Words and Idioms: Studies in the English LanguageHoughton Mifflin Company, 1925 - 299 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
abroad acquired adjective aesthetic artist become borrowed called character classical colloquial creation creative criticism curious derived describe Devil dialect words Dryden Dutch dynamic verb ears eighteenth century element embodied England English idioms English language English words enriched Essay Europe expression famous feeling foreign France French French language genius German give grammar Greek human idiomatic phrases idioms imagination imitation important inspiration instance invention Italian Joseph Warton kind large number Latin linguistic literary literature Madame de Staël meaning modern mouth Nature one's hand one's head one's heart one's nose origin Oxford Dictionary perhaps phrasal verbs play poetic poetry poets popular speech possess prepositions regarded romantic love Romantic Movement romanticism romantique sailors says send to Coventry Shakespeare ship Spanish speak standard language Teutonic Thomas Warton thought throw tion translated turn usage vivid word romantic writing
Popular passages
Page 124 - Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, "I will compose poetry." The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness...
Page 96 - The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.
Page 247 - Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.
Page 273 - He shall not drop." said my uncle Toby, firmly. "A-well-o'day, do what we can for him, said Trim, maintaining his point,; "the poor soul will die." "He shall not die, by G— !" cried my uncle Toby. The Accusing Spirit, which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath, blushed as he gave it in, and the Recording Angel, as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.
Page 264 - I have laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations. Something, perhaps, I have added to the elegance of its construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence.
Page 134 - FOR beauty being the best of all we know Sums up the unsearchable and secret aims Of nature, and on joys whose earthly names Were never told can form and sense bestow ; And man hath sped his instinct to outgo The step of science ; and against her shames Imagination stakes out heavenly claims, Building a tower above the head of woe.
Page 103 - A star of the first magnitude among the moderns was Shakespeare; among the ancients, Pindar; who, as Vossius tells us, boasted of his nolearning, calling himself the eagle, for his flight above it.
Page 88 - Homer himself drew not his art so immediately from the fountains of nature ; it proceeded through Egyptian strainers and- channels, and came to him not without some tincture of the learning, or some cast of the models, of those before him. The poetry of...
Page 125 - He who combines the two is the man of genius ; and for that reason he must partake of both. Hence there is in genius itself an unconscious activity ; nay, that is the genius in the man of genius.
Page 264 - If clearness and perspicuity were only to be consulted, the poet would have nothing else to do but to clothe his thoughts in the most plain and natural expressions. But, since it often happens that the most obvious phrases, and those which are used in ordinary conversation, become too familiar to the ear, and contract a kind of meanness by passing through the mouths of the vulgar, a poet should take particular care to guard himself against idiomatic ways of speaking.