Essays, Biographical, Critical, and Historical: Illustrative of the Rambler, Adventurer, & Idler, and of the Various Periodical Papers Which, in Imitation of the Writings of Steele and Addison, Have Been Published Between the Close of the Eighth Volume of the Spectator, and the Commencement of the Year 1809, Volume 2

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J. Seeley, 1810 - 499 pages
 

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Page 230 - Here Reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind, He has not left a wiser or better behind : His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand : His manners were gentle, complying, and bland ; Still born to improve us in every part, His pencil our faces, his manners our heart...
Page 243 - Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn; The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go, To make a third she joined the former two.
Page 281 - I was very glad to think of anything, rather than politics. In short, I was so engrossed with my tale, which I completed in less than two months, that one evening, I wrote from the time I had drunk my tea, about six o'clock, till half an hour after one in the morning, when my hand and fingers were so weary, that I could not hold the pen to finish the sentence, but left Matilda and Isabella talking, in the middle of a paragraph.
Page 230 - Still born to improve us in every part, His pencil our faces, his manners our heart : To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, When they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing : When they talk'd of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff, He shifted his trumpet,* and only took snuff.
Page 470 - Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.
Page 52 - I have been directed to chide, and even repulse, when an offence was either taken or given, at the very time that the heart of the chider or repulser was open before me, overflowing with esteem and affection, and the fair repulser, dreading to be taken at her word, directing this word, or that expression, to be softened or changed. One, highly gratified with her lover's fervour and vows of everlasting love, has said, when I have asked her direction, ' I cannot tell you what to write ; but (her heart...
Page 34 - ... at the reflection : but let not this be read as something that relates only to another ; for a few years only can divide the eye that is now reading from the hand that has written.
Page 223 - Whatever merit these Discourses may have, must be imputed in a great measure to the education which I may be said to have had under Dr. Johnson. I do not mean to say, though it certainly would be to the credit of these Discourses, if I could say it with truth, that he contributed even a single sentiment to them ; but he qualified my mind to think justly.
Page 120 - Fancy, from the scenes of folly, To meet the matron Melancholy, Goddess of the tearful eye, That loves to fold her arms, and sigh ; Let us with silent footsteps go To charnels and the house of woe, To Gothic churches, vaults, and tombs, Where each sad night some virgin comes, With throbbing breast, and faded cheek, Her promis'd bridegroom's um to seek; Or to some abbey's mould'ring tow'rs, Where, to avoid cold wintry show'rs, The naked beggar shivering lies, While whistling tempests round her rise,...
Page 120 - Mid forests dark of aged oak, Ne'er echoing with the woodman's stroke, Where never human art appear'd, Nor ev'n one straw-roof'd cott was rear'd, Where NATURE seems to sit alone, Majestic on a craggy throne; Tell me the path, sweet...

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