A Course of English Reading: Adapted to Every Taste and Capacity: with Anecdotes of Men of Genius |
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Page 7 - What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention, so there is but one half to be employed on what we read*;" and this the Doctor said when sixty-seven years had rolled over his sober head.
Page 24 - not such events or precepts as are gathered by reading, but such remarks, similitudes, allusions, assemblages, or inferences, as occasion prompted or inclination produced ; those thoughts which were generated in his own mind, and might be usefully applied to some future purpose. Such is the labour of those who write for immortality.
Page 7 - combated ; but I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study." My plan requires no rigid adherence, but allows full latitude, as the Doctor goes on to require. " I, myself, have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good."—Vol. ii. p.
Page 60 - a thousand questions are continually arising, a thousand subjects of inquiry presenting themselves, which keep his faculties in constant exercise, and his thoughts perpetually on the wing, so that lassitude is excluded from life, and that craving after artificial excitement and dissipation of mind, which leads so many into frivolous, unworthy, and destructive pursuits, is altogether eradicated from the bosom
Page 224 - no feeling of the lively and the graceful." Sir James justly maintained that " there is a poetical sensibility which in the progress of the mind becomes as distinct a power, as a musical ear or a picturesque eye," which sensibility Johnson had not. The author of Rasselas
Page 126 - ^Eschylus, and Menandar, and all the Greek poets, Plutarch and Polybius, Xenophon, and all those other excellent persons of both faculties, whose choicest dictates are collected by Stobaeus ; Plato and his scholars, Aristotle, and after him Porphyry, and all his other disciples, Pythagoras, and especially Hierocles and all the old Academics and Stoics within the Roman school.
Page 37 - of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents, by flood and field ; Of hair-breadth seapes i
Page 23 - the mask—to show that the mightiest objects of our wonder are mere men like ourselves; have attained their superiority by steps which we can follow ; and that we can, at all events, walk in the same path, though there remains at last a space between us. Think of the wit of
Page 79 - to which many of the authors already recommended are greatly indebted, may satisfy the most eager curiosity. Camden, in 1582, travelled through the eastern and northern counties of England to survey the country and arrange a correspondence for the supply of further information. His " Remains" of a greater work on Britain was published
Page 77 - years between the withdrawing of the Romans from Britain and the descent of the Saxons. These are the leading principles on which you should select " a strong point" in history ; and on which I have selected, by way of example and illustration, the following portions : 1st, The early history till about the time of the