Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866. Excerpt: ... THE ETHICAL CURRENT. JHEN a painter draws his own portrait, he has the advantage of a mirror in which he can see himself at a proper distance. But when we attempt to understand or to delineate the age we live in, we are apt to forget that we have no chance of viewing it from a sufficient distance--that we are too much in it to be able to see how it looks on the broad plain of history. Perhaps no collection of opinions would be more curious than those which even great thinkers have pronounced upon their own times. Thus we find Bacon expressing a " doubt that this age of the world is somewhat upon the descent of the wheel." Hooker complained that the same age was deficient in learning. Bishop King described it as " this prodigal and intemperate age of the CHAPTER XVII. The diffi-culty of un-derstanding one's own time. Chapter world." Michael Drayton summed it up as _' "this lunatic age." The period so decried is The opinions the grand Elizabethan epoch, which we now of Eliza-P L beth»i.son extol as the proudest in our annals. And yet 'e. of Drayton, who could speak of the time in which he flourished as lunatic, Ben Jonson says, "I find in him, which is in most of my compatriots, too great an admiration of their country." One naturally recurs to these opinions con ot conteni-' L porari1ou cerning the Elizabethan age, when we hear what the present age. even men ot ability can now assert regarding our Victorian era. Archdeacon Hare says it is an age of superficial character, feeble-minded, earthworshipping and self-idolizing. Mr. John George Phillimore assures us that all strength has gone from our literature, and that we are little better than the beasts. Mr. Matthew Arnold tells us that we have no ideas, and that England is hindmost in the intellectual ...
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Book Description
Eneas Sweetland (E. S.) Dallas (1828–1879) was a journalist whose love of poetry led to his writing the two-volume The Gay Science, published in 1866. The title comes from an expression used by Provençal troubadours to describe composing poetry. Volume 2 examines pleasure and the ethics of art.
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