Lectures on the English Poets: Delivered at the Surrey InstitutionThomas Dobson and Son, at the Stone house, no. 41, South Second Street. William Fry, printer., 1818 - English poetry - 331 pages |
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Page 53
... sort of characteristic excellence , or what might be termed gusto . They have a local truth and freshness , which gives the very feeling of the air , the coolness or moisture of the ground . Inanimate objects are thus made to have a ...
... sort of characteristic excellence , or what might be termed gusto . They have a local truth and freshness , which gives the very feeling of the air , the coolness or moisture of the ground . Inanimate objects are thus made to have a ...
Page 84
... sort of endless sing - song . - Not that I would , on that account , part with the stanza of Spenser . We are , perhaps , indebted to this very ne- cessity of finding out new forms of expression , and to the occasional faults to which ...
... sort of endless sing - song . - Not that I would , on that account , part with the stanza of Spenser . We are , perhaps , indebted to this very ne- cessity of finding out new forms of expression , and to the occasional faults to which ...
Page 97
... sort of intuitive power , the same faculty of bringing every object in nature , whether pre- sent or absent , before the mind's eye , is observable in the speech of Cleopatra , when conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in ...
... sort of intuitive power , the same faculty of bringing every object in nature , whether pre- sent or absent , before the mind's eye , is observable in the speech of Cleopatra , when conjecturing what were the employments of Antony in ...
Page 136
... sort of people , and not altogether to be despised . The question , whether Pope was a poet , has hardly yet been settled , and is hardly worth set- tling ; for if he was not a great poet , he must have been a great prose - writer ...
... sort of people , and not altogether to be despised . The question , whether Pope was a poet , has hardly yet been settled , and is hardly worth set- tling ; for if he was not a great poet , he must have been a great prose - writer ...
Page 155
... sort in some other writer . Thus they say that the line , " I lisp'd in numbers , for the numbers came , " is pretty , but taken from that of Ovid - Et quum conabar scribere , versus erat . They are safe in this mode of ON DRYDEN AND ...
... sort in some other writer . Thus they say that the line , " I lisp'd in numbers , for the numbers came , " is pretty , but taken from that of Ovid - Et quum conabar scribere , versus erat . They are safe in this mode of ON DRYDEN AND ...
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Common terms and phrases
admirable affectation allegory appear Ballads beauty Beggar's Opera blank verse Boccaccio breast character Chaucer common Cutty Sark delight describes despair doth equal excellence face fame fancy feeling finest flowers genius gives Gonne grace Gulliver's Travels happy hates hath heart heaven Herbert Croft hire Homer human idea images imagination interest kind Knight's Tale labour language less light lines living look Lord Lord Byron love ys dedde Lyrical Ballads Milton mind moral Muse nature never o'er objects painted passion pathos persons pleasure poem poet poetical poetry Pope praise prose racter reader rhyme satire sense sentiment Shakspeare soul sound Spenser spirit spring story style sweet Tam o'Shanter ther thing thou thought tion Titian tree truth verse Whan wings wolde words Wordsworth writer wyllowe-tree youth
Popular passages
Page 326 - Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother: They parted — ne'er to meet again! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining — They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cliffs which had been rent asunder A dreary sea now flows between ; — But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been.
Page 148 - He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.
Page 143 - Tis with our judgments as our watches, none Go just alike, yet each believes his own.
Page 227 - Unanxious for ourselves; and only wish, As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise. At thirty man suspects himself a fool ; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ; At fifty chides his infamous delay, Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve; In all the magnanimity of thought, Resolves, and re-resolves, then dies the same. And why? because he thinks himself immortal. All men think all men mortal, but themselves; Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate Strikes thro...
Page 226 - tis madness to defer: Next day the fatal precedent will plead ; Thus on, till wisdom is push'd out of life. Procrastination is the thief of time ; Year after year it steals, till all are fled, And to the mercies of a moment leaves The vast concerns of an eternal scene.
Page 326 - Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.
Page 264 - But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flow'r, its bloom is shed ; Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white — then melts for ever ; Or like the borealis race, That flit ere you can point their place ; Or like the rainbow's lovely form Evanishing amid the storm. Nae man can tether time or tide ; The hour approaches Tarn maun ride ; That hour, o...
Page 130 - Others more mild, Retreated in a silent valley, sing With notes angelical to many a harp Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall By doom of battle ; and complain that fate ' Free virtue should enthrall to force or chance.
Page 114 - I am now indebted, as being a work not to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine, like that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amorist or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters...
Page 329 - What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower ; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind ; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be ; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering ; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind.