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Adam Smith Addison admire Aristides beauty Biographia Literaria blockhead Boswell's boyhood Burns called Carlyle Carlyle's Charles Lamb child childhood Coleridge Cowley Cowley's critic David Hume delight describes dulness Edmund Burke English Eton College evil fame famous favourite feel football Garrick genius glory Goldsmith governors of India Happy Homer hope Horace Walpole Hume to William imagination Johnson judgment kings knowledge LECTURE lived look Macaulay mighty Milton mind misery nature never nevertheless noble Oxford pass patriotism Pindar play pleasure poem poet poetry Pope ramble Ruskin Samuel Johnson says scholar scorn Scott Scottish Shakespeare silent poets Sir William Sir William Jones song story style taste taught teach teacher things Thomas Car thought told trained Tristram Shandy turned William Jones William Strahan word-painting words Wordsworth writes wrote young youth
Popular passages
Page 18 - The floating clouds their state shall lend To her; for her the willow bend; Nor shall she fail to see Even in the motions of the storm Grace that shall mould the maiden's form By silent sympathy. 'The stars of midnight shall be dear To her; and she shall lean her ear In many a secret place Where rivulets dance their wayward round, And beauty born of murmuring sound Shall pass into her face.
Page 17 - THREE years she grew in sun and shower ; Then Nature said : " A lovelier flower On earth was never sown ; This child I to myself will take ; She shall be mine, and I will make A lady of my own. " Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse ; and with me The girl, in rock and plain, In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, Shall feel an overseeing power, To kindle or restrain.
Page 82 - We do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence ; For it is, as the air, invulnerable, And our vain blows malicious mockery.
Page 71 - And when I die, be sure you let me know Great Homer died three thousand years ago. Why did I write ? what sin to me unknown Dipp'd me in ink, my parents', or my own ? As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame. I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came...
Page 57 - Will no one tell me what she sings? — Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again?
Page 78 - Is it for thee the lark ascends and sings? Joy tunes his voice, joy elevates his wings. Is it for thee the linnet pours his throat ? Loves of his own and raptures swell the note.
Page 158 - The mathematics, and the metaphysics, Fall to them, as you find your stomach serves you: No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en ; — In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
Page 140 - Night primeval and of Chaos old ! Before her, fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain ; As Argus
Page 92 - ... in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.
Page 85 - Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in Man. What passion cannot Music raise and quell? When Jubal struck the chorded shell, His listening brethren stood around, And, wondering, on their faces fell To worship that celestial sound. Less than a god they thought there could not dwell Within the hollow of that shell, That spoke so sweetly, and so well.