Essays: On Poetry and Music, as They Affect the Mind; on Laughter, and Ludicrous Composition; on the Usefulness of Classical Learning. By James Beattie, ...

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E. and C. Dilly; and W. Creech, Edinburgh, 1779 - Classical education - 515 pages

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Page 218 - Heaven, with all his host Of rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring To set himself in glory...
Page 504 - Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts: others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention.
Page 248 - And, to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks I should know you and know this man; Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant What place this is, and all the skill I have Remembers not these garments; nor I know not Where I did lodge last night. Do not laugh at me; For, as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia.
Page 29 - I care not, Fortune, what you me deny : You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace ; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve...
Page 13 - WHAT shall I do to be for ever known, And make the age to come my own ? I shall, like beasts or common people, die, Unless you write my elegy ; Whilst others great, by being born, are grown; Their mothers' labour, not their own. In this scale gold, in th' other fame does lie, The weight of that mounts this so high.
Page 30 - ... the murmur of the rivulet and in the uproar of the ocean, in the radiance of summer and gloom of winter, in the thunder of heaven and in the whisper of the breeze, he still finds something to rouse or to soothe his imagination, to draw forth his affections, or to employ his understanding.
Page 414 - Georgics ; but throw the former into ridicule, as in the Lutrin^ I think this may very well be accounted for ; laughter implies...
Page 354 - Cadwallador and Arthur, kings Full famous in romantic tale) when he, O'er many a craggy hill and barren cliff, Upon a cargo of fam'd Cestrian cheese, High over-shadowing rides, with a design To vend his wares, or at th' Avonian mart, Or Maridunum, or the ancient town Yclep'd Brechinia, or where Vaga's stream Encircles Ariconium, fruitful soil!
Page 150 - ... it is very imperfectly, because we know not why: — the singer, by taking up the same air, and applying words to it, immediately translates the oration into our own language; then all uncertainty vanishes, the fancy is filled with determinate ideas...
Page 127 - When the merry bells ring round, And the jocund rebecks sound To many a youth and many a maid, Dancing in the chequer'd shade...

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