Essays, Biographical, Critical, and Historical, Illustrative of the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, Volume 3 |
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Page 2
... production which forms a new epoch in our style , and whence the series of our Essayists , and the chain of composi- tion , remain uninterrupted and entire . By the almost unanimous suffrage of criticism , the age of Queen Elizabeth has ...
... production which forms a new epoch in our style , and whence the series of our Essayists , and the chain of composi- tion , remain uninterrupted and entire . By the almost unanimous suffrage of criticism , the age of Queen Elizabeth has ...
Page 9
... productions are unfortunately remarkable for little else than their feebleness , tautology , and conceit . Here , however , occur no phrases which are not genuine English ; no sesquipedalia verba , no words of a foot and a half long ...
... productions are unfortunately remarkable for little else than their feebleness , tautology , and conceit . Here , however , occur no phrases which are not genuine English ; no sesquipedalia verba , no words of a foot and a half long ...
Page 18
... productions , which are frequently very quaint and pedantic ; but will not , I think , attach to his English philosophical works . In these , a plain but manly eloquence is often to be found ; and the following passage from his ...
... productions , which are frequently very quaint and pedantic ; but will not , I think , attach to his English philosophical works . In these , a plain but manly eloquence is often to be found ; and the following passage from his ...
Page 20
... productions of Lord Bacon , the Essays , Civil and Moral , are beyond comparison the most valuable . No book con- tains a greater fund of useful knowledge , or dis- plays a more intimate acquaintance with human life and manners . The ...
... productions of Lord Bacon , the Essays , Civil and Moral , are beyond comparison the most valuable . No book con- tains a greater fund of useful knowledge , or dis- plays a more intimate acquaintance with human life and manners . The ...
Page 25
... productions , which in point of information possess no small degree of merit , Sir Thomas has been at incredible pains to introduce all the exotic terms he could muster . Some with a happy effect , but the greater part throws such an ...
... productions , which in point of information possess no small degree of merit , Sir Thomas has been at incredible pains to introduce all the exotic terms he could muster . Some with a happy effect , but the greater part throws such an ...
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Common terms and phrases
Addison admirable Æneid Anatomy of Melancholy ancient apologues appear Arabian beauty caliphs Canterbury Tales century character charms Chaucer colours composition consider criticism crusade delight diction Ditto Dryden East edition effect elegant endeavours English English Poetry Essays excellent exhibited exquisite fable fairy fancy genius Geoffery grace guage hath heaven humour imagery imagination justly king language learned literary literature Lord manner ment merit Milton mind moral nature never night observes opinion oriental passage period Persian perspicuity philosophy Pilpay pleasing pleasure poem poet poetry present productions prose racter reader remarks rich Roger de Coverley romance says second Crusade sense Shakspeare shew Simeon Seth simplicity Sir Roger species specimen Spectator spirit stars story style sublime supposed sweetness taste Tatler things third crusade thou tion verse whilst William of Malmesbury wonderful words writers written
Popular passages
Page 100 - When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with...
Page 36 - I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies...
Page 111 - What he attempted, he performed ; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetic ; he is never rapid, and he never stagnates. His sentences have neither studied amplitude, nor affected brevity ; his periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison, HUGHES.
Page 44 - But so have I seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and, at first, it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece ; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head, and broke its stalk, and, at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion...
Page 31 - Lastly, I should not choose this manner of writing, wherein knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account, but of my left hand.
Page 32 - Time serves not now, and perhaps I might seem too profuse to give any certain account of what the mind at home, in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope and hardest attempting; whether that epic form whereof the two poems of Homer and those other two of Virgil and Tasso 5 are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief, model...
Page 18 - STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business.
Page 35 - Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing reader, that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him toward the payment of what I am now indebted...
Page 76 - Thus the ideas, as well as children, of our youth often die before us ; and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching ; where though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away. The pictures drawn in our minds are laid in fading colours ; and if not sometimes refreshed, vanish and disappear.
Page 105 - We cannot indeed have a single image in the fancy that did not make its first entrance through the sight; but we have the power of retaining, altering, and compounding those images which we have once received, into all the varieties of picture and vision...