Selections from the Essays of EliaLeach, Shewell & Sanborn, 1897 - 207 pages |
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admire AINGER Alice beauty Benchers better BLAKESMOOR born boys Bridget brother called cards Carthusian celebrated Charles Lamb cheerful Christ's Christ's Hospital College common confess cousin cribbage dreams earth English Essays of Elia face fancy father feel gardens gentleman great-grandmother Field hath heart Hertfordshire holy humors India House Inner Temple Izaak Walton John Woolman king knew lady Lamb's LINE lived London look Mackery End Margate Mary Lamb mind nature never night noble occasions once Oxford Paradise Lost passed passion person play pleasant pleasure poet poor Quaker reader Religio Medici remember School seemed sickness sister smile solitude sometimes sort speak spirit stood story strange strange matter Street sweet sympathy thee thing Thomas Thomas à Kempis thou thought tion told touch truth walk whist words Wordsworth young youth
Popular passages
Page 124 - ... with the gilding almost rubbed out — sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me — and how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them, because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then...
Page 35 - To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a class of alienators more formidable than that which I have touched upon; I mean your borrowers of books — those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes.
Page 122 - ... greatgrandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa lived) which had been the scene — so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country — of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood.
Page 108 - Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that's made To a green thought in a green shade.
Page 169 - Time all to himself. It seemed to me that I had more time on my hands than I could ever manage. From a poor man — poor in Time — I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue ; I could see no end of my possessions. I wanted some steward or judicious bailiff to manage my estates in Time for me. And here let me caution persons grown old in active business, not lightly, nor without weighing their own resources, to forego their customary employment all at once, for there may be danger in it.
Page 126 - I was lame-footed ; and how when he died, though he had not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life and death; and how I bore his death as I thought pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and haunted me, and though I did not cry or take it to heart as some do, and as I think he would have done if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how much I had loved him.
Page 127 - I became in doubt which of them stood there before me, or whose that bright hair was; and while I stood gazing, both the children gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features were seen in the uttermost distance...
Page 176 - Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver, two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect ! And here the same lady, or another, (for likeness is identity on teacups,) is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence...
Page 49 - Do they not fortify like a cordial ; enlarging the heart, and productive of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction ? Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed or affected ? — Passed like a cloud — absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry — clean washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries.
Page 125 - ... might be said to love their uncle, John L , because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us ; and, instead of moping about in solitary corners, like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than themselves, and make it carry him half over the county in a morning, and join the hunters when there were any out...