The Works of John Dryden: Now First Collected ...

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Page 34 - But know, that I alone am king of me. 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 107 - As scriv'ners draw away the bankers' trade. Howe'er, the poet 's safe enough to-day, They cannot censure an unfinish'd play. But, as when vizard-mask appears in pit, Straight every man who thinks himself a wit Perks up, and, managing his comb with grace, With his white wig sets off his nut-brown face...
Page 221 - The desire of imitating so great a pattern, first awakened the 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.
Page 216 - He is the very Janus of poets ; he wears almost everywhere two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one, ere you despise the other.
Page 209 - 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.
Page 53 - ... less." In return for such proofs of tenderness as these, her admirer consents to murder his two sons and a benefactor to whom he feels the warmest gratitude. Lyndaraxa, in the Conquest of Granada, assumes the same lofty tone with Abdelmelech.
Page 10 - You have lost that which you call natural, and have not acquired the last perfection of art.
Page 228 - ... the ground, as if she were sinking under the conscious load of her own attractions ; then launches into a flood of fine language and compliment, still playing her chest forward in fifty falls and risings, like a swan upon waving water ; and, to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly fond of her own wit, that she will not give her lover leave to praise it : silent, assenting bows, and vain endeavours to speak, are all the share of the conversation he is admitted to, which, at last, he is...
Page 114 - Love's an heroic passion, which can find No room in any base degenerate mind : It kindles all the soul with honour's fire, To make the lover worthy his desire.

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