The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper, Volume 9

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Alexander Chalmers
J. Johnson, 1810

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Page 158 - Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call to-day his own : He who, secure within, can say, ' To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day : Be fair or foul or rain or shine, The joys I have possess'd, in spite of Fate, are mine.
Page 506 - Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
Page 9 - Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, and Mr. Waller of Fairfax, for we have our lineal descents and clans as well as other families. Spenser more than once insinuates that the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body, and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease.
Page 481 - Tories echoed every clap, to show that the satire was unfelt. The story of Bolingbroke is well known. He called Booth to his box, and gave him fifty guineas for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator.
Page 357 - Horror of horrors ! what ! his only son ? How look'd our hermit when the fact was done ! Not hell, though hell's black jaws in sunder part, And breathe blue fire, could more assault his heart.
Page 13 - He is a perpetual fountain of good sense ; learned in all sciences ; and, therefore, speaks properly on all subjects. As he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off ; a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting Virgil and Horace.
Page 354 - While through their ranks in silver pride The nether crescent seems to glide ! The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe, The lake is smooth and clear beneath, Where once again the spangled show Descends to meet our eyes below. The grounds which on the right aspire, In dimness from the view retire : The left presents a place of graves, Whose wall the silent water laves. That steeple guides thy doubtful sight Among the livid gleams of night. There pass, with melancholy state. By all the solemn heaps...
Page 13 - We can only say that he lived in the infancy of our poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first. We must be children before we grow men.
Page 491 - No greater felicity can genius attain, than that of having purified intellectual pleasure, separated mirth from indecency, and wit from licentiousness ; of having taught a succession of writers to bring elegance and gaiety to the aid of goodness ; and, if I may use expressions yet more awful, of having " turned many to righteousness.
Page 125 - The sense of an author, generally speaking, is to be sacred and inviolable. If the fancy of Ovid be luxuriant, it is his character to be so ; and if I retrench it, he is no longer Ovid. It will be replied, that he receives advantage by this lopping of his superfluous branches ; but I rejoin, that a translator has no such right.