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Wit and Humour, Selected from the English Poets : with an Illustrative Essay, and Critical Comments
Wit and Humour Selected from the English Poets with an Illustrative Essay and Critical Comments Author:Leigh Hunt General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1846 Original Publisher: Smith, Elder Subjects: English wit and humor English poetry Humor / General Juvenile Nonfiction / Poetry / General Juvenile Nonfiction / Poetry / Humorous Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scot... more »tish, Welsh Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, 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: B U T L E K. BORN, l6l2 -- DIED, l680. Butler is the wittiest of English poets, and at the same time he is one of the most learned, and what is more, one of the wisest. His Hudibras, though naturally the most popular of his works from its size, subject, and witty excess, was an accident of birth and party compared with his Miscellaneous Poems; yet both abound in thoughts as great and deep as the surface is sparkling; and his genius altogether, having the additional recommendation of verse, might have given him a fame greater than Rabelais, had his animal. spirits been equal to the rest of his qualifications for a universalist At the same time, though not abounding in poetic sensibility, he was not without it. He is author of the touching simile, True as the dial to the sun, Although it be not shin'd upon. The following is as elegant as anything in Lovelace or Waller: -- : -- What security's too strong To guard that gentle heart from wrong, That to its friend is glad to pass Itself away, and all it has, And like an anchorite, gives over This world, for the heaven of a lover ? And this, if read with the seriousness and singleness of feeling that become it, is, I think, a comparison full of as much grandeur as cordiality, -- Like Indian widows, gone to bed Inflaming curt...« less