The Works of the British Poets: With Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, Volume 6

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Robert Anderson
Arch, 1795 - English poetry

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Page 31 - A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome : Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon ; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Page 163 - And unburied remain Inglorious on the plain : Give the vengeance due To the valiant crew ! Behold how they toss their torches on high, How they point to the Persian abodes And glittering temples of their hostile gods.
Page 40 - 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 219 - And that, a sleeve embroider'd by his love. With Palamon, above the rest in place, Lycurgus came, the surly...
Page 162 - Flushed with a purple grace, He shows his honest face : Now give the hautboys breath. He comes ! he comes ! Bacchus, ever fair and young, Drinking joys did first ordain ; Bacchus...
Page 59 - They who would prove religion by reason, do but weaken the cause which they endeavour to support, it is to take away the pillars from our faith, and to prop it only with a twig...
Page iv - Perhaps no nation ever produced a writer that enriched his language with such variety of models. To him we owe the improvement, perhaps the completion, of our metre, the refinement of our language, and much of the correctness of our sentiments.
Page 35 - Law they require, let law then show her face ; They could not be content to look on grace, Her hinder parts, but with a daring eye To tempt the terror of her front, and die. By their own arts 'tis righteously decreed, Those dire artificers of death shall bleed...
Page 66 - To keep it in her power to damn and save. Scripture was scarce, and as the market went, Poor laymen took salvation on content, As needy men take money, good or bad ; God's word they had not, but the priest's they had.
Page 139 - Strung each his lyre, and tun'd it high, That all the people of the sky Might know a poetess was born on earth ; And then, if ever, mortal ears Had heard the music of the spheres. And if no clust'ring swarm of bees...

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