Essays, Biographical, Critical, and Historical, Illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, Volume 3 |
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Page 20
... greater fund of useful knowledge , or dis- plays a more intimate acquaintance with human life and manners . The style , however , is not pleasing ; it is devoid of melody and simplicity , and the sentences are too short and antithetic ...
... greater fund of useful knowledge , or dis- plays a more intimate acquaintance with human life and manners . The style , however , is not pleasing ; it is devoid of melody and simplicity , and the sentences are too short and antithetic ...
Page 22
... greater part a cento , and the quo- tations abound in almost every page . Where , however , his own language is suffered to appear , and especially on subjects interesting to himself , the style , for the period he wrote in , is uncom ...
... greater part a cento , and the quo- tations abound in almost every page . Where , however , his own language is suffered to appear , and especially on subjects interesting to himself , the style , for the period he wrote in , is uncom ...
Page 25
... greater part throws such an obscurity round his subject , or places it in such a ludicrous light , that the knowledge he wishes to communicate is either not understood , or , if perceived , is unhappily associated with ideas of ridicule ...
... greater part throws such an obscurity round his subject , or places it in such a ludicrous light , that the knowledge he wishes to communicate is either not understood , or , if perceived , is unhappily associated with ideas of ridicule ...
Page 31
... greater energy or purity . Milton early commenced his ecclesiastical war- fare , and , in 1642 , published The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy . In this pro- duction he nobly declares , and in the spirit of sincerity ...
... greater energy or purity . Milton early commenced his ecclesiastical war- fare , and , in 1642 , published The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy . In this pro- duction he nobly declares , and in the spirit of sincerity ...
Page 49
... greater number of horses for their service , upon their propositions , than any other of the same quality ; convinced in his consci- ence , fled from them , and besought the King's pardon and , for the better manifesting the ten ...
... greater number of horses for their service , upon their propositions , than any other of the same quality ; convinced in his consci- ence , fled from them , and besought the King's pardon and , for the better manifesting the ten ...
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Common terms and phrases
Addison admirable Æneid Anatomy of Melancholy ancient apologues appear Arabian beauty caliphs Canterbury Tales century character charms Chaucer colours composition consider criticism crusade delight diction Ditto Dryden East edition effect elegant endeavours English English Poetry Essays excellent exhibited exquisite fable fairy fancy genius Geoffery grace guage hath heaven humour imagery imagination justly king language learned literary literature Lord manner ment merit Milton mind moral nature never night observes opinion oriental passage period Persian perspicuity philosophy Pilpay pleasing pleasure poem poet poetry present productions prose racter reader remarks rich Roger de Coverley romance says second Crusade sense Shakspeare shew Simeon Seth simplicity Sir Roger species specimen Spectator spirit stars story style sublime supposed sweetness taste Tatler things third crusade thou tion verse whilst William of Malmesbury wonderful words writers written
Popular passages
Page 100 - When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with...
Page 36 - I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies...
Page 111 - What he attempted, he performed ; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetic ; he is never rapid, and he never stagnates. His sentences have neither studied amplitude, nor affected brevity ; his periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison, HUGHES.
Page 44 - But so have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and, at first, it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece ; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head, and broke its stalk, and, at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion...
Page 31 - Lastly, I should not choose this manner of writing, wherein knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account, but of my left hand.
Page 32 - Time serves not now, and perhaps I might seem too profuse to give any certain account of what the mind at home, in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting; whether that epic form whereof the two poems of Homer and those other two of Virgil and Tasso 5 are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief, model...
Page 18 - STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business.
Page 35 - Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted...
Page 76 - Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth often die before us ; and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching ; where though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away. The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colours ; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear.
Page 105 - We cannot indeed have a single image in the fancy that did not make its first entrance through the sight; but we have the power of retaining, altering, and compounding those images which we have once received, into all the varieties of picture and vision...