Essays, Biographical, Critical, and Historical, Illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, Volume 3 |
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Page 4
... perspicuous , was soon after displayed , and produced a more ac- curate attention to selection of words and har- mony of arrangement . We shall begin our series of instances from the middle of Elizabeth's reign , dividing it into three ...
... perspicuous , was soon after displayed , and produced a more ac- curate attention to selection of words and har- mony of arrangement . We shall begin our series of instances from the middle of Elizabeth's reign , dividing it into three ...
Page 10
... perspicuity , sweetness , and ease are too generally sacrificed . There is , notwithstanding these usual features of his composition , an occa sional simplicity in his pages , both of style and sentiment , which truly charms . The ...
... perspicuity , sweetness , and ease are too generally sacrificed . There is , notwithstanding these usual features of his composition , an occa sional simplicity in his pages , both of style and sentiment , which truly charms . The ...
Page 14
... perspicuous , and more free from inversions , than that of any other writer of the age of Eliza- beth or James the First . A couple of extracts from his great work , " The History of the World , " which was published in April 1614 ...
... perspicuous , and more free from inversions , than that of any other writer of the age of Eliza- beth or James the First . A couple of extracts from his great work , " The History of the World , " which was published in April 1614 ...
Page 40
... perspicuous arrange- ment of French periods could not fail of proving eminently serviceable . t It may be deemed remarkable , that the first writer who has given us a specimen of elegance and unaffected ease in prose , should be the ...
... perspicuous arrange- ment of French periods could not fail of proving eminently serviceable . t It may be deemed remarkable , that the first writer who has given us a specimen of elegance and unaffected ease in prose , should be the ...
Page 44
... perspicuous , and the members of his sentences distinct , har- monious , not clogged with supernumerary words , nor dragging at the close . The year which closed the life of Cowley wit- nessed likewise the death of JEREMY TAYLOR , a ...
... perspicuous , and the members of his sentences distinct , har- monious , not clogged with supernumerary words , nor dragging at the close . The year which closed the life of Cowley wit- nessed likewise the death of JEREMY TAYLOR , a ...
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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...