The Life of Shakespeare: Enquiries Into the Originality of His Dramatic Plots and Characters; and Essays on the Ancient Theatres and Theatrical Usages, Volume 1

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Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1824 - Dramatists, English

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Page 260 - With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries ; The honey bags steal from the humble-bees, And, for night-tapers, crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glowworm's eyes...
Page 269 - Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd : a certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the west, And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
Page 73 - I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Coleridge, like the former, was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performances. CVL, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention.
Page 254 - He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
Page 153 - I'll sup. Farewell. Poins. Farewell, my lord. [Exit POINS. P. Hen. I know you all, and will a while uphold The unyok'd humour of your idleness : Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds ' To smother up his beauty from the world...
Page 234 - Her own shall bless her: Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn, And hang their heads with sorrow. Good grows with her; In her days every man shall eat in safety Under his own vine what he plants, and sing The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.
Page 69 - Two loves I have, of comfort and despair, Which, like two spirits, do suggest me still: The better angel is a man right fair, The worser spirit a woman coloured ill. To win me soon to hell my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side, And would corrupt my saint to be a devil, Wooing his purity with her foul pride...
Page 269 - Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song ; And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To hear the sea-maid's music.
Page 84 - ... where (before) you were abus'd with diverse stolne and surreptitious copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious impostors that expos'd them ; even those are now offer'd to your view cur'd and perfect of their limbes, and all the rest absolute in their numbers as he conceived them; who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it.
Page 344 - O good old man ; how well in thee appears The constant service of the antique world, When service sweat for duty, not for meed...

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