The life of Milton. To which are added Conjectures on the origin of Paradise lost: with an Appendix. By W. Hailey [sic].

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Page 77 - ... are the inspired gift of God rarely bestowed, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every nation; and are of power, beside the office of a pulpit, to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune...
Page 79 - ... devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases...
Page 61 - That not to know at large of things remote From use, obscure and subtle,; but to know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom...
Page 175 - Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.
Page 81 - And long it •was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem...
Page 238 - I have a particular occasion to remember; for whereas I had the perusal of it from the very beginning : for some years as I went from time to time to visit him , in a parcel of ten , twenty , or thirty verses at a time, which being written by whatever hand came next , might possibly want correction as to the orthography and pointing...
Page 78 - ... teaching over the whole book of sanctity and virtue, through all the instances of example, with such delight to those especially of soft and delicious temper, who will not so much as look upon truth...
Page 23 - Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, It shall be still in strictest measure even To that same lot, however mean or high, Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven ; All is, if I have grace to use it so, As ever in my great Task-Master's eye.
Page 78 - 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, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar...
Page 65 - Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree of merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who hastens home, because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism in a private boarding-school.

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