Illustrations of Sterne: With Other Essays and Verses, Volumes 1-2

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Cadell and Davies, By J. and J. Haddock, Warrington, 1812

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Page 66 - Wise men have said are wearisome; who reads Incessantly, and to his reading brings not A spirit and judgment equal or superior (And what he brings, what needs he elsewhere seek) Uncertain and unsettled still remains, Deep versed in books and shallow in himself, Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys, And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge; As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Page 94 - Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another? Are we for ever to be twisting, and untwisting the same rope? for ever in the same track — for ever at the same pace?
Page 80 - Whose midnight revels, by a forest side Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while over head the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course; they, on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear; At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.
Page 72 - The guarded gold : so eagerly the fiend O'er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies...
Page 84 - Howsoever, it is a kind of policy in these days, to prefix a fantastical title to a book which is to be sold; for, as larks come down to a day-net, many vain readers will tarry and stand gazing like silly passengers at an antic picture in a painter's shop, that will not look at a judicious piece.
Page 88 - So delightsome these toys are at first, they could spend whole days and nights without sleep, even whole years alone in such contemplations, and fantastical meditations, which are like unto dreams, and they will hardly be drawn from them, or willingly interrupt, so pleasant their vain conceits are, that they hinder their ordinary tasks and necessary business, they cannot address themselves to them, or almost...
Page 43 - He used often to say, that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an inn; it looking like a pilgrim's going home, to whom this world was all as an inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in it. He added, that the officious tenderness and care of friends was an entanglement to a dying man; and that the unconcerned attendance of those that could be procured in such a place would give less disturbance. And he obtained what he desired, for he died at the Bell Inn in Warwick Lane.
Page 126 - There is no small degree of malicious craft in fixing upon a season to give a mark of enmity and ill will: a word, — a look, which at one time would make no impression at another time wounds the heart; and like a shaft flying with the wind, pierces deep, which, with its own natural force, would scarce have reached the object aimed at.
Page 88 - A most incomparable delight to build castles in the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite variety of parts, which they suppose, and strongly imagine, they act, or that they see done.
Page 108 - There is no terror, brother Toby, in its looks, but what it borrows from groans and convulsions — and the blowing of noses and the wiping away of tears with the bottoms of curtains, in a dying man's room.

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