The British Essayists: Tatler

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James Ferguson
J. Richardson and Company, 1823 - English essays

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Page 124 - As one who long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe Among the pleasant villages and farms Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight; The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine, Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound...
Page 197 - So saying, on he led his radiant files, Dazzling the moon; these to the bower direct In search of whom they sought : him there they found Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams...
Page 329 - Thy creatures have been my books, but thy scriptures much more. I have sought thee in the courts, fields, and gardens; but I have found thee in thy temples.
Page 203 - Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits, While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits; And ever and anon with frightful din The leather sounds; he trembles from within. So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed, Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed, (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, Instead of paying chairmen, run them through), Laocoon struck the outside with his spear, And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear...
Page 275 - If he be deigned the honour to sit down. Soon as the tarts appear, Sir Crape, withdraw ! Those dainties are not for a spiritual maw ; Observe your distance, and be sure to stand Hard by the cistern with your cap in hand; There for diversion you may pick your teeth, Till the kind voider* comes for your relief.
Page 197 - Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams, Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint...
Page 168 - That from their noyance he no where can rest, But with his clownish hands their tender wings He brusheth oft, and oft doth mar their murmurings.
Page 171 - ... been improved in the foregoing hundred: And this is what I design chiefly to enlarge upon, leaving the former evils to your animadversion. " But instead of giving you a list of the late refinements crept into our language, I here send you...
Page 313 - Such whispering wak'd her, but with startled eye On Adam, whom embracing, thus she spake. O sole in whom my thoughts find all repose, My glory, my perfection ! glad I see Thy face, and morn...
Page 246 - ... fast from hand to hand, that before I was five years old, I had travelled into almost every corner of the nation. But in the beginning of my sixth year, to my unspeakable grief, I fell into the hands of a miserable old fellow, who clapped me into an iron chest, where I found five hundred more of my own quality who lay under the same confinement. The only relief we had, was to be taken out and counted over in the fresh air every morning and evening. After an imprisonment of several years, we heard...

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