The works of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland. With prefaces, biographical and critical, by S. Johnson, 6. köide

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Page 319 - Some to Conceit alone their taste confine, And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line; Pleas'd with a work where nothing's just or fit; One glaring Chaos and wild heap of wit. Poets, like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part, And hide with ornaments their want of art.
Page 372 - Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride, He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest; In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err...
Page 56 - Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies; They fall successive, and successive rise : So generations in their course decay; So flourish these, when those are pass'd away.
Page 3 - How fertile will that imagination appear which was able to clothe all the properties of elements, the qualifications of the mind, the virtues and vices, in forms and persons, and to introduce them into actions agreeable to the nature of the things they shadowed?
Page 312 - And lonely woodcocks haunt the watery glade. He lifts the tube, and levels with his eye ; Straight a short thunder breaks the frozen sky : Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clamorous lapwings feel the leaden death : Oft, as the mounting larks their notes prepare, They fall, and leave their little lives in air.
Page 381 - Pursues that chain which links th' immense design, Joins heaven and earth, and mortal and divine ; Sees that no being any bliss can know, But touches some above and some below ; Learns from this union of the rising whole The first, last purpose of the human soul ; And knows where faith, law, morals, all began, All end, in love of God and love of man.
Page 399 - Hear this, and tremble ! you who 'scape the laws. Yes, while I live, no rich or noble knave Shall walk the world, in credit, to his grave.
Page 318 - Music resembles poetry; in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach, And which a master-hand alone can reach. If, where the rules not far enough extend, (Since rules were made but to promote their end) Some lucky licence answer to the full Th' intent propos'd, that licence is a rule.
Page 469 - As Fancy opens the quick springs of Sense, We ply the Memory, we load the brain, Bind rebel Wit, and double chain on chain; Confine the thought, to exercise the breath; And keep them in the pale of Words till death.
Page 398 - What ? arm'd for virtue when I point the pen, Brand the bold front of shameless guilty men, Dash the proud gamester in his gilded car, Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath a star ; Can there be wanting, to defend her cause, Lights of the church, or guardians of the laws ? Could pension'd Boileau lash in honest strain Flatterers and bigots e'en in Louis...

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