The Collected Works of William Hazlitt: The plain speaker. Essay on the principles of human action, etc

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J. M. Dent & Company, 1903 - English essays

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Page 326 - Yet nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art, Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scion to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race: this is an art Which does mend nature, — change it rather; but The art itself is nature.
Page 371 - I care not, fortune, what you me deny ; You cannot rob me of free nature's grace ; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face, You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve : Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave : Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.
Page 63 - As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done : Perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright : To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.
Page 64 - O'er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present, Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours ; For time is like a fashionable host That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer : the welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing.
Page 74 - Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen Full many a sprightly race Disporting on thy margent green The paths of pleasure trace; Who foremost now delight to cleave With pliant arm, thy glassy wave? The captive linnet which enthral? What idle progeny succeed To chase the rolling circle's speed, Or urge the flying ball?
Page 21 - That which is now a horse, even with a thought The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct, As water is in water.
Page 318 - Piety displays Her mouldering roll, the piercing eye explores New manners, and the pomp of elder days, Whence culls the pensive bard his pictured stores. Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways Of hoar antiquity, but strown with flowers.
Page 64 - High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin...
Page 266 - How charming is divine Philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns.
Page 59 - What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.— That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures.

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