The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1188]
V.
Of much of our cottage architecture we may safely say, I think, (admitting the good intention,) that it would have been Gothic if it had not felt it its duty to be Dutch.
VI.
James’s multitudinous novels seem to be written upon the plan of “the songs of the Bard of Schiraz,” in which, we are assured by Fadladeen, “the same beautiful thought occurs again and again in every possible variety of phrase.”
VII.
Some of our foreign lions resemble the human brain in one very striking particular. They are without any sense themselves, and yet are the centres of sensation.
VIII.
Mirabeau, I fancy, acquired his wonderful tact at foreseeing and meeting contingencies, during his residence in the stronghold of If.
IX.
Cottle’s “Reminiscences of Coleridge” is just such a book as damns its perpetrator forever in the opinion of every gentleman who reads it. More and more every day do we moderns povoneggiarsi about our Christianity; yet, so far as the spirit of Christianity is concerned, we are immeasurably behind the ancients. Mottoes and proverbs are the indices of national character; and the Anglo-Saxons are disgraced in having no proverbial equivalent to the “De mortuis nil nisi bonum.” Moreover — where, in all statutary Christendom, shall we find a law so Christian as the “Defuncti injuriâ ne afficiantur “ of the Twelve Tables? The simple negative injunction of the Latin law and proverb — the injunction not to do ill to the dead — seems, at a first glance, scarcely susceptible of improvement in the delicate respect of its terms. I cannot help thinking, however, that the sentiment, if not the idea intended, is more forcibly conveyed in an apothegm by one of the old English moralists, James Puckle. By an ingenious figure of speech he contrives to imbue the negation of the Roman command with a spirit of active and positive beneficence. “When speaking of the dead,” he says, in his “Gray Cap for a Green Head,” “so fold up your discourse that their virtues may be outwardly shown, while their vices are wrapped up in silence.”
X.
I have no doubt that the Fourierites honestly fancy “a nasty poet fit for nothing” to be the true translation of “poeta nascitur non fit.”
XI.
There surely cannot be “more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of” (oh, Andrew Jackson Davis!) “in your philosophy.”
XII.
“It is only as the Bird of Paradise quits us in taking wing,” observes, or should observe, some poet, “that we obtain a full view of the beauty of its plumage;” and it is only as the politician is about being “turned out” that — like the snake of the Irish Chronicle when touched by St. Patrick — he “awakens to a sense of his situation.”
XIII.
Newspaper editors seem to have constitutions closely similar to those of the Deities in “Walhalla,” who cut each other to pieces every day, and yet get up perfectly sound and fresh every morning.
XIV.
As far as I can comprehend the modern cant in favor of “unadulterated Saxon,” it is fast leading us to the language of that region where, as Addison has it, “they sell the best fish and speak the plainest English.”
XV.
The frightfully long money-pouches — “like the Cucumber called the Gigantic” — which have come in vogue among our belles — are not of Parisian origin, as many suppose, but are strictly indigenous here. The fact is, such a fashion would be quite out of place in Paris, where it is money only that women keep in a purse. The purse of an American lady, however, must be large enough to carry both her money and the soul of its owner.
XVI.
I can see no objection to gentlemen “standing for Congress” — provided they stand on one side — nor to their “running for Congress” — if they are in a very great hurry to get there — but it would be a blessing if some of them could be persuaded into sitting still, for Congress, after they arrive.
XVII.
If Envy, as Cyprian has it, be “the moth of the soul,” whether shall we regard Content as its Scotch snuff or its camphor?
XVIII.
M———, having been “used up” in the “—— Review,