A Lecture on the Writings: Prose and Poetic, and Character, Public and Personal, of John Milton, Delivered at Several Metropolitan Literary Institutions

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H. Hooper, 1838 - 55 pages

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Page 22 - Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun, When first on this delightful land, he spreads His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, Glistening with dew ; fragrant the. fertile earth After short showers ; and sweet the coming on Of grateful evening
Page 32 - And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worst in a free and open encounter ? Her confuting is the best and surest sup*
Page 32 - undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam ; purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance ; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and
Page 26 - demean themselves, as well as men, and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors ; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a progeny of life in them, to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are
Page 26 - intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost
Page 23 - and sweet the coming on Of grateful evening mild—then silent night With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon And these the gems of heav'n, her starry train : But neither breath of morn, when she ascends With charm of earliest bird, nor
Page 29 - Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue nnexercised, and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by
Page 9 - Cyriac, this three-years'-day, these eyes, though clear To outward view of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot; Nor to their idle orbs, doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout tlie year, Or man or woman. Yet I argue not
Page 48 - and th' excess 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 16 - all seemly and generous arts and affairs ; till which in some measure be compassed at mine own peril and cost, I refuse not to sustain this expectation from as many as are not loth to hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges that I can give them.

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