Vulgar words in Essays Æsthetical (Page 1)
This book at a glance
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~ ~ ~ Sentence 750 ~ ~ ~
In a paper on Schlosser's "Literary History of the Eighteenth Century" he reaffirms--what cannot be too strongly insisted on--the falsity of the common opinion that Swift's style is, for all writers, a model of excellence, showing how it is only fitted to the kind of subjects on which Swift wrote, and concluding with this characteristic passage: "That nearly all the blockheads with whom I have at any time had the pleasure of conversing upon the subject of style (and pardon me for saying that men of the most sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz., poetry and style, to talk _most_ like blockheads) have invariably regarded Swift's style not as if _relatively_, (i.e., _given_ a proper subject), but as if _absolutely_ good--good unconditionally, no matter what the subject.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,342 ~ ~ ~
The experience one may get in brothels and "hells," in consorting with pimps and knaves, has in it lessons of virtue and morality,--for those who can extract them; but even for these few it is a very partial teaching; and for the many who cannot read so spiritually, whether in the book or the brothel, the experience is demoralizing and deadening.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,428 ~ ~ ~
To all sane men is allotted a complete endowment of mental faculties, of capacities of intellect and feeling; the degree to which these are energized, are injected with nervous flame, makes the difference between a genius and a blockhead.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,647 ~ ~ ~
Our American magniloquence--the tendency to which is getting more and more subdued--comes partly from national youthfulness, partly from license, that bastard of liberty, and partly from the geographical and the present, and still more the prospective, political grandeur of the country, which Coleridge somewhere says is to be "England in glorious magnification."