The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq. in Six Volumes Complete: The dunciad, in four books

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C. Bathurst, 1787
 

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Page 223 - Night primeval and of Chaos old ! Before her, fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain ; As Argus
Page 226 - Light dies before thy uncreating word : Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, And universal darkness buries all.
Page 80 - In merry old England it once was a rule, The King had his Poet, and also his Fool : But now we're so frugal, I'd have you to know it, That Cibber can serve both for Fool and for Poet.
Page 133 - Ditch with disemboguing streams Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames, The king of dykes ! than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood.
Page 148 - Silence, ye wolves ! while Ralph to Cynthia howls And makes night hideous — Answer him, ye owls ! " Sense, speech, and measure, living tongues and dead, Let all give way, and Morris may be read.
Page 230 - ... poets were ranged in classes, to which were prefixed almost all the letters of the alphabet (the greatest part of them at random) ; but such...
Page xxi - As for those which are the most known, and the most received, they are placed in so beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty, and make the reader, who was before acquainted with them, still more convinced of their truth and solidity.
Page 148 - My great example, as it is my theme ! Tho' deep, yet clear ; tho' gentle, yet not dull ; Strong without rage, without o'er-flowing full.
Page 194 - Show all his paces, not a step advance. With the same cement ever sure to bind, We bring to one dead level every mind. Then take him to develop, if you can ; And hew the block off, and get out the man. 270 But wherefore waste I words ? I see advance Whore, pupil,* and laced governor of France. Walker ! our hat : ' nor more he deign'd to say ; But, stern as Ajax
Page 193 - We only furnish what he cannot use, Or wed to what he must divorce, a muse: Full in the midst of Euclid dip at once, And petrify a genius to a dunce: Or set on metaphysic ground to prance, Show all his paces, not a step advance.

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