The collected works Volume 10 - Softcover
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. 1911 Excerpt: ... without significance that Gothic architecture was first so called in derision, the Goths having no architecture. It was named by the Deacon Harveys of the period. The passage that has provoked this class of critics to the most shameless feats of self-exposure is this: Infernal rubrics, sung to Satan's might, Or chanted to the Dragon in his gyre. Upon this they have expended all the powers of ridicule belonging to those who respect nothing because they know nothing. A person of light and leading in their bright band says of it: "We confess that we had never before heard of a 'gyre.' Looking it up in the dictionary, we find that it means a gyration, or a whirling round. Rubrics chanted to a dragon while he was whirling ought to be worth hearing." Mr. Arthur Brisbane. Now, whose fault is it that this distinguished journalist had never heard of a gyre? Certainly not the poet's. And whose that in very sensibly looking it up he suffered himself to be so misled by the lexicographer as to think it a gyration, a whirling round? Gyre means, not a gyration, but the path of a gyration, an orbit. And has the poor man no knowledge of a dragon in the heavens?--the constellation Draco, to which, as to other stars, the magicians of old chanted incantations? A peasant is not to be censured for his ignorance, but when he glories in it and draws its limit as a dead line for his betters he is the least pleasing of all the beasts of the field. An amusing instance of the commonplace mind's inability to understand anything having a touch of imagination is found in a criticism of the now famous lines: The blue-eyed vampire, sated at her feast, Smiles bloodily against the leprous moon. "Somehow," says the critic, who, naturally, is a book-reviewer, "one doe...
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About the Author:
Ambrose Bierce was an American writer, critic and war veteran. Bierce fought for the Union Army during the American Civil War, eventually rising to the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army following an 1866 expedition across the Great Plains. Bierce s harrowing experiences during the Civil War, particularly those at the Battle of Shiloh, shaped a writing career that included editorials, novels, short stories and poetry. Among his most famous works are An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, The Boarded Window, Chickamauga, and What I Saw of Shiloh. While on a tour of Civil-War battlefields in 1913, Bierce is believed to have joined Pancho Villa s army before disappearing in the chaos of the Mexican Revolution.
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- PublisherRareBooksClub.com
- Publication date2012
- ISBN 10 1151982865
- ISBN 13 9781151982865
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages66
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