Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 6, 2025
This liberal patronage was brought into fashion, as it seems, by the magnificent Dorset, almost the only noble versifier in the Court of Charles the Second who possessed talents for composition which were independent of the aid of a coronet.
O to be in England Now that April's there! was, after all, the cry of a homesick versifier, thinking "Home Thoughts, from Abroad"; and are Herrick and Wordsworth quite to be trusted on the subject of daffodils? Well, I am glad to have to own that my revisiting my native land resulted in an agreeable disappointment.
Tickell was a Fellow of a College at Oxford, and must be supposed to have been able to construe the Iliad; and he was a better versifier than his friend. We are not aware that Pope pretended to have discovered any turns of expression peculiar to Addison.
He had no criticism to offer, no sign of objection more specific than a slight cough, a scarcely perceptible pause before assenting, and an air of self-control in his utterance as if certain considerations had determined him not to inform against the so-called poet, who to his knowledge was a mere versifier.
He was well acquainted with all the petty vanities and affectations of the poetaster; but was not aware that these foibles were united with all the talents and vices which lead to success in active life, and that the unlucky versifier who pestered him with reams of middling Alexandrines, was the most vigilant, suspicious, and severe of politicians.
He did not shrink from attempting, and what was worse, publishing, poetry, which bore imprinted on it the characteristics of his effeminate mind. Seneca quotes one passage from which we may form an estimate of his level as a versifier. But, however feeble in execution, he was a skilful adviser of others.
Tight as the versifier may draw the knot of logic, yet for the ear he still leaves the tissue of the sentence floating somewhat loose. In prose, the sentence turns upon a pivot, nicely balanced, and fits into itself with an obtrusive neatness like a puzzle. The ear remarks and is singly gratified by this return and balance; while in verse it is all diverted to the measure.
He took part in the debating society, where he was prominent, and was known as a versifier of both love poems and satire. When Master Clarke retired, in 1823, Poe read an English ode addressed to the outgoing principal. One of his friends said of him at this time that he was "self-willed, capricious, inclined to be imperious, and though of generous impulses, not steadily kind, nor even amiable."
Daniel lived respected by men of worth and fashion, he passed through life without tasting many of the vicissitudes of fortune; he seems to have been a second rate genius, and a tolerable versifier; his poetry in some places is tender, but want of fire is his characteristical fault.
He caused the triumphs to be carefully prepared by the best artists, the dresses of the masquers to be accurately studied, and their chariots to be adorned with illustrative paintings. Michelangelo's old friend Granacci dedicated his talents to these shows, which also employed the wayward fancy of Piero di Cosimo and Pontormo's power as a colourist. "It was their wont," says Il Lasca, "to go forth after dinner; and often the processions paraded through the streets till three or four hours into the night, with a multitude of masked men on horseback following, richly dressed, exceeding sometimes three hundred in number, and as many on foot with lighted torches. Thus they traversed the city, singing to the accompaniment of music arranged for four, eight, twelve, or even fifteen voices, and supported by various instruments." Lorenzo represented the worst as well as the best qualities of his age. If he knew how to enslave Florence, it was because his own temperament inclined him to share the amusements of the crowd, while his genius enabled him to invest corruption with charm. His friend Poliziano entered with the zest of a poet and a pleasure-seeker into these diversions. He helped Lorenzo to revive the Tuscan Mayday games, and wrote exquisite lyrics to be sung by girls in summer evenings on the public squares. This giant of learning, who filled the lecture-rooms of Florence with Students of all nations, and whose critical and rhetorical labours marked an epoch in the history of scholarship, was by nature a versifier, and a versifier of the people. He found nothing' easier than to throw aside his professor's mantle and to improvise ballate for women to chant as they danced their rounds upon the Piazza di S. Trinit
Word Of The Day
Others Looking