Word: mans
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...which, to the utilitarian, is but dust and ashes. No; these are things which I cannot give up. They depend upon feelings which lie too deep for logic. They carry with them a certainty which neither logic, facts, nor figures have ever brought to the mind of man. Is it, then, strange or wrong that they should be so loved...
...ranked among his best productions. Yet imitation is not Byron's specialty; his mind was so constituted that when he set himself to dramatize the ideas of others he did not excel. The "Deformed Transformed" and "Werner" seem to me to exemplify this. The plot is, that Werner, a man of high principle, but weak-minded, under the pressure of circumstances, reaches a high position through the crimes of himself and his son, suffering afterwards the tortures of a guilty conscience. In the "Deformed Transformed," Arnold, a hunchback, sells his soul to the Devil, who takes the name of Caesar...
Compare these with his more thoroughly original work, and though I yield a place to "Manfred," his imitations sink into insignificance. "Sardanapalus" can vie in many points with "Manfred." In the one a remorseful, despairing man speaks; in the other, an Eastern voluptuary. Though Byron excels in both, - and it may be objected that the comparison is not fair, - yet Sardanapalus, his own creation, allows him a latitude of development which Manfred does not. In "Manfred" there is no woman. "Sardanapalus," on the contrary, has one of the fairest types of Byronic poetry. Here his true spirit shows itself; that...
Sardanapalus is especially suited to the development of Myrrha's character, a pious Greek slave, passionately in love with her master, an Eastern prince, a man of noble parts, but deadened by a voluptuous life, and hardly capable of any exertion, except in extreme circumstances, when all his superiority appears...
Again, humor, to be pleasing, should be natural, should spring forth of its own accord. Nothing is more displeasing than a labored production, especially if it aims to be witty. True wit resides in the man, and is not the result of education; it is the gift of nature. The more manifest reasons that the so-called funny writings are not favorably received in college journals is, because they appear to have no point to them; or if they have their applications, they are so poorly carried out, either by inability on the part of the writer...