Sketches from Life, Volume 1

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Henry Colburn, 1849

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Page 175 - Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks, The air, a charter'd libertine, is still, And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears, To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences...
Page 94 - And thy arch and wily ways, And thy store of other praise. Blithe of heart, from week to week Thou dost play at hide-and-seek ; While the patient primrose sits...
Page 117 - Oh ! that I were The viewless spirit of a lovely sound, A living voice, a breathing harmony, A bodiless enjoyment, born and dying With the blest Tone that made me.
Page iii - Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves is as true of personal habits as of money.
Page xliv - His thoughts were as a pyramid up-piled, On whose far top an angel stood and smiled — Yet, in his heart, was he a simple child.
Page xxiv - ... and colonial appointments, can reward his services and prevent his starving. But for the author there is nothing but his pen, till that and life are worn to the stump ; and then, with good fortune, perhaps on his death-bed he receives a pension — and equals, it may be, for a few months, the income of a retired butler...
Page xliii - Added to this, they contain not a thought, not a line, from which the most anxious parent would guard his child. They may be read with safety by the most simple, and yet they contain enough of truth and character to interest the most reflective.
Page 284 - Oh! who can hold a fire in his hand, By thinking of the frosty Caucasus?
Page vi - Blanchard, or had gone more resolutely through the author's hardening ordeal of narrow circumstance, of daily labour, and of that disappointment in the higher aims of ambition, which must almost inevitably befall those who retain ideal standards of excellence, to be reached but by time and leisure, and who are yet condemned to draw hourly upon unmatured resources for the practical wants of life.
Page xliii - HE taught the cheerfulness that still is ours The sweetness that still lurks in human powers; If heaven be full of stars, the earth has flowers. His was the searching thought, the glowing mind; The gentle will, to others soon resigned; But, more than all, the feeling just and kind. His pleasures were as melodies from reeds — Sweet books, deep music and unselfish deeds. Finding immortal flowers in human weeds. True to his kind, nor of himself afraid, He...

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