Melville brought to the task a sound knowledge of actual whaling, much curious learning in the literature of the subject, and, above all, an imagination which worked with great power upon the facts of his own experience. — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
Guy Rivers, a conventional piece as regards the love affair which makes a part of the plot, is a tale of deadly strife between… — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
In fiction, too, after the death of Cooper the main tendency for nearly a generation was away from the conquest of new borders to… — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
Although by 1851 tales of adventure had begun to seem antiquated, they had rendered a large service to the course of literature: they had… — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
The race of man, while sheep in credulity, are wolves for conformity. — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
The most familiar quotations are the most likely to be misquoted. Some misquotations are still variable, some have settled down to false versions that… — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
The first writers are first and the rest, in the long run, nowhere but in anthologies. — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
IT is mere coincidence that Cooper was born in the year which produced The Power of Sympathy and that when he died Uncle Tom's… — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
Familiar life, tending to sordidness, had been succeeded by remote life, generally idealized; historical detail had been brought in to teach readers who were… — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
The two most common charges against the older fiction, that it pleased wickedly and that it taught nothing, had broken down before the discovery,… — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
The region west of the Mississippi continued in the popular mind to be a strange land for which the reports of explorers and travellers… — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
Melville brought to the task a sound knowledge of actual whaling, much curious learning in the literature of the subject, and, above all, an… — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
It is obvious that no difficulty in the way of world government can match the danger of a world without it. — Carl Clinton Van Doren Copy Share Image
