The works of Samuel Johnson [ed. by F.P. Walesby]., Volume 5Talboys and Wheeler, 1825 |
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Page 153
... 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 Eu ... them not laboriously , but luckily : when 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 Eu ... them not laboriously , but luckily : when he ...
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Popular passages
Page 90 - She should have died hereafter ; There would have been a time for such a word. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.
Page 72 - Pale Hecate's offerings; and wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it.
Page 115 - He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. From his writings indeed a system of social duty may be selected...
Page 67 - Than wishest should be undone.' Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear ; And chastise with the valour of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round, Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem To have thee crown'd withal.
Page 56 - To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence, of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God, in various passages both of the Old and New Testament : and the thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested or by prohibitory laws; which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits.
Page 46 - When we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided who, being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature and clear the world...
Page 75 - When first they put the name of king upon me, And bade them speak to him; then, prophet-like, They hail'd him father to a line of kings. Upon my head they plac'da fruitless crown, And put a barren sceptre in my gripe, Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand, No son of mine succeeding.
Page 73 - The night has been unruly : where we lay, Our chimneys were blown down : and, as they say, Lamentings heard i...
Page 110 - Shakespeare's plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination ; and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend...
Page 112 - Shakespeare's mode of composition is the same, an interchange of seriousness and merriment by which the mind is softened at one time and exhilarated at another. But whatever be his purpose, whether to gladden or depress, or to conduct the story, without vehemence or emotion, through tracts of easy and familiar dialogue, he never fails to attain his purpose; as he commands us, we laugh or mourn, or sit silent with quiet expectation, in tranquillity without indifference. When Shakespeare's plan is...