Selections from the Essays of Francis Jeffrey

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Ginn, 1894 - 213 страници
 

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Страница 200 - d to find or forge a fault; A turn for punning, call it Attic salt; To Jeffrey go, be silent and discreet, His pay is just ten sterling pounds per sheet: Fear not to lie, 'twill seem a sharper hit ; Shrink not from blasphemy, 'twill pass for wit; Care not for feeling — pass your proper jest, And stand a critic, hated yet caress'd.
Страница 80 - Behold the child, by nature's kindly law, Pleas'd with a rattle, tickled with a straw; Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight, A little louder, but as empty quite ; Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage, And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age ;* Pleas'd with this bauble still, as that before ; Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er!
Страница 205 - That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going ; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me.
Страница 196 - Further, it is the language of men who speak of what they do not understand ; who talk of Poetry as of a matter of amusement and idle pleasure ; who will converse with us as gravely about a taste for Poetry, as they express it, as if it were a thing as indifferent as a taste for ropedancing, or Frontiniac or Sherry.
Страница 202 - I have taken, whether from within or without, what have they to do with routs, dinners, morning calls, hurry from door to door, from street to street, on foot or in carriage; with Mr. Pitt or Mr. Fox, Mr. Paul or Sir Francis Burdett, the Westminster election or the borough of Honiton ? In a word — for I cannot stop to make my way through the hurry of images that present themselves to me — what have they to do with endless talking about things nobody cares anything for except as far as their own...
Страница 88 - ... they are flushed all over with the rich lights of fancy, and so coloured and bestrewn with the flowers of poetry, that even while perplexed and bewildered in their labyrinths, it is impossible to resist the intoxication of their sweetness, or to shut our hearts to the enchantments they so lavishly present.
Страница 202 - It is impossible that any expectations can be lower than mine concerning the immediate effect of this little work upon what is called the public. I do not here take into consideration the envy and malevolence, and all the bad passions which always stand in the way of a work of any merit from a living poet ; but merely think of the pure, absolute, honest...
Страница 202 - I do not here take into consideration the envy and malevolence, and all the bad passions which always stand in the way of a work of any merit from a living Poet; but merely think of the pure absolute honest ignorance, in which all worldlings of every rank and situation must be enveloped, with respect to the thoughts, feelings, and images, on which the life of my Poems depends. The things which I have taken, whether from within or without, — what have they to do with routs, dinners, morning calls,...
Страница 61 - ... a captain of a small trading vessel, for example, who, being past the middle age of life, had retired upon an annuity, or small independent income, to some village or country town of which he was not a native, or in which he had not been accustomed to live. Such men, having nothing to do, become credulous and talkative from indolence.
Страница 115 - Tis, by comparison, an easy task Earth to despise ; but, to converse with heaven — This is not easy : — to relinquish all We have, or hope, of happiness and joy, And stand in freedom loosened from this world, I deem not arduous ; but must needs confess That 'tis a thing impossible to frame Conceptions equal to the soul's desires ; /And the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain.

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