English History

  • Poets
    • Byron
      • Letters
      • Poems
      • General
    • Keats
      • Letters
      • Poetry
    • Shakespeare
      • Plays
    • Tennyson
  • Vikings
  • Middle Ages
  • Stuarts
    • English Civil War
  • Tudor
    • Monarchs
    • Citizens
    • Relatives
    • Letters
    • Quizzes
  • Vikings
  • About
    • Start a History Blog
    • Cookie Policy
    • Contact
    • The Right to Display Public Domain Images
    • Author & Reference Information For Students

Critical Opinion Of Lord Byron By Ralph Waldo Emerson

From Thoughts on Modern Literature (1840)

***A wild striving to express a more inward and infinite sense characterizes the works of every art. The music of Beethoven is said, by those who understand it, to labor with vaster conceptions and aspirations than music has attempted before. This feeling of the Infinite has deeply colored the poetry of he period. This new love of the vast, always native in Germany, was imported into France by De Stael, appeared in England in Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley… and finds a most genial climate in the American mind. Scott and Crabbe, who formed themselves on the past, had none of this tendency; their poetry is objective. In Byron, on the other hand, it predominates; but in Byron it is blind, it sees not its true end – an infinite good, alive and beautiful, a life nourished on absolute beatitudes, descending into Nature to behold itself reflected there. His will is perverted, he worships the accidents of society, and his praise of Nature is thieving and selfish.

Read More English History Topics

Link/cite this page

If you use any of the content on this page in your own work, please use the code below to cite this page as the source of the content.

Link will appear as Hanson, Marilee. "Critical Opinion Of Lord Byron By Ralph Waldo Emerson" https://englishhistory.net/byron/critical-opinion-ralph-waldo-emerson/, March 6, 2015

Search English History

Popular Posts

Mary Boleyn: Biography, Portrait, Facts & Information
Queen Elizabeth by Edward Spencer Beesly, 1892 – Chapter IV
The Coronation/Crowning Of Anne Boleyn, 1533
Anne Boleyn’s Speech At Her Execution
Letter of Katharine of Aragon to her husband, King Henry VIII 7 January 1536

Related Posts

Lord Byron to Francis Hodgson, 3 November 1808

Lord Byron’s Lovers

John Keats Poem

Lord Byron Critical Opinion

T.S. Eliot – Byron (1937)

The Tudors

Lord Byron

John Keats

shakespeare

Copyright © 1999-2021 All Rights Reserved.
English History
Other Sites: Learn Web Development

This site uses cookies More info