, who is looking at the water with anguish in his face; and he says, 'Give it to this man; his necessity is yet greater than mine.' |
| Influence | A work so extensively perused as was the Arcadia must have contributed not a little to liberalize and dignify English speech, and to create, among writers, a bold and imaginative use of words. From him, as from a fountain, the most vigorous shoots of the period drew something of their verdure and strength. Shakespeare was his attentive reader, copied his diction, transferred his ideas - above all, his fine conceptions of female character ... The moral charm of his character wrought blessedly in life; and the noble feeling, the lofty aspiration, that lives in and exhales from the record of his heart and brain, is a part of the breath of human-kind, to nourish pastoral delight, pure friendship, and magnanimous thought. |
Web Counter says you are visitor
number