Dryden

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Macmillan, 1902 - 196 pages

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Page 134 - 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 59 - tis all a cheat; Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit; Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay: To-morrow's falser than the former day; Lies worse, and, while it says, we shall be blest With some new joys, cuts off what we possest. Strange cozenage! None would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And, from the dregs of life, think to receive, What the first sprightly running could not give. I'm tired with waiting for this chemic gold, Which fools us young, and...
Page 185 - Read all the prefaces of Dryden, For these our critics much confide in (Though merely writ at first for filling, To raise the volume's price a shilling...
Page 12 - Oxford to him a dearer name shall be, Than his own mother university. Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage; He chooses Athens in his riper age.
Page 144 - Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call to-day his own: He who, secure within, can say, To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day. Be fair or foul, or rain or shine, The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine. Not heaven itself upon the past has power; But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
Page 92 - O'ertops thy talent in thy very trade : Doeg, to thee thy paintings are so coarse, A poet is, though he's the poet's horse. A double noose thou on thy neck dost pull, For writing treason, and for writing dull: To die for faction is a common evil, But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil.
Page 90 - But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day...
Page 92 - Hast shamefully defied the Lord's anointed. I will not rake the dunghill of thy crimes, For who would read thy life that reads thy rhymes ? But of King David's foes be this the doom, May all be like the young man Absalom ; And for my foes, may this their blessing be, To talk like Doeg, and to write like thee...
Page 134 - ... bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets, " Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.
Page 89 - Through all the realms of Non-sense, absolute. This aged prince now flourishing in peace, And blest with issue of a large increase...

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