Johnson's Lives of the British poets completed by W. Hazlitt, Volume 3

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Page 182 - As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night! O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene; Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole; O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, And tip with silver every mountain's head.
Page 148 - Why all this toil for triumphs of an hour ? What though we wade in wealth, or soar in fame ? Earth's highest station ends in, " Here he lies," And " Dust to dust
Page 248 - We were all, at the first night of it, in great uncertainty of the event ; till we were very much encouraged by overhearing the Duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, ' It will do — it must do ! I see it in the eyes of them.
Page 225 - With many a weary step, and many a groan, Up a high hill he heaves a huge round stone; The huge round stone, resulting with a bound, Thunders impetuous down, and smokes along the ground.
Page 22 - Whatever he did, he seemed willing to do in a manner peculiar to himself, without sufficiently considering that singularity, as it implies a contempt of the general practice, is a kind of defiance which justly provokes the hostility of ridicule ; he, therefore, who indulges peculiar habits, is worse than others, if he be not better.
Page 219 - The method of Pope, as may be collected from his translation, was to write his first thoughts in his first words, and gradually to amplify, decorate, rectify, and refine them. With such faculties and such dispositions he excelled every other writer in poetical prudence : he wrote in such a. manner as might expose him to few hazards.
Page 249 - Of this performance, when it was printed, the reception was different, according to the different opinion of its readers. Swift commended it for the excellence of its morality, as a piece that " placed all kinds of vice in the strongest and most odious light;" but others, and among them Dr.
Page 215 - ... a letter is addressed to a single mind, of which the prejudices and partialities are known, and must therefore please, if not by favouring them, by forbearing to oppose them.
Page 93 - Oxford enjoined him to study Spanish; and when, some time afterwards, he came again, and said that he had mastered it, dismissed him with this congratulation, "Then, sir, I envy you the pleasure of reading 'Don Quixote
Page 22 - It may be justly supposed that there was in his conversation, what appears so frequently in his letters^ an affectation of familiarity with the great, an ambition of momentary equality sought and enjoyed by the neglect of those ceremonies which custom has established as the barriers between one order of society and another.

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