The Works of the English Poets: With Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, Volume 34

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Samuel Johnson
C. Bathurst, 1779 - English poetry

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Page 24 - ... or science, which have not been touched upon by others ; we have little else left us but to represent the common sense of mankind in more strong, more beautiful, or more uncommon lights. If a reader examines Horace's Art of Poetry...
Page 172 - The moon-struck prophet felt the madding hour : Then rose the seed of Chaos, and of Night, To blot out order, and extinguish light, Of dull and venal a new world to mould, And bring Saturnian days of lead and gold.
Page 188 - Scholiast, whose unweary'd pains Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains. Turn what they will to Verse, their toil is vain, Critics like me shall make it Prose again. Roman and Greek Grammarians! know your Better: Author of something yet more great than Letter; While tow'ring o'er your Alphabet, like Saul, Stands our Digamma, and o'er-tops them all.
Page 192 - Full in the midst of Euclid dip at once, And petrify a genius to a dunce ; Or, set on metaphysic ground to prance, Show all his paces, not a step advance.
Page 165 - Polly, till then obscure, became all at Once the favourite of the town; her pictures were engraved, and sold in great numbers; her life written, books of letters and...
Page 183 - Winton shake through all their sons. All flesh is humbled, Westminster's bold race Shrink, and confess the genius of the place : The pale boy-senator yet tingling stands, And holds his breeches close with both his hands. Then thus : " Since man from beast by words is known, Words are man's province, words we teach alone.
Page 183 - As Fancy opens the quick springs of Sense, We ply the Memory, we load the brain, Bind rebel Wit, and double chain on chain; Confine the thought, to exercise the breath; And keep them in the pale of Words till death.
Page 24 - Poetry, he will find but few precepts in it which he may not meet with in Aristotle, and which were not commonly known by all the poets of the Augustan age. His way of expressing and applying them, not his invention of them, is what we are chiefly to admire.
Page 195 - But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps, And Cupids ride the Lion of the Deeps; Where, eas'd of Fleets, the Adriatic main Wafts the smooth Eunuch and enamour'd swain.
Page 180 - On two unequal crutches propt he came, Milton's on this, on that one Johnston's name. The decent Knight retir'd with sober rage, Withdrew his hand, and clos'd the pompous page.

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