A legacy: being the life and remains of John Martin, schoolmaster and poet, by the author of 'John Halifax, gentleman'. |
Common terms and phrases
beautiful Beckenham behold Blenkarne Boxing Day boys calm City of London cold comes Cubitt Town dead death delight despair Divine Comedy doubt Dunmow Easton Essex eternity evil eyes fact faith feel flitch of bacon flowers follow genius give gloom hand happy happy days heart hope human immortality Joe Adams John Martin knew letter light Linklater lives London look melancholy memory mind misery months morning nature ness never night noble Note-book ourselves pain passed passions perhaps Plaistow pleasure plebs poems poet poetry poor poverty present quiet racter Sancho Panza schoolmaster seems selfishness Sept sorrow soul speak spirit street things thou thought tion to-day to-night truth walk Wapping Wapping Wall week wonderful words write young
Popular passages
Page 97 - Man is his own star; and the soul that can Render an honest and a perfect man, Commands all light, all influence, all fate; Nothing to him falls early or too late. Our acts our angels are, or good or ill, Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
Page 127 - I pass through the filthy lanes, not in imagination, for I have been through them bodily just now, and I see, partly issuing from the depths of my own heart — for we are all centres of evil which we behold — the most squalid beastliness, oaths, quarrels, fights, drunkenness. To know that the image of God can fall below the level of the brutes, and ape their antics with hideous intelligence, is grief enough. To know that that state is its highest joy ; to know that life in all its circle of intellectual...
Page 58 - There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind, is a party to all that...
Page 99 - ... with the most vivid red and white. It thus appeared to stand out from the rock; and I was certainly rather surprised at the moment that I first saw this gigantic head and upper part of a body bending over and staring grimly down at me. It would be impossible to convey in words an adequate idea of this uncouth and savage figure...
Page 128 - At the best the life of these people is very mournful. There is such an utter absence of any desire to achieve immortality to be discovered in them (the people). They pursue daily the same dull, never-thinking course of existence, the only variation to which they look forward being that of hard drinking. The children grow up just in the same way ; at four years old they can " swear like troopers," very often being taught by their parents to do so.
Page 103 - Dickens, after thirty years have elapsed, speaks with bitterness of the sufferings of early manhood. Because the spirit suffers a whole lifetime of torment, it projects these dreary days far, far into the future, so that they make sombre and worthless our good when it comes. Oct. 12. — Interview with Rev. Mr. W., Vicar of Tottenham, at Tottenham. Oct. 13. — It does us good to hear the kind word, and know that the kind heart exists for us. To bear our weight of secret sorrow and care, eating our...
Page 100 - Certificates, &c. Reply from Rev. A. Wilson. Sunday. — Reading. Find lowest common multiple. Here follows an elaborate sum, worked out to its result. Apparently the application concerning the Exhibition failed, but, as is his habit, Martin never complains — merely sinks into silence. Oct. 11. — I am in no mood to write.' Into what dreary paths of life my circumstances will soon lead me I know not. Sorrow and care spring out upon my way, at the most impossible times and places. To come upon...
Page 15 - ... whether they have the sense to follow it up and work it out. Therefore, I always answered Martin's letters and criticised his verses, generally without a day's delay ; for it was easy to trace, under the formality and self-restraint which characterised them, the restlessness of the genus irritabile. One is apt to be rather impatient of literary vanity — the bane of so many amateur authors, but which to all real authors seems so ridiculous and so small. The passion for VOL. I. C 1 " seeing one's...
Page 46 - I received from Mr. Linklater the following letter, which, after much consideration, I have decided to give literally. "You have asked me to collect a few facts respecting John Martin. " I find that he was born in the parish of St. George's-in-the-East on November 20th, 1847, and was baptised. That he was sent to St. Peter's School, and educated by Mr. Rowley, now the Reverend Henry• Rowley, the well-known African Missionary, who managed our school at that time. That a Mr. Blunt, a friend of Mr....
Page 127 - Christ, the nobleminded, the divinely-pure, was born as to-night, when I know that sin is in me almost too great to be forgiven; when I know that there are thousands of souls that reject and despise the hope of everlasting life, for the reason that they are not fit to live now ? I pass through the filthy lanes, not in imagination...