Conferences on Books and Men

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Smith, Elder, 1900 - English essays - 299 pages

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Page 155 - ... has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as...
Page 54 - My house a cottage more Than palace; and should fitting be For all my use, no luxury. My garden painted o'er With Nature's hand, not Art's; and pleasures yield, Horace might envy in his Sabine field.
Page 272 - ... in Chaucer's age. It were an easy matter to produce some thousands of his verses, which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make otherwise.
Page 286 - I see Baucis and Philemon as perfectly before me as if some ancient painter had drawn them; and all the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales, their humours, their features, and the very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped with them at the Tabard in Southwark.
Page 171 - My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and the horsemen thereof!
Page 229 - We breakfast commonly between eight and nine; till eleven, we read either the Scripture, or the sermons of some faithful preacher of those holy mysteries; at eleven we attend divine service, which is performed here twice every day; and from twelve to three we separate and amuse ourselves as we please. During that interval I either read in my own apartment, or walk, or ride, or work in the garden.
Page 272 - They who lived with him, and some time after him, thought it musical; and it continues so even in our judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lidgate and Gower, his contemporaries: there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect.
Page 43 - Well then ; I now do plainly see, This busy world and I shall ne'er agree ; The very honey of all earthly joy Does of all meats the soonest cloy, And they, methinks, deserve my pity, Who for it can endure the stings, The crowd, and buzz, and murmurings Of this great hive, the city. Ah, yet, ere I descend to th...
Page 142 - Dancing, bright lady, then began to be, When the first seeds whereof" the world did spring, The fire, air, earth, and water, did agree By Love's persuasion, Nature's mighty king, To leave their first disordered combating, And in a dance such measure to observe, As all the world their motion should preserve.
Page 233 - The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear, From morn to eve his solitary task. Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears And tail cropp'd short, half lurcher, and half cur, His dog attends him.

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