The Works of John Dryden: Now First Collected in Eighteen Volumes, Volume 4

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A. Constable & Company, 1821

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Page 211 - ... either in rejecting such old words, or phrases, which are ill sounding, or improper; or in admitting new, which are more proper, more sounding, and more significant.
Page 61 - Beneath a myrtle shade. Which love for none but happy lovers made, I slept ; and straight my love before me brought Phyllis, the object of my waking thought. Undressed she came my flames to meet, While love strewed flowers beneath her feet ; Flowers which, so pressed by her, became more sweet.
Page 225 - ... dull and heavy spirits of the English from their natural reservedness ; loosened them from their stiff forms of conversation, and made them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus, insensibly, our way of living became more free ; and the fire of the English wit, which...
Page 40 - I am as free as Nature first made man, Ere the base laws of servitude began, When wild in woods the noble savage ran.
Page 116 - A watchful fate o'ersees its tender years: Till, grown more strong, it thrusts and stretches out, And elbows all the kingdoms round about: The place thus made for its first breathing free, It moves again for ease and luxury; Till, swelling by degrees, it has...
Page 62 - A careless veil of lawn was loosely spread: From her white temples fell her shaded hair, Like cloudy sunshine not too brown nor fair: Her hands, her lips did love inspire; Her ev'ry grace my heart did fire : But most her eyes which languish'd with desire.
Page 66 - Tis he ; I feel him now in every part : Like a new lord he vaunts about my heart; Surveys, in state, each corner of my breast, While poor fierce I, that was, am dispossessed...
Page 353 - ... in my own defence, neither will I gratify the ambition of two wretched scribblers, who desire nothing more than to be answered. I have not wanted friends, even amongst strangers, who have defended me more strongly than my contemptible pedant could attack me ; for the other, he is only like Fungoso in the play, who follows the fashion at a distance, and adores the Fastidious Brisk of Oxford.
Page 5 - If from thy hands alone my death can be, I am immortal and a god to thee. If I would kill thee now, thy fate's so low, That I must stoop ere I can give the blow : But mine is fixed so far above thy crown, That all thy men, Piled on thy back, can never pull it down : But, at my ease, thy destiny I send, By ceasing from this hour to be thy friend.
Page 213 - Witness the lameness of their plots ; many of which, especially those which they writ first (for even that age refined itself in some measure), were made up of some ridiculous incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age.

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