United States or Vatican City ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


In saving his employer from wreck he might virtually become captain of the ship. After this brief delineation of character, it would strike the reader as very incongruous to say that Mr. Fox had fallen in love with Edith. Mr. Fox never stumbled or fell. He could slide down and scramble up to any extent, and when cornered could take a flying leap like that of a cat.

It is also valuable as a faithful picture of the manners and characters of the eleventh century. Indeed, the chief characteristic of Spanish song and poetry is its delineation of the national life. It is said that the Cid is the foremost poem produced in Europe from the thousand years that marked the decline of Greek and Roman civilization, to the appearance of the Divine Comedy.

The concern of Poetry with corporal beauty is, though important, yet secondary: this art uses form as an auxiliary, as a subordinate though proper part in the delineation of mind and character, of which it is appointed to be a visible organ. But with mind and character themselves lies the highest occupation of the Muse.

For as, before there can be made anything like true generalizations respecting the classification of organisms and the laws of organization, there must be an extensive accumulation of the facts presented in numerous organic bodies; so, without a tolerably-complete delineation of mental phenomena of all orders, there can scarcely arise any adequate theory of mind.

It is hence that every society exhibits examples of individuals, who aim at singularity of manners, merely that they may be different from the generality of mankind; it is hence that many persons, even of a cultivated mind, shut their eye to the charms of beauty in every department of taste, merely that they may display their own wretched vanity in criticising its imperfections; it is hence that painters select the moment of passion or exertion, for no other reason than for the display of their anatomical knowledge, or their skill in the delineation of extraordinary emotion; and that poets have so often neglected what is really pathetic in the scenes, either of nature or of man, to present the artificial conceptions of their learning or fancy.

Its most authorized exponent declared it to be "the delineation of sentimental matter in fantastic form." A more elaborated authoritative definition is given in the first volume of the Athenæum: "Romantic poetry is a progressive universal-poetry.

It not only furnishes far less material for stage effects, but also supplies little of that sympathy which the dramatist must find in the minds of his audience. While life has become less dramatic, it has become far more complex, and requires a broader treatment in its delineation than the restrictions of the stage can allow.

While Dürer's art exhibits a close affinity with the religious ideas of the Middle Ages, Holbein appears to have been imbued with more modern and more material sentiments, and accordingly we find him excelling Dürer in closeness and delicacy of observation in the delineation of nature.

All the art of the author's splendid rhetoric is employed in awakening, by turns, the indignation and contempt of the reader in contemplating the character of the wrong-headed king. In portraying that character, he has brought into exercise all those powers of invective and merciless ridicule which give such a savage relish to his delineation of Barrere.

It is his fidelity to this principle, his dealing with events and circumstances chiefly as they illustrate character, his delineation of the features of the souls of men, that constitutes Plutarch's highest merit as a biographer.