A History of English Literature: In a Series of Biographical Sketches

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Page 210 - The other shape, If shape it might be called that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint or limb; Or substance might be called that shadow seemed; For each seemed either; black it stood as night, Fierce as ten furies, terrible as Hell, And shook a dreadful dart; what seemed his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on...
Page 211 - Hail, horrors ! hail, Infernal world ! and thou, profoundest Hell, Receive thy new possessor ! one who brings A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
Page 212 - No sooner had the Almighty ceased but — all The multitude of Angels, with a shout Loud as from numbers without number, sweet As from blest voices, uttering joy — Heaven rung With jubilee, and loud hosannas filled The eternal regions.
Page 379 - It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.
Page 243 - That every man with him was God or devil. In squandering wealth was his peculiar art; Nothing went unrewarded but desert. Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late ; He had his jest, and they had his estate.
Page 190 - For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds : but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant — descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the...
Page 243 - He sought the storms ; but, for a calm unfit, Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Page 227 - I' th' middle of his speech, or cough, H' had hard words ready to show why, And tell what rules he did it by ; Else, when with greatest art he spoke, You'd think he talked like other folk.
Page 447 - Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ? And who commanded — and the silence came — Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest...
Page 149 - Yet his real power is not shown in the splendour of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable and the tenor of his dialogue ; and he that tries to recommend him by select quotations will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.

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