Elements of Prose |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
adjective adjective-clause adverb Adverb-clause adverb-phrase ambiguity analogy Archbishop Whately balance beauty beginner in prose Ben Jonson Blair Causal Citizen clause climax close cloth co-ordinate sentences comma common common-sense connection consequently Copula definite Edited effect employed English epithet essay Essays of Elia example Faery Queen fault figure frequently grammatical order habit harmony ideas illustration inner temple Inversion ject John Downie Julius Cæsar kind king language Letter light verb meaning merely metaphor Metonymy mind nature never noun observe old topic Osrick PARAGRAPH-CLOSE paragraph-topic particular PLACEMENT CORRECT PLACEMENT FAULTY Pleonasm possible precede Predicative Matter Predicative Paragraph pronoun proposition quently reader refer regard relative clauses Remark requires resemblance rhetorical rule SENTENCE-GLIDES Shakespeare simile speak Spectator statement stress-value structure style subordinate syndeton Synecdoche Tautology tence things thought ticular tion tive unity verb Whately whole word or phrase World writing دو وو
Popular passages
Page 77 - Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me ! You would play upon me ; you would seem to know my stops ; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery ; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass : and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ ; yet cannot you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe ? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.
Page 88 - I HAVE observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author.
Page 124 - We have often thought that the motion of the public mind in our country resembles that of the sea when the tide is rising. Each successive wave rushes forward, breaks, and rolls back ; but the great flood is steadily coming in.
Page 69 - To spend too much time in studies, is sloth ; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humour of a scholar: they perfect nature, and are perfected by experience...
Page 107 - It is very unlucky for a man to be entangled in a friendship with one, who, by these changes and vicissitudes of humour, is sometimes amiable and sometimes odious : and as most men are at...
Page 13 - No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion.
Page 79 - ... as turning back to my promise ; I desire the learned and charitable critic, to have so much faith in me, to think it was done of industry .- for, with what ease I could have varied it nearer his scale (but that I fear to boast my own faculty) I could here insert. But my special aim being to put the snaffle in their mouths, that cry out, We never punish vice in our interludes, &c.
Page 124 - ... were rushing capriciously to and fro. But when he keeps his eye on them for a quarter of an hour, and sees one sea-mark disappear after another, it is impossible for him to doubt of the general direction in which the ocean is moved. Just such has been the course of events in England.
Page 104 - Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to this mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the natives of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of de» pendence upon one another, and be united together by their common interest.
Page 63 - I look upon these writers as Goths in poetry, who, like those in architecture, not being able to come up to the beautiful simplicity of the old Greeks and Romans, have endeavoured to supply its place with all the extravagancies of an irregular fancy. Mr. Dryden makes a very handsome observation on Ovid's writing a letter from Dido to JEneas, in the following words :