Lectures on the English Poets: Delivered at the Surrey InstitutionThomas Dobson and Son, at the Stone house, no. 41, South Second Street. William Fry, printer., 1818 - English poetry - 331 pages |
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Page 9
... present suffering in the imaginary exaggeration of it ; exhausts the terror or pity by an unlimited in dulgence of it ; grapples with impossibilities in its desperate impatience of restraint ; throws us back upon the past , forward into ...
... present suffering in the imaginary exaggeration of it ; exhausts the terror or pity by an unlimited in dulgence of it ; grapples with impossibilities in its desperate impatience of restraint ; throws us back upon the past , forward into ...
Page 18
... presents , and that not the least interesting ; so poetry is one part of the history of the human mind , though it is neither science nor philosophy . It cannot be concealed , however , that the progress of knowledge and re- finement ...
... presents , and that not the least interesting ; so poetry is one part of the history of the human mind , though it is neither science nor philosophy . It cannot be concealed , however , that the progress of knowledge and re- finement ...
Page 19
... present we are less exposed to the vicissitudes of good or evil , to the incursions of wild beasts or " bandit fierce , " or to the unmitigated fury of the elements . The time has been that " our fell of hair would at a dismal treatise ...
... present we are less exposed to the vicissitudes of good or evil , to the incursions of wild beasts or " bandit fierce , " or to the unmitigated fury of the elements . The time has been that " our fell of hair would at a dismal treatise ...
Page 33
... present to every thing : " If we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth , it is there also ; if we turn to the east or the west , we cannot escape from it . " Man is thus aggrandised in the image of his Maker . The history of the ...
... present to every thing : " If we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth , it is there also ; if we turn to the east or the west , we cannot escape from it . " Man is thus aggrandised in the image of his Maker . The history of the ...
Page 35
... presents to the mind , are not much in themselves , they want grandeur , beauty , and order ; but they become every thing by the force of the character he im- presses upon them . His mind lends its own power to the objects which it ...
... presents to the mind , are not much in themselves , they want grandeur , beauty , and order ; but they become every thing by the force of the character he im- presses upon them . His mind lends its own power to the objects which it ...
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Common terms and phrases
admirable affectation allegory appear Ballads beauty Beggar's Opera blank verse Boccaccio breast character Chaucer common Cutty Sark delight describes despair doth equal excellence face fame fancy feeling finest flowers genius gives Gonne grace Gulliver's Travels happy hates hath heart heaven Herbert Croft hire Homer human idea images imagination interest kind Knight's Tale labour language less light lines living look Lord Lord Byron love ys dedde Lyrical Ballads Milton mind moral Muse nature never o'er objects painted passion pathos persons pleasure poem poet poetical poetry Pope praise prose racter reader rhyme satire sense sentiment Shakspeare soul sound Spenser spirit spring story style sweet Tam o'Shanter ther thing thou thought tion Titian tree truth verse Whan wings wolde words Wordsworth writer wyllowe-tree youth
Popular passages
Page 326 - Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother: They parted — ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining — They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder A dreary sea now flows between ; — But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.
Page 148 - He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
Page 143 - Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
Page 227 - Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish, As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. At thirty man suspects himself a fool ; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ; At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; In all the magnanimity of thought, Resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same. And why? because he thinks himself immortal. All men think all men mortal, but themselves; Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate Strikes thro...
Page 226 - tis madness to defer: Next day the fatal precedent will plead ; Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life. Procrastination is the thief of time ; Year after year it steals, till all are fled, And to the mercies of a moment leaves The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
Page 326 - Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.
Page 264 - But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed ; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white — then melts for ever ; Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place ; Or like the rainbow's lovely form Evanishing amid the storm. Nae man can tether time or tide ; The hour approaches Tarn maun ride ; That hour, o...
Page 130 - Others more mild, Retreated in a silent valley, sing With notes angelical to many a harp Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall By doom of battle ; and complain that fate ' Free virtue should enthrall to force or chance.
Page 114 - 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 amorist or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters...
Page 329 - What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower ; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind ; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be ; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering ; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.