The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, to the Time of Dean Swift, Volume 1

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R. Griffiths, at the Dunciad in St. Paul's Church-Yard., 1753 - Poets, English

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Page 137 - His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had been so too. Many times he fell into those things could not escape laughter; as when he said in the person of Caesar, one speaking to him, "Caesar, thou dost me wrong," he replied, "Caesar did never wrong but with just cause"; and such like, which were ridiculous.
Page 94 - Full little knowest thou that hast not tried, What hell it is, in suing long to bide: To lose good days, that might be better spent; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; To speed today, to be put back tomorrow; To feed on hope, to pine with fear and sorrow; To have thy prince's grace, yet want her peers...
Page 243 - Above the ill fortune of them, or the need. I therefore will begin: Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room: Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live And we have wits to read and praise to give.
Page 312 - I know frail beauty like the purple flower, To which one morn oft birth and death affords; That love a jarring is of minds...
Page 20 - Dire was the tossing, deep the groans ; Despair Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch ; And over them triumphant Death his dart Shook, but delay'd to strike, though oft invoked With vows, as their chief good, and final hope.
Page 85 - Marlowe, bathed in the Thespian springs, Had in him those brave translunary things That the first poets had ; his raptures were All air and fire, which made his verses clear ; For that fine madness still he did retain Which rightly should possess a poet's brain.
Page 292 - Falkland ; a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war, than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity.
Page 290 - O Pallas, thou hast failed thy plighted word, To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword. I warned thee, but in vain, for well I knew What perils youthful ardour would pursue ; That boiling blood would carry thee too far ; Young as thou wert in dangers, raw to war. O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom, Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come.
Page 205 - Two days after their arrival there, Mr. Donne was left alone in that room, in which Sir Robert and he and some other friends had dined together. To -this place Sir Robert returned within half an hour; and as he left, so he found, Mr. Donne alone, but in such an...
Page 137 - ... between penetration and felicity, he hits upon that particular point on which the bent of each argument turns, or the force of each motive depends.

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