The Poetical Works of John Dryden., Esq: Containing Original Poems, Tales, and Translations, Volume 1

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F. C. and J. Rivington, 1811

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Page 75 - The composition of all poems is, or ought to be, of wit; and wit in the poet, or Wit writing (if you will give me leave to use a school-distinction), is no other than the faculty of imagination in the writer, which, like a nimble spaniel, beats over and ranges through the field of memory, till it springs the quarry it hunted after; or, without metaphor, which searches over all the memory for the species or ideas of those things which it designs to represent.
Page liii - I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine, which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance.
Page 232 - In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung, The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung, On once a flock-bed, but repair'd with straw, With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw, The George and Garter dangling from that bed Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies — alas!
Page 158 - Gad, I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the Lord; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man.
Page 303 - Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. Blest madman, who could every hour employ With something new to wish or to enjoy ! Railing and praising were his usual themes, And both, to show his judgment, in extremes : So over violent or over civil That every man with him was God or Devil.
Page 366 - Babel, which if it were possible, as it is not, to reach heaven, would come to nothing by the confusion of the workmen. For every man is building a several...
Page 290 - Doeg, though without knowing how or why, Made still a blundering kind of melody; Spurred boldly on, and dashed through thick and thin Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in: Free from all meaning, whether good or bad, And, in one word, heroically mad, He was too warm on picking-work to dwell, But faggoted his notions as they fell, And, if they rhymed and rattled, all was well.
Page 294 - But of King David's foes, be this the doom, May all be like the young man Absalom ; And, for my foes, may this their blessing be, To talk like Doeg, and to write like thee...
Page 384 - Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.
Page 254 - To learning and to loyalty were bred : For colleges on bounteous kings depend, And never rebel was to arts a friend.

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