History presents the pleasantest features of poetry and fiction,--the majesty of the epic, the moving accidents of the drama, the surprises and moral of the romance. Wallace is a ruder Hector; Robinson Crusoe is not stranger that Croesus; the Knights… — Robert Aris Willmott Copy Share Image
A good reader is nearly as rare as a good writer. People bring their prejudices, whether friendly or adverse. They are lamp and spectacles, lighting and magnifying the page. — Robert Aris Willmott Copy Share Image
In literature and art memory is a synonym for invention. It is the life-blood of imagination, which faints and dies when the veins are… — Robert Aris Willmott Copy Share Image
Poetical taste is the only magician whose wand is not broken. No hand, except its own, can dissolve the fabric of beauty in which… — Robert Aris Willmott Copy Share Image
Some gifted adventurer is always sailing round the world of art and science, to bring home costly merchandise from every port. — Robert Aris Willmott Copy Share Image
Taste is not stationary. It grows every day, and is improved by cultivation, as a good temper is refined by religion. In its most… — Robert Aris Willmott Copy Share Image
The gloomy recess of an ecclesiastical library is like a harbor, into which a far-traveling curiosity has sailed with its freight, and cast anchor.… — Robert Aris Willmott Copy Share Image
Romance is the truth of imagination and boyhood. Homer's horses clear the world at a bound. The child's eye needs no horizon to its… — Robert Aris Willmott Copy Share Image
The advice of a scholar, whose piles of learning were set on fire by imagination, is never to be forgotten. Proportion an hour's reflection… — Robert Aris Willmott Copy Share Image
The drama embraces and applies all the beauties and decorations of poetry. The sister arts attend and adorn it. Painting, architecture, and music are… — Robert Aris Willmott Copy Share Image
From numberless books the fluttering reader, idle and inconstant, bears away the bloom that only clings to the outer leaf; but genius has its… — Robert Aris Willmott Copy Share Image
