Word: optimistically
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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...Iterum Iterumque" is a metrical version of the pure optimist's views...
...though far above the average of college verse, is not, we think, quite up to the standard of his former work, in spite of a number of lines more than ordinarily good. It is likely that many will object to the gloomy sentiment of this poem. Yet if an optimist will kindly grant that verse pessimistic in tone is justifiable, he must acknowledge that Mr. Houghton's Ballad has not only strength but unusually deep feeling...
...application of the principle of sincerity to the subject. The idea has in some way gotten abroad that a pessimist is a child of the devil, with notions accordingly diabolical. Yet the fact is that the pessimist simply believes that more misery than happiness exists in the world. The optimist holds the opposite. Everyone grants that an optimist who writes pessimistically should be condemned for insincerity. But few seem to realize that if a man's most sober and honest thought is pessimistic, as it often is, he would do wrong to write optimistically. Both argue that you must shape...
...Houghton in a "Study of Despair" reviews the "Bubaiyat" and presents the most thoughtful work of the number. Although an optimist might quarrel with many of the conclusions drawn as representing Kayyam in too dark a light, the conclusions are by no means fanciful, and are upon their face the result of deep study and clear ideas. It is a question, however, whether the Tent-maker of Naishapur can be so systematically interpreted throughout. Is it true that a thread of despair runs through the mystic lines of Omar and darkens all their thought? One long magazine article has been...