Quotes4study

In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance he was just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and seemed occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something special of his own. The difference between his former and present self was that formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was said to him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly seeking to distinguish something at a distance. At present he still forgot what was said to him and still did not see what was before his eyes, but he now looked with a scarcely perceptible and seemingly ironic smile at what was before him and listened to what was said, though evidently seeing and hearing something quite different. Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so people had been inclined to avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of life always played round his lips, and sympathy for others, shone in his eyes with a questioning look as to whether they were as contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his presence.

Leo Tolstoy     War and Peace

Pierre had failed to notice Natasha because he did not at all expect to see her there, but he had failed to recognize her because the change in her since he last saw her was immense. She had grown thin and pale, but that was not what made her unrecognizable; she was unrecognizable at the moment he entered because on that face whose eyes had always shone with a suppressed smile of the joy of life, now when he first entered and glanced at her there was not the least shadow of a smile: only her eyes were kindly attentive and sadly interrogative.

Leo Tolstoy     War and Peace

BARNES, WILLIAM (1800-1886), the Dorsetshire poet, was born on the 22nd of February 1800, at Rushay, near Pentridge in Dorset, the son of John Barnes and Grace Scott, of the farmer class. He was a delicate child, in direct contrast to a strong race of forebears, and inherited from his mother a refined, retiring disposition and a love for books. He went to school at Sturminster Newton, where he was considered the clever boy of the school; and when a solicitor named Dashwood applied to the master for a quick-witted boy to join him as pupil, Barnes was selected for the post. He worked with the village parson in his spare hours at classics and studied music under the organist. In 1818 he left Sturminster for the office of one Coombs at Dorchester, where he continued his evening education with another kindly clergyman. He also made great progress in the art of wood-engraving, and with the money he received for a series of blocks for a work called _Walks about Dorchester_, he printed and published his first book, _Orra, a Lapland Tale_, in 1822. In the same year he became engaged to Julia Miles, the daughter of an excise officer. In 1823 he took a school at Mere in Wiltshire, and four years later married and settled in Chantry House, a fine old Tudor mansion in that town. The school grew in numbers, and Barnes occupied all his spare time in assiduous study, reading during these years authors so diverse in character as Herodotus, Sallust, Ovid, Petrarch, Buffon and Burns. He also began to write poetry, and printed many of his verses in the _Dorset County Chronicle_. His chief studies, however, were philological; and in 1829 he published _An Etymological Glossary of English Words of Foreign Derivation_. In 1832 a strolling company of actors visited Mere, and Barnes wrote a farce, _The Honest Thief_, which they produced, and a comedy which was played at Wincanton. Barnes also wrote a number of educational books, such as _Elements of Perspective, Outlines of Geography_, and in 1833 first began his poems in the Dorsetshire dialect, among them the two eclogues "The 'Lotments" and "A Bit o' Sly Coorten," in the pages of the local paper. In 1835 he left Mere, and returned to Dorchester, where he started another school, removing in 1837 into larger quarters. In 1844 he published _Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect_. Three years later Barnes took holy orders, and was appointed to the cure of Whitcombe, 3 m. from Dorchester. He had been for some years upon the books of St John's College, Cambridge, and took the degree of B.D. in 1850. He resigned Whitcombe in 1852, finding the work too hard in connexion with his mastership; and in June of that year he sustained a severe bereavement by the death of his wife. Continuing his studies in the science of language, he published his _Philological Grammar_ in 1854, drawing examples from more than sixty languages. For the copyright of this erudite work he received £5. The second series of dialect poems, _Hwomely Rhymes_, appeared in 1859 (2nd ed. 1863). _Hwomely Rhymes_ contained some of his best-known pieces, and in the year of its publication he first began to give readings from his works. As their reputation grew he travelled all over the country, delighting large audiences with his quaint humour and natural pathos. In 1861 he was awarded a civil list pension of £70 a year, and in the next year published _Tiw_, the most striking of his philological studies, in which the Teutonic roots in the English language are discussed. Barnes had a horror of Latin forms in English, and would have substituted English compounds for many Latin forms in common use. In 1862 he broke up his school, and [v.03 p.0414] removed to the rectory of Winterborne Came, to which he was presented by his old friend, Captain Seymour Dawson Damer. Here he worked continuously at verse and prose, contributing largely to the magazines. A new series of _Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect_ appeared in 1862, and he was persuaded in 1868 to publish a series of _Poems of Rural Life in Common English_, which was less successful than his dialect poems. These latter were collected into a single volume in 1879, and on the 7th of October 1886 Barnes died at Winterborne Came. His poetry is essentially English in character; no other writer has given quite so simple and sincere a picture of the homely life and labour of rural England. His work is full of humour and the clean, manly joy of life; and its rusticity is singularly allied to a literary sense and to high technical finish. He is indeed the Victorian Theocritus; and, as English country life is slowly swept away before the advance of the railway and the telegraph, he will be more and more read for his warm-hearted and fragrant record of rustic love and piety. His original and suggestive books on the English language, which are valuable in spite of their eccentricities, include:--_Se Gefylsta: an Anglo-Saxon Delectus_ (1849); _A Grammar and Glossary of the Dorset Dialect_ (1864); _An Outline of English Speech-Craft_ (1878); and _A Glossary of the Dorset Dialect_ (Dorchester, 1886). Entry: BARNES

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 "Banks" to "Bassoon"     1910-1911

DOSTOIEVSKY, FEODOR MIKHAILOVICH (1821-1881), Russian author, born at Moscow, on the 30th of October 1821, was the second son of a retired military surgeon of a decayed noble family. He was educated at Moscow and at the military engineering academy at St Petersburg, which he left in 1843 with the grade of sub-lieutenant. Next year his father died, and he resigned his commission in order to devote himself to literature--thus commencing a long struggle with ill-health and penury. In addition to the old Russian masters Gogol and Pushkin, Balzac and George Sand supplied him with literary ideals. He knew little of Dickens, but his first story is thoroughly Dickensian in character. The hero is a Russian "Tom Pinch," who entertains a pathetic, humble adoration for a fair young girl, a solitary waif like himself. Characteristically the Russian story ends in "tender gloom." The girl marries a middle-aged man of property; the hero dies of a broken heart, and his funeral is described in lamentable detail. The germ of all Dostoievsky's imaginative work may be discovered here. The story was submitted in manuscript to the Russian critic, Bielinski, and excited his astonishment by its power over the emotions. It appeared in the course of 1846 in the _Recueil de Saint-Pétersbourg_, under the title of "Poor People." An English version, _Poor Folk_, with an introduction by Mr George Moore, appeared in 1894. The successful author became a regular contributor of short tales to the _Annals of the Country_, a monthly periodical conducted by Kraevsky; but he was wretchedly paid, and his work, though revealing extraordinary power and intensity, commonly lacks both finish and proportion. Poverty and physical suffering robbed him of the joy of life and filled him with bitter thoughts and morbid imaginings. During 1847 he became an enthusiastic member of the revolutionary reunions of the political agitator, Petrachevski. Many of the students and younger members did little more than discuss the theories of Fourier and other economists at these gatherings. Exaggerated reports were eventually carried to the police, and on the 23rd of April 1849 Dostoievsky and his brother, with thirty other suspected personages, were arrested. After a short examination by the secret police they were lodged in the fortress of St Peter and St Paul at St Petersburg, in which confinement Feodor wrote his story _A Little Hero_. On the 22nd of December 1849 the accused were all condemned to death and conveyed in vans to a large scaffold in the Simonovsky Place. As the soldiers were preparing to carry out the sentence, the prisoners were informed that their penalty was commuted to exile in Siberia. The novelist's sentence was, four years in Siberia and enforced military service in the ranks for life. On Christmas eve 1849 he commenced the long journey to Omsk, and remained in Siberia, "like a man buried alive, nailed down in his coffin," for four terrible years. His Siberian experiences are graphically narrated in a volume to which he gave the name of _Recollections of a Dead-House_ (1858). It was known in an English translation as _Buried Alive in Siberia_ (1881; another version, 1888). His release only subjected him to fresh indignities as a common soldier at Semipalatinsk; but in 1858, through the intercession of an old schoolfellow, General Todleben, he was made an under-officer; and in 1859, upon the accession of Alexander II., he was finally recalled from exile. In 1858 he had married a widow, Madame Isaiev, but she died at St Petersburg in 1867 after a somewhat stormy married life. Entry: DOSTOIEVSKY

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 6 "Dodwell" to "Drama"     1910-1911

By far the longest and the most famous poem of this series is attributed to Aneurin. This spelling of his name is comparatively modern, and in the old manuscripts it is given as Aneirin. The later form seems to have been affected by the form _eurin_, "golden," and to owe the continuation of the misspelling to a belief that the poet and Gildas, whose name is supposed to be the Latin form of the Old English _gylden_, were one and the same person. This poem, called the _Gododin_ (with notes by T. Stephens and published by Prof. Powel for the Cymmrodorion Society, London, 1888), is extremely obscure, both on account of its vocabulary and its topography and allusions. It deals mainly with "the men who went to Cattraeth," which is supposed to have been fought between the Britons and the Scots under Aedan, king of Dalriada, and the pagan Saxons and their British subjects in _Devyr_ (Deira) and _Bryneich_ (Bernicia), and the half-pagan Picts of Guotodin, a district corresponding to the northern half of the Lothians along the Firth of Forth. Critics have attempted with partial success to cast some light on its obscurity by supposing that the poem as a whole is made up of two parts dealing with two distinct battles. This may or may not be, but there is no doubt that many of the stanzas of the poem as found in the manuscript are not in their proper places, and a critical readjustment of the different stanzas and lines would do much towards solving its problem. It seems probable, too, that the original nucleus of the poem was handed down orally, and recited or sung by the bards and minstrels at the courts of different noblemen. It thus became the common stock-in-trade of the Welsh rhapsodist, and in time the bards, using it as a kind of framework, added to it here and there pieces of their own composition formed on the original model, especially when the heroes named happened to be the traditional forefathers of their patrons, and occasionally introduced the names of new heroes and new places as it suited their purpose; and all this seems to have been done in early times. Older fragments dealing too with the legendary heroes of the Welsh were afterwards incorporated with the poem, and some of these fragments undoubtedly preserve the orthographical and grammatical forms of the 9th century. So that, on the whole, it seems as fruitless to look for a definite record of historical events in this poem as it would be to do so in the Homeric poems, but like them, though it cannot any longer be regarded as a correct and definite account of a particular battle or war, it still stands to this day the epic of the warriors of its own nation. It matters not whether these heroes fought at far Cattraeth or on some other forgotten field of disaster; this song still reflects, as a true national epic, the sad defeats and the brave but desperate rallies of the early Welsh. Like the music of the Welsh, its dominant note is that of sadness, expressing the exultation of battle and the very joy of life in minor notes. To a great extent Welsh poets are to this day true and faithful disciples of this early master. Entry: 2

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 5 "Cat" to "Celt"     1910-1911

The age of the Hohenstaufen emperors is, in many respects, the most interesting in the medieval history of Germany. It was a period of great men and great ideas, of dramatic contrasts of character and opinion--on the one side a broad humanitarianism combined with a gay enjoyment of the world, on the other side an almost superhuman spirituality which sought its ideal in the rejection of all that the world could give. It saw the new-birth of poetry and of art; it witnessed the rise of the friars. The contest between Empire and Papacy was more than a mere struggle for supremacy between two world-powers; it was a war to the death between two fundamentally opposite conceptions of life, which in many respects anticipated and prepared the way for the Renaissance and the Reformation. The emperor Frederick II. himself stands out as the type of the one tendency; Innocent III., Francis of Assisi and Dominic, in their various degrees, are types of the other. Frederick himself, of course, was Italian rather than German, akin to the despots of the Renaissance in his many-sided culture, his tolerant scepticism and his policy of "cruelty well applied." The culture of which he was the supreme representative, that of Italy and of Provence, took a more serious shade when it penetrated into Germany. The German _Minnesinger_ and romance-writers, whose golden age corresponded with that of the Hohenstaufen, were not content only to sing the joy of life or the chivalrous virtues of courage, courtesy and reverence for women; they in some sort anticipated the underlying ideas of the Reformation by championing the claims of the German nation against the papal monarchy and pure religion, as they conceived it, against the arrogance and corruption of the clergy. In them the medieval lay point of view became articulate, finding perhaps its most remarkable expression in the ideas of religious toleration proclaimed by Walther von der Vogelweide and Wolfram von Eschenbach. In Germany, as elsewhere, the victory of the Papacy was the victory of obscurantism. German culture, after a short revival, perished once more amid the smoke of the fires kindled by Conrad of Marburg and his fellow inquisitors. Entry: GERMANY

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 8 "Germany" to "Gibson, William"     1910-1911

"Be calm! I entreat you to hear me before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine, my joints more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous."

Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley     Frankenstein

It was inevitable that such extraordinary works as _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_ should attract special imitators in the direction of their outward form. It was also inevitable that this imitation should frequently fix upon these Rabelaisian characteristics which are least deserving of imitation, and most likely to be depraved in the hands of imitators. It fell within the plan of the master to indulge in what has been called _fatrasie_, the huddling together, that is to say, of a medley of language and images which is best known to English readers in the not always successful following of Sterne. It pleased him also to disguise his naturally terse, strong and nervous style in a burlesque envelope of redundant language, partly ironical, partly the result of superfluous erudition, and partly that of a certain childish wantonness and exuberance, which is one of his raciest and pleasantest characteristics. In both these points he was somewhat corruptly followed. But fortunately the romancical writers of the 16th century had not Rabelais for their sole model, but were also influenced by the simple and straightforward style of the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_. The joint influence gives us some admirable work. Nicholas of Troyes, a saddler of Champagne, came too early (his _Grand Parangon des nouvelles nouvelles_ appeared in 1536) to copy Rabelais. But Noël du Fail (d. c. 1585?), a judge at Rennes, shows the double influence in his _Propos rustiques_ and _Contes d'Eutrapel_, both of which, especially the former, are lively and well-written pictures of contemporary life and thought, as the country magistrate actually saw and dealt with them. In 1558, however, appeared two works of far higher literary and social interest. These are the _Heptaméron_ of the queen of Navarre, and the _Contes et joyeux devis_ of Bonaventure des Periers (c. 1500-1544). Des Periers, who was a courtier of Marguerite's, has sometimes been thought to have had a good deal to do with the first-named work as well as with the second, and was also the author of a curious Lucianic satire, strongly sceptical in cast, the _Cymbalum mundi_. Indeed, not merely the queen's prose works, but also the poems gracefully entitled _Les Marguerites de la Marguerite_, are often attributed to the literary men whom the sister of Francis I. gathered round her. However this may be, some single influence of power enough to give unity and distinctness of savour evidently presided over the composition of the _Heptaméron_. Composed as it is on the model of Boccaccio, its tone and character are entirely different, and few works have a more individual charm. The _Tales_ of des Periers are shorter, simpler and more homely; there is more wit in them and less refinement. But both works breathe, more powerfully perhaps than any others, the peculiar mixture of cultivated and poetical voluptuousness with a certain religiosity and a vigorous spirit of action which characterizes the French Renaissance. Later in time, but too closely connected with Rabelais in form and spirit to be here omitted, came the _Moyen de parvenir_ of Béroalde de Verville (1558?-1612?), a singular _fatrasie_, uniting wit, wisdom, learning and indecency, and crammed with anecdotes which are always amusing though rarely decorous. Entry: D

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 2 "French Literature" to "Frost, William"     1910-1911

_Design._--With the exception of the episode of Elihu, the connexion of which with the original form of the poem may be doubtful, all five parts of the book are essential elements of the work as it came from the hand of the first author, although some parts of the second and fourth divisions may have been expanded by later writers. The idea of the composition is to be derived not from any single element of the book, but from the teaching and movement of the whole piece. Job is unquestionably the hero of the work, and in his ideas and his history combined we may assume that we find the author himself speaking and teaching. The discussion between Job and his friends of the problem of suffering occupies two-thirds of the book, or, if the space occupied by Elihu be not considered, nearly three-fourths, and in the direction which the author causes this discussion to take we may see revealed the main didactic purpose of the book. When the three friends, the representatives of former theories of providence, are reduced to silence, we may be certain that it was the author's purpose to discredit the ideas which they represent. Job himself offers no positive contribution to the doctrine of evil; his position is negative, merely antagonistic to that of the friends. But this negative position victoriously maintained by him has the effect of clearing the ground, and the author himself supplies in the prologue the positive truth, when he communicates the real explanation of his hero's calamities, and teaches that they were a trial of his righteousness. It was therefore the author's main purpose in his work to widen men's views of the providence of God and set before them a new view of suffering. This purpose, however, was in all probability subordinate to some wider practical design. No Hebrew writer is merely a poet or a thinker. He is always a teacher. He has men before him in their relations to God,[1] and usually not men in their individual relations, but members of the family of Israel, the people of God. It is consequently scarcely to be doubted that the book has a national scope. The author considered his new truth regarding the meaning of affliction as of national interest, and as the truth then needful for the heart of his people. But the teaching of the book is only half its contents. It contains also a history--deep and inexplicable affliction, a great moral struggle, and a victory. The author meant his new truth to inspire new conduct, new faith, and new hopes. In Job's sufferings, undeserved and inexplicable to him, yet capable of an explanation most consistent with the goodness and faithfulness of God, and casting honour upon his faithful servants; in his despair bordering on unbelief, at last overcome; and in the happy issue of his afflictions--in all this Israel may see itself, and from the sight take courage, and forecast its own history. Job, however, is not to be considered Israel, the righteous servant of the Lord, under a feigned name; he is no mere parable (though such a view is found as early as the Talmud); he and his history have both elements of reality in them. It is these elements of reality common to him with Israel in affliction, common even to him with humanity as a whole, confined within the straitened limits set by its own ignorance, wounded to death by the mysterious sorrows of life, tortured by the uncertainty whether its cry finds an entrance into God's ear, alarmed and paralysed by the irreconcilable discrepancies which it seems to discover between its necessary thoughts of Him and its experience of Him in His providence, and faint with longing that it might come into His place, and behold him, not girt with His majesty, but in human form, as one looketh upon his fellow--it is these elements of truth that make the history of Job instructive to Israel in the times of affliction when it was set before them, and to men of all races in all ages. It would probably be a mistake, however, to imagine that the author consciously stepped outside the limits of his nation and assumed a human position antagonistic to it. The chords he touches vibrate through all humanity--but this is because Israel is the religious kernel of humanity, and because from Israel's heart the deepest religious music of mankind is heard, whether of pathos or of joy. Entry: JOB

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 15, Slice 4 "Jevons, Stanley" to "Joint"     1910-1911