Academics From England

"From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics, compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness, a system in which the two great commandments were, to hate your neighbour, and to love your neighbour's wife."

"Mad, bad and dangerous to know."

"You speak of Lord Byron and me — there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees — I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task."

"The list of writers, artists, and composers who were directly inspired by Byron's life and poetry is almost without peer; it includes Hector Berlioz, Alexander Pushkin, J. M. W. Turner, Robert Schumann, Victor Hugo, Alfred-Victor de Vigny, Alfred de Musset, Giuseppe Verdi, Gaetano Donizetti, Franz Liszt, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Arnold Schoenberg, Gioacchino Rossini, Charles Baudelaire, and Virgil Thomson. Not surprisingly, most of these influenced by Byron were themselves intensely emotional and inclined toward the Romantic."

"In a room at the end of the garden to this house was a magnificent rocking-horse, which a friend had given my little boy; and Lord Byron, with a childish glee becoming a poet, would ride upon it. Ah! why did he ever ride his Pegasus to less advantage?"

"Whatever he does, he must do in a more decided and daring manner than any one else; he lounges with extravagance, and yawns so as to alarm the reader!"

"Lord Byron makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave."

"Emotional sorrow has inspired many sublime lyrics, much profound insight and poetic exultation of a Byron, Shelley, Heine, and their kind."

"It still saddens me that Lord Byron, who showed such impatience with the fickle public, wasn't aware of how well the Germans can understand him and how highly they esteem him. With us the moral and political tittle-tattle of the day falls away, leaving the man and the talent standing alone in all their brilliance."

"Lord Byron is great only as a poet; as soon as he reflects, he is a child."

"The world is rid of Lord Byron, but the deadly slime of his touch still remains."

"If they had said that the sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in creation than the words: "Byron is dead!""

"What helps it now, that Byron bore, With haughty scorn which mocked the smart, Through Europe to the Aetolian shore The pageant of his bleeding heart? That thousands counted every groan, And Europe made his woe her own?"

"[Armenian] is a rich language, however, and would amply repay any one the trouble of learning it."

"It would be difficult, perhaps, to find the annals of a nation less stained with crimes than those of the Armenians, whose virtues have been those of peace, and their vices those of compulsion. But whatever may have been their destiny — and it has been bitter — whatever it may be in future, their country must ever be one of the most interesting on the globe."

"Both were so young, and one so innocent, That bathing pass'd for nothing; Juan seem'd To her, as 'twere, the kind of being sent, Of whom these two years she had nightly dream'd, A something to be loved, a creature meant To be her happiness, and whom she deem'd To render happy; all who joy would win Must share it,––Happiness was born a twin."

"What is the end of fame? 'tis but to fill A certain portion of uncertain paper: Some liken it to climbing up a hill, Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapour; For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill, And bards burn what they call their "midnight taper," To have, when the original is dust, A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust."

"But now at thirty years my hair is gray–– (I wonder what it will be like at forty? I thought of a peruke the other day) My heart is not much greener; and, in short, I Have squander'd my whole summer while 'twas May, And feel no more the spirit to retort; I Have spent my life, both interest and principal, And deem not, what I deem'd my soul invincible."

"She thought of her own strength, and Juan's youth, And of the folly of all prudish fears, Victorious virtue, and domestic truth, And then of Don Alfonso's fifty years: [...] When people say, "I've told you fifty times," They mean to scold, and very often do: When poets say, "I've written fifty rhymes," They make you dread that they'll recite them too; In gangs of fifty thieves commit their crimes: At fifty love for love is rare, 'tis true, But then, no doubt, it equally as true is, A good deal may be bought for fifty louis."

"Jack was embarrassed — never hero more, And as he knew not what to say, he swore."

"Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe When tipp'd with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe; Like other charmers, wooing the caress More dazzlingly when daring in full dress; Yet thy true lovers more admire by far Thy naked beauties—give me a cigar!"

"Sublime tobacco! which from east to west Cheers the tar's labor or the Turkman's rest."

"While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven, Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven, Or drawing from the no less kindled earth Freedom and peace to that which boasts his birth; While Washington's a watchword, such as ne'er Shall sink while there's an echo left to air."

"Where is he, the champion and the child Of all that's great or little, wise or wild; Whose game was empires, and whose stakes were thrones; Whose table earth — whose dice were human bones?"

"The "good old times" — all times when old are good — Are gone."

"My best! my last friends! Let's not unman each other: part at once: All farewells should be sudden, when for ever, Else they make an eternity of moments, And clog the last sad sands of life with tears. Hence, and be happy: trust me, I am not Now to be pitied; or far more for what Is past than present; — for the future, 'tis In the hands of the deities, if such There be: I shall know soon. Farewell — Farewell."

"The dust we tread upon was once alive."

"Oh! if thou hast at length Discover'd that my love is worth esteem, I ask no more—but let us hence together, And I — let me say we — shall yet be happy. Assyria is not all the earth—we'll find A world out of our own — and be more bless'd Than I have ever been, or thou, with all An empire to indulge thee."

"But take this with thee: if I was not form'd To prize a love like thine, a mind like thine, Nor dote even on thy beauty — as I've doted On lesser charms, for no cause save that such Devotion was a duty, and I hated All that look'd like a chain for me or others (This even rebellion must avouch); yet hear These words, perhaps among my last — that none E'er valued more thy virtues, though he knew not To profit by them…"

"I am the very slave of circumstance And impulse — borne away with every breath! Misplaced upon the throne — misplaced in life. I know not what I could have been, but feel I am not what I should be — let it end."

"Eat, drink, and love; the rest's not worth a fillip."

"By all that's good and glorious."

"How my soul hates This language, Which makes life itself a lie, Flattering dust with eternity."

"O Mirth and Innocence! O milk and water! Ye happy mixtures of more happy days."

"Heart on her lips, and soul within her eyes, Soft as her clime, and sunny as her skies."

"I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth, And sounds as if it should be writ on satin, With syllables which breathe of the sweet South, And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in, That not a single accent seems uncouth, Like our harsh northern whistling, grunting guttural, Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit, and sputter all."

"Besides, they always smell of bread and butter."

"His heart was one of those which most enamour us, Wax to receive, and marble to retain: He was a lover of the good old school, Who still become more constant as they cool."

"Soprano, basso, even the contra-alto, Wished him five fathom under the Rialto."

"For most men (till by losing rendered sager) Will back their own opinions by a wager."

"Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we'll go no more a roving By the light of the moon."

"For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest."

"So, we'll go no more a roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright."

"I cannot repress my indignation at the use of those foolish obsolete, odious, words Whig and Tory."

"Though what Gibbon calls ‘the curiosity of the public’ may have exhausted itself long since, the candid judgment of many generations and of almost every class of readers has confirmed the opinion formed at once by Gibbon's own age. His great work remains an enduring monument of research, an imperishable literary possession and one of the highest encouragements to intellectual endeavour that can be found in the history of letters."

"The penetration, solidity, and taste, that made you the first of historians, dear Sir, prevent my being surprised at your being the best writer of controversial pamphlets too. I have read you with more precipitation than such a work deserved, but I could not disobey you and detain it. Yet even in that hurry I could discern, besides a thousand beauties and strokes of wit, the inimitable eighty-third page, and the conscious dignity that you maintain throughout over your monkish antagonists. When you are so superior in argument, it would look like insensibility to the power of your reasoning, to select transient passages for commendation; and yet I must mention one that pleased me particularly, from the delicacy of the severity, and from its novelty too; it is, ‘Bold is not the word.’ This is the feathered arrow of Cupid, that is more formidable than the club of Hercules."

"Gibbon was not interested in religious doctrine, though he amused himself with its speculative refinements. But religion and Churches, he would admit, are a social and psychological necessity, and the particular forms which they take are important, for they can influence the progress or decline of civilization. Therefore the historical question he asked was, did the ideas of Christianity and the organization of the Church, as adapted to the Roman Empire, generate or stifle public spirit, freedom, and the advancement of knowledge and a plural society. His answer was that they stifled it. If Christianity had first been established in independent city-states like those of Greece, perhaps it would have assumed a different and more useful form – as it eventually did in the communes of Italy and, more successfully, in the Protestant cities of Switzerland. But the very fact of its establishment by imperial power, as an ideological support to that power, made it subservient to a centralized, monopolist system whose organization and absolutism, in its own formative period, it imitated and sustained."

"Gibbon's historical philosophy was...animated by...what we now call "civic humanism": that is, the conviction that the progress of society depends on a certain moral force: the "spirit" which, to Montesquieu, must animate the "laws" if history is not to be, as it often is, merely anarchical, "the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind". It was because he believed intensely in civic virtue that he deplored the attitude of the early Christians. When Roman civilisation was in danger, these men contracted out. They refused to serve the state and preferred to sit on pillars in the desert or waste their energies in sterile theological disputes. On the other hand, when the church, or churchmen, showed such a spirit, he would commend them. "Active virtue" was to be respected wherever it was expressed."

"Gibbon was an exact and exacting scholar (hence his disdain for the French philosophes who subordinated scholarship to their philosophy). He read the latest articles, subscribed to the learned journals, cited and criticised his sources. His errors are remarkably few. Of course much has been written on the subject since his time. But his scholarship and his judgement can seldom be faulted."

"Edward Gibbon...is the one irreplaceable English historian. What other 18th-century historian is still read, not only for his style, nor as a contemporary witness of events, but as an interpreter of past ages? Gibbon now seems much less dated than his great successors, Macaulay, Carlyle, Froude; nor can anyone, today, discuss the problem – the permanent problem – of the decline of the Roman Empire except in implicit dialogue with him."