Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume 4

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Houghton, Mifflin, 1901 - Authors, Scottish
 

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Page 401 - I could not help thinking, in the midst of the glee, what gloom had lately been over the minds of three of the company.
Page 361 - ... scholar, I none ; he a musician and artist, I without knowledge of a note ; he a democrat, I an aristocrat — with many other points of difference; besides his being an Irishman, I a Scotchman, and both tolerably national. Yet there is a point of resemblance, and a strong one. We are both good-humoured fellows, who rather seek to enjoy what is going forward than to maintain our dignity as lions ; and we have both seen the world too widely and too well not to contemn in our souls the imaginary...
Page 428 - Bony may both go to the paper-maker, and I may take to smoking cigars and drinking grog, or turn devotee, and intoxicate the brain another way.
Page 37 - He was a man of middle age ; In aspect manly, grave, and sage, As on king's errand come; But in the glances of his eye, A penetrating, keen, and sly Expression found its home; The flash of that satiric rage, Which, bursting on the early stage, Branded the vices of the age, And broke the keys of Rome.
Page 413 - This warld's wealth when I think on, Its pride, and a' the lave o't ; Fie, fie on silly coward man, That he should be the slave o't.
Page 520 - Lear. My wits begin to turn. Come on, my boy : how d°ost, my boy ? art cold ? I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow ? The art of our necessities is strange, That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel. Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart That 's sorry yet for thee.
Page 303 - O'Kelly; and he had produced, on the spur of the occasion, this modest parody of Dryden's famous epigram : — ' Three poets, of three different nations born, The United Kingdom in this age adorn,— Byron of England; Scott, of Scotia's blood; And Erin's pride, O'Kelly, great and good.
Page 174 - The hero is the celebrated Paul Jones, whom I well remember advancing above the island of Inchkeith with three small vessels to lay Leith under contribution. I remember my mother being alarmed with the drum, which she had heard all her life at eight o'clock, conceiving it to be the pirates who had landed. I never saw such a change as betwixt that time, 1779, in the military state of a city. Then Edinburgh had scarce three companies of men under arms; and latterly she furnished 5000, with complete...
Page 208 - ... expectation has gone on increasing. I do the same now. I anticipate what this plantation and that one will presently be, if only taken care of, and there is not a spot of which I do not watch the progress. Unlike building, or even painting, or indeed any other kind of pursuit, this has no end, and is never interrupted ; but goes on from day to day, and from year to year, with a perpetually augmenting interest.
Page 384 - Square the odds, and good-night Sir Walter about sixty. — I care not, if I leave my name unstained, and my family properly settled — /Sat est vixisse.

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