The Works of John Dryden: Now First Collected in Eighteen Volumes, Volume 1

Front Cover
A. Constable & Company, 1821

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 170 - Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun, When first on this delightful land he spreads His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower...
Page 169 - With thee conversing I forget all time ; All seasons and their change, all please alike. Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet, With charm of earliest birds...
Page 311 - Thy rate and price, and mark thee for a treasure, Hearken unto a Verser, who may chance Rhyme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure : A verse may find him, who a Sermon flies, And turn delight into a Sacrifice.
Page 313 - But, gracious God ! how well dost thou provide For erring judgments an unerring guide ! Thy throne is darkness in the' abyss of light, A blaze of glory that forbids the sight.
Page 189 - His style is boisterous and rough-hewn, his rhyme incorrigibly lewd, and his numbers perpetually harsh and ill-sounding. The little talent which he has, is fancy. He sometimes labours with a thought ; but, with the pudder he makes to bring it into the world...
Page 123 - I boldly answer him that an heroic poet is not tied to a bare representation of what is true, or exceeding probable : but that he may let himself loose to visionary objects, and to the representation of such things as, depending not on sense and therefore not to be comprehended by knowledge, may give him a freer scope for imagination.
Page 447 - Of this kind of meanness he never seems to decline the practice or lament the necessity : he considers the great as entitled to encomiastic homage ; and brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift, more delighted with the fertility of his invention than mortified by the prostitution of his judgment.
Page 111 - Poets like lovers should be bold and dare, They spoil their business with an over-care. And he who servilely creeps after sense, Is safe, but ne'er will reach an excellence.
Page 8 - England* began first that language; all our ladies were then his scholars ; and that beauty in court which could not parley Euphuism...
Page 473 - Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much; Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.

Bibliographic information