Brief Literary Criticisms Author:Richard Holt Hutton General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1906 Original Publisher: Macmillan and co., limited Subjects: English literature Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism / Poetry Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish... more », Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: THE STORING OF LITERARY POWER Mr. Gladstone, in replying for " The Interests of Literature" at the Royal Academy on Saturday,1 intimated that we must not expect to see soon again so great a literary period as that which commenced with the Peace of 1815; but beyond intimating that the immediate future was likely to be an age of research rather than one of expression, he gave no hint of the reasons which were likely, in his opinion, to prevent the present day from becoming a day of great literary spfendour. Yet one reason, at all events, is conspicuous why this should not be so, and one, I fear, which is not likely to diminish, but rather to increase in influence; I mean -- and my reason will only seem paradoxical to those who have not thought much on those subjects -- the verygreat and increasing facilities for literary expression, which prevent jmy. thing 'like large reserves of feeling and thought from accumulating fill they acquire sufficient mass to produce great individual effects. Yet almost every gfeat literary perTocTTti the world has been one following a long period of repression, and consequently of accumulation. When Athens first opened the sluices of literary life and power, the 1 May 5, 1877. world awoke almost for the first time to the conception of literary freedom and to the full power of human thought and language. ...« less