But the eighteenth century, on the whole, loathed melancholy.

The hardest thing to attain... is the appreciation of difference without insisting on superiority.

But the eighteenth century, on the whole, loathed melancholy.

The transition state of manners and language cannot be too often insisted upon: for this affected the process at both ends, giving the artist in fictitious life an uncertain model to copy and unstable materials to work in.

The Odyssey is, indeed, one of the greatest of all stories, it is the original romance of the West; but the Iliad, though a magnificent poem, is not much of a story.

Miss Austen had shown the infinite possibilities of ordinary and present things for the novelist.

But even gold is not everything: and only a fanatic, and a rather foolish fanatic, would say that this style of fiction summed up and exhausted all the good that fiction could give and do.