The Works of John Dryden: In Verse and Prose, with a Life, 2. köide

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Page 209 - 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. "I cannot say he is everywhere alike.
Page 75 - Within a long recess there lies a bay: An island shades it from the rolling sea, And forms a port secure for ships to ride; Broke by the jutting land, on either side, In double streams the briny waters glide. Betwixt two rows of rocks a sylvan scene Appears above, and groves for ever green: A grot is form'd beneath, with mossy seats, To rest the Nereids, and exclude the heats. Down thro...
Page 208 - ... and counter-turns of plot, as some of them have attempted, since Corneille's plays have been less in vogue, you see they write as irregularly as we, though they cover it more speciously. Hence the reason is perspicuous, why no French plays, when translated, have, or ever can succeed on the English stage.
Page 210 - 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 206 - They are quickly up, and if the concernment be poured unexpectedly in upon us, it overflows us. But a long sober shower gives them leisure to run out as they came in, without troubling the ordinary current. As for comedy, repartee is one of its chiefest graces. The greatest pleasure of the audience is a chase of wit, kept up on both sides, and swiftly managed.
Page 210 - As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself (for his last plays were but his dotages), I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of 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...
Page 209 - He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.
Page 112 - Let him for succour sue from place to place, Torn from his subjects, and his son's embrace. First let him see his friends in battle slain, And their untimely fate lament in vain: And when at length the cruel war shall cease, On hard conditions may he buy his peace: Nor let him then enjoy supreme command ; But fall, untimely, by some hostile hand, And lie unburied on the barren sand!
Page 210 - Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language...
Page 225 - Fletcher have written to the genius of the age and nation in which they lived; for though nature, as he objects, is the same in all places, and reason too the same, yet the climate, the age, the disposition of the people, to whom a poet writes, may be so different, that what pleased the Greeks would not satisfy an English audience.

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