Something Beautiful

History "from which all poetry's been driven"

This assessment strikes me as so true --

Adam Zagajewski mourns the passing of history as a literary art. Modern historians, he says, “write in an inhuman, ugly, wooden, bureaucratic language from which all poetry’s been driven, a language flat as a wood louse and petty as the daily paper.” He names no names but historical writing has seen few heirs to Gibbon and Adams, . . . .

[From Anecdotal Evidence: `The Inferior Role of Chronicler'.]

Public domain essays

A collection of fine essays - at Quotidiana.

Thomas Hardy

I was quite taken by this painting of author Thomas Hardy by (surprise!) Augustus John.