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. 1909 Excerpt: ...The Dial still lives, and as a journal of literary criticism, discussion and information has none to surpass it. sculpture and its oneness of impression. In every page one felt the pervasive charm of a clear, sane, wholesome feeling flowing from the springs of life in a pure and sound nature. "Augustine and His Mother" ...
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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. 1909 Excerpt: ...The Dial still lives, and as a journal of literary criticism, discussion and information has none to surpass it. sculpture and its oneness of impression. In every page one felt the pervasive charm of a clear, sane, wholesome feeling flowing from the springs of life in a pure and sound nature. "Augustine and His Mother" opened the volume, which closed with a brilliant sketch of the Renaissance, in which we are shown, framed in beauty, culture and sorrow, the delicate but striking figure of Olympia Morata. "Parlez Vous Francais?" was a satire on the linguistic mania which would end, he said, in our having many dialects and few ideas, whereas it is better to have many ideas and one rich-toned language. "A Roman Home" was "a letter to his friend Ximines, from Tiro, a slave of Cicero," describing the family life and habits of the great orator. Here we see the orator at home, and the essayist also, for Swing's knowledge of that old, faroff Roman home was intimate and complete. One of the best essays in the volume, after the sketch of "Pliny the Younger," was the "History of Love," pointing out the fact, noted later by Vernon Lee and others, that since the days of the Greeks and even the Troubadours, there has been a spiritualization of the physical passion of love; that Dante, in his "Vita Nuova," gave love a soul, and that it has had a soul ever since, with those who have a soul for anything else. One can easily imagine the delight which these essays gave to the Chicago Literary Club. It has always been a regret of his friends that Swing did not write a story dealing with life in ancient Greece and Rome. He knew those epic scenes and epochal minds, and it was believed that he could have made t...
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