The British Essayists: With Prefaces, Historical and Biographical, 31. köideLittle, Brown, 1856 |
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Common terms and phrases
acquaintance acquired ADRASTUS affection allow amusement ancholy attention bear-baiting beauty benevolent better character circumstances companion creative memory daugh daughters degree Delaserre delight dinner disposition dissipation distress Don Quixote Dormer Draper dress Edinburgh Emilia enjoy enjoyment Eudocius excellent Falstaff fancy fashion father favour favourite feelings folly fortune frequently gave genius gentleman give Hamlet Hannah Glasse happiness heard honour humour husband indulgence kind ladies ladyship late learned less lived look Lounger Macbeth manner marriage married melancholy ment mind misanthropy misfortune mother nature ness never object observed perhaps person pleasure Plutarch possessed Richard courts ridicule Roberts drew Saintfort SATURDAY seems sensibility sentiments servant Shakspeare situation society sometimes sort spirit Symposius talk taste tell tender thing thought tion told town uncon Valens vanity virtue virtue betrayed walk wealth wife Wilfull wish XXXI young youth
Popular passages
Page 325 - Thou's met me in an evil hour; For I maun crush amang the stoure Thy slender stem: To spare thee now is past my pow'r, Thou bonnie gem. Alas ! it's no thy neebor sweet, The bonnie Lark, companion meet! Bending thee 'mang the dewy weet! Wi' spreckl'd breast, When upward-springing, blythe, to greet The purpling east.
Page 326 - mang the dewy weet, Wi' spreckled breast! When upward-springing, blithe, to greet The purpling east. Cauld blew the bitter-biting north Upon thy early, humble birth; Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth Amid the storm, Scarce rear'd above the parent earth Thy tender form. The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield, High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield, But thou, beneath the random bield O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field Unseen, alane.
Page 326 - Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate, That fate is thine — no distant date; Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate Full on thy bloom, Till crush'd beneath the furrow's weight Shall be thy doom!
Page 327 - Shakespeare discerns the characters of men, with which he catches the many changing hues of life, forms a sort of problem in the science of mind, of which it is easier to see the truth than to assign the cause. Though I am very far from meaning to compare...
Page 326 - O' clod or stane, Adorns the histie stibble-field, Unseen, alane. There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snawie bosom sunward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise ; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies ! Such is the fate of artless maid, Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade ! By love's simplicity betrayed, And guileless trust, Till she, like thee, all soiled, is laid Low i
Page 326 - Low i' the dust. Such is the fate of simple Bard, On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd! Unskilful he to note the card Of prudent lore, Till billows rage, and gales blow hard, And whelm him o'er! Such fate to suffering worth is giv'n, Who long with wants and woes has striv'n, By human pride or cunning driv'n To mis'ry's brink, Till wrench'd of ev'ry stay but Heav'n, He, ruin'd, sink!
Page 247 - Holla, or the encouraging Hark forward! to a cautious hound. But though these are a set of capacities which mark one's denizenship to the country, and which therefore I am proud to retain, yet I confess I am more delighted with its quieter and less turbulent pleasures. There is a sort of moral use of the country, which every man who has not lost the rural sentiment will feel; a certain purity of mind and imagination which its scenes inspire, a simplicity, a colouring of nature on the objects around...
Page 248 - ... to the ideas of him who can lounge with all his mind open about him. I am not sure if, in the regret which I feel for my absence from the country, I do not rate its enjoyments higher, and paint its landscapes in more glowing colours, than the reality might afford. I have long cultivated a talent very fortunate for a man of my disposition, that of travelling in my...
Page 252 - I could draw the old lady at this moment ! — dressed in gray, with a clean white hood nicely plaited (for she was somewhat finical about the neatness of her person) , sitting in her straight-backed elbow-chair, which stood in a large window scooped out of the thickness of the ancient wall. The middle panes of the window were of painted glass, the story of Joseph and his brethren. On the outside waved a honeysuckle-tree, which often threw its shade across her book or her work ; but she would not...
Page 345 - AMONG the cautions which prudence and worldly wisdom inculcate on the young, or at least among those sober truths which experience often pretends to have acquired, is that danger which is said to result from the pursuit of letters and of science, in men destined for the labours of business, for the active exertions of professional life.