The Writer's Handbook, a Guide to the Art of Composition, Embracing a General Treatise on Composition and Style: Instruction in English Composition, with Exercises for Paraphrasing; and an Elaborate Letter-writer's Vademecum, in which are Numerous Rules and Suggestions Relating to the Epistolary Art |
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adverb Æneid allegory ancient appear Aristotle arrangement beauty Beggar's Opera blank verse character Cicero circumstances city of York composition connexion critics degree discourse effect elegance employed English English language Essays examples expression eyes fancy figure frequently genius grace happy hath heart heaven Hist Homer honour human humour idea imagination instances introduced kind Koreish labour language learned letters literary living Lord Mahomet manner meaning ment metaphor mind nature never object observed occasion ornament passage passion period person personification perspicuity pleasure poet poetry possessed precision proper propriety prose qualities reader reason remarkable resemblance Roger Ascham Roman Roman Empire Roman Republic rule seems sense sentence sentiments simile simplicity Sir William Temple soul sound speak strength style taste thee things thou thought tion tragedy trope truth verb verse Virgil virtue words writer
Popular passages
Page 162 - And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down.
Page 85 - To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, . Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold ; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean ; This is not solitude ; 'tis but to hold Converse with nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd.
Page 120 - A stranger yet to pain! I feel the gales, that from ye blow, A momentary bliss bestow, As waving fresh their gladsome wing, My weary soul they seem to soothe, And, redolent of joy and youth, To breathe a second spring.
Page 231 - He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too.
Page 238 - I could discover nothing in it: but the other appeared to me a vast ocean planted with innumerable islands, that were covered with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a thousand little shining seas that ran among them. I could see persons dressed in glorious habits with garlands...
Page 84 - Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault...
Page 232 - He is many times flat, insipid, his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him...
Page 113 - But yet, if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheats...
Page 236 - Bagdat, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer. As I was here airing myself on the tops of the mountains, I fell into a profound contemplation on the vanity of human life; and, passing from one thought to another, 'Surely,' said I, 'man is but a shadow and life a dream.
Page 46 - Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear, Compels me to disturb your season due: For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer: Who would not sing for Lycidas?