“There is no poetry which can be said to form such a distinctive portion of our household literature as that of Wordsworth.”

Seeing Wordsworth's poetry as unusually woven into ordinary domestic reading · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Memory
• Poetry

“The poet of passion will always have a depth of sympathy, almost we may say a violence of sympathy, to which the poet of sentiment cannot attain.”

Arguing that passionate poetry can reach emotional depths beyond sentiment alone · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Art
• Poetry

“No man with a sense of humour could have exposed himself to those occasionally just criticisms of the almost comic positions of some of his characters, verging on coarseness.”

Arguing that humour can serve as a form of artistic self-criticism · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth

“It is very interesting to see, in connexion with Wordsworth's adoration of the beauties of Nature, that his name and fame are incorporated with the scenery of the Lakes.”

Linking a poet's lasting fame with the landscape that shaped his vision · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Fame
• Nature
• Poetry

“The expedition was interesting as a specimen of what I may call a very laudable literary enthusiasm, of which I shall be very glad to see more among the youth of this day.”

Celebrating youthful literary enthusiasm as something worth renewing · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Art
• Hope
• Poetry

“He is essentially the poet of youth; he is the embodiment, as it were, of youth and poetry in the richness of the imagination and in the abundance of melodious power.”

Seeing Keats as an embodiment of youthful imagination and musical richness · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Childhood
• Music
• Poetry

“I do not conceive that any criticism, with such liveliness and liberty as makes criticism at all amusing, would be suitable at a meeting of this kind.”

Treating lively criticism as something requiring freedom as well as judgement · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Art
• Truth

“We in this country are not too apt to keep alive the remembrance of literary men.”

Warning how readily a culture can allow its writers to fade from memory · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Art
• Fame
• Memory

“I think gatherings representative of literary homage, and also of personal interest in the poets in whose works we still take delight, are not only very just in themselves, but extremely useful in the cause of literature.”

Defending literary commemoration as useful to the continuing life of literature · Speech, Wordsworth Society, 8 July 1885

• Art
• Memory
• Poetry

“None the less have those verses, thus modestly produced, permeated the hearts of millions of men and women, and, so to say, incorporated themselves in the English language.”

Describing how quietly published verse can enter a culture's shared language · Speech, Gray Memorial unveiling, Cambridge, 26 May 1885

• Fame
• Memory
• Poetry

“Gray's perfect combination of sentiment and form may justly place him on the pedestal he occupies.”

Praising the marriage of emotional feeling and formal control · Speech, Gray Memorial unveiling, Cambridge, 26 May 1885

• Art
• Beauty
• Poetry

“When I define Gray as a poet of sentiment, you will understand that I distinguish him from the poet of passion and the poet of imagery.”

Distinguishing poetic sentiment from passion and imagery · Speech, Gray Memorial unveiling, Cambridge, 26 May 1885

• Art
• Poetry

“For this prominent problem of the genius of Gray every serious critic will attempt his own solution.”

Seeing criticism as an individual search for the nature of genius · Speech, Gray Memorial unveiling, Cambridge, 26 May 1885

• Art
• Poetry
• Truth

“Such a celebration has a right to require propriety of place and time.”

Insisting that commemoration should suit both its setting and moment · Speech, Gray Memorial unveiling, Cambridge, 26 May 1885

• Memory
• Time

“I remember, when a student at Cambridge, going with Arthur Hallam to call on Coleridge, who received us as Goethe or as Socrates might have received us.”

Remembering Coleridge as a figure of almost classical intellectual authority · Speech, Coleridge bust unveiling, Westminster Abbey, 7 May 1885

• Friendship
• Memory
• Poetry

“It is not without personal emotion that I dissociate myself from this good company, with which I have worked and talked for over thirty years.”

Marking the sorrow of leaving a fellowship sustained over decades · Valedictory, Philobiblon Society, 1884

• Friendship
• Memory
• Time

“The historical wealth of our great libraries is in process of general distribution through numerous and ready channels of editorial ability.”

Welcoming the wider circulation of knowledge preserved in libraries · Valedictory, Philobiblon Society, 1884

• Art
• Memory

“A collector may prize a rare book as much as ever, but he would rather be known as the author of a popular one.”

Contrasting private collecting with the desire for public authorship · Valedictory, Philobiblon Society, 1884

• Art
• Fame

“Nevertheless, the judicious conclusion of its existence may be as opportune as was its foundation.”

Recognising that a timely ending can be as wise as a good beginning · Valedictory, Philobiblon Society, 1884

• Mortality
• Time

“Before another winter came Henry Bright had passed away in his home amid his family and books, and had gone to his rest beneath the wreaths of his own Lancashire garden.”

A tender image of death framed by home, books and garden · Memorial essay, Henry Bright

• Death
• Memory
• Nature

“What insures a lengthened existence to these pages is the combination of an almost peasant-village simplicity, with an abundant English and classical culture which seems to me without parallel in literature.”

Valuing the union of simplicity and cultivated learning · Memorial essay, Henry Bright

• Art
• Beauty

“The very absence of anything like abstruse botanical science, or any but necessary phraseology, no doubt adds to its charm.”

Praising clarity and simplicity over unnecessary technical display · Memorial essay, Henry Bright

• Art
• Nature

“It is to this very restriction that the merit and, so to say, influence of the work is especially due.”

Suggesting that creative limitations can strengthen a work · Memorial essay, Henry Bright

• Art
• Truth

“From this humble space, however, Henry Bright had derived as much gratification and perhaps instruction as could be given by the most lordly pleasaunces.”

Finding deep pleasure and instruction in a modest garden · Memorial essay, Henry Bright

• Joy
• Nature