Short essays: original and selected

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Moffatt & Paige, 1885 - 195 pages

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Page 102 - But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch ; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him.
Page 32 - Here thou, great ANNA ! whom three realms obey, Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes tea.
Page 27 - The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen: Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
Page 39 - ... a gross of green spectacles, with silver rims and shagreen cases." "A gross of green spectacles!" repeated my wife, in a faint voice. "And you have parted with the colt, and brought us back nothing but a gross of green paltry spectacles!" "Dear mother," cried the boy, "why won't you listen to reason?
Page 17 - To this succeeded that Licentiousness which entered with the Restoration, and from infecting our Religion and Morals, fell to corrupt our Language; which last was not like to be much improved by those who at that Time made up the Court of King Charles the Second; either such...
Page 145 - I saw it, close in upon us ! One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging ; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat — which she did...
Page 100 - All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously but luckily: when he describes anything you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.
Page 102 - ... it. In his works you find little to retrench or alter. Wit, and language, and humour also in some measure, we had before him ; but something of art was wanting to the drama, till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions ; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such an height.
Page 102 - Perhaps too, he did a little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them— wherein, though he learnedly followed the idiom of their language, he did not enough comply with the idiom of ours.
Page 15 - Men look with an evil eye upon the good that is in others, and think that their reputation obscures them, and their commendable qualities stand in their light ; and therefore they do what they can to cast a cloud over them, that the bright shining of their virtues may not obscure them.

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