Satires and Epistles

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Clarendon Press, 1872 - English poetry - 164 pages

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Page 30 - Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer ; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike...
Page 33 - Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys : So well-bred spaniels civilly delight In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.
Page 30 - Who but must laugh, if such a man there be? Who would not weep, if Atticus were he ? What though my name stood rubric on the walls Or plaster'd posts, with claps, in capitals ? Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers...
Page 52 - Who counsels best ? who whispers, ' Be but great, With praise or infamy leave that to fate; Get place and wealth, if possible, with grace ; If not, by any means get wealth and place.
Page 145 - I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing (whatsoever he penned) he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, "Would he ' had blotted a thousand," which they thought a malevolent speech.
Page 27 - Say, for my comfort, languishing in bed, 'Just so immortal Maro held his head'; And, when I die, be sure you let me know Great Homer died three thousand years ago. Why did I write? what sin to me unknown Dipp'd me in ink, my parents', or my own?
Page 144 - whispers through the trees": If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep," The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with "sleep": Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Page 29 - Pretty! in amber to observe the forms Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms! The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare, But wonder how the devil they got there.
Page 28 - Commas and points they set exactly right, And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite.
Page 64 - Who now reads Cowley ? if he pleases yet, His moral pleases, not his pointed wit ; Forgot his epic, nay Pindaric art, But still I love the language of his heart.

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