The Works of the English Poets: Prefaces

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H. Hughs, 1781

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Страница 155 - He copies life with so much fidelity that he can be hardly said to invent : yet his exhibitions have an air so much original that it is difficult to suppose them not merely the product of imagination.
Страница 82 - was particular in this writer, that when he had taken his resolution or made his plan for what he designed to write, he would walk about a room and dictate it into language with as much freedom and ease as any one could write it down, and attend to the coherence and grammar of what he dictated.
Страница 90 - No greater felicity can genius attain, than that of having purified intellectual pleasure, separated mirth from indecency, and wit from licentiousness; of having taught a succession of writers to bring elegance and gaiety to the aid of goodness; and, if I may use expressions yet more awful, of having turned many to righteousness.
Страница 75 - He taught us how to live; and, oh! too high The price of knowledge, taught us how to die.
Страница 156 - As a teacher of wisdom, he may be confidently followed. His religion has nothing in it enthusiastic or superstitious: he appears neither weakly credulous, nor wantonly sceptical; his morality is neither dangerously lax, nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment of fancy, and all the cogency of argument, are employed to recommend to the reader his real interest, the care of pleasing the Author of his being.
Страница 149 - It is not uncommon for those who have grown wise by the labour of others to add a little of their own, and overlook their masters. Addison is now despised by some who perhaps would never have seen his defects but by the lights which he afforded them.
Страница 150 - That general knowledge which now circulates in common talk was in his time rarely to be found. Men not professing learning were not ashamed of ignorance, and in the female world any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured.
Страница 157 - ... always equable, and always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences. Addison never deviates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendour.
Страница 68 - ... reign ; an act of authority violent enough, yet certainly legal, and by no means to be compared with that contempt of national right with •which, some time afterwards, by the instigation of whiggism, the commons, chosen by the people for three years, chose themselves for seven.
Страница 61 - The marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition to his happiness ; it neither found them nor made them equal. She always remembered her own rank, and thought herself entitled to treat with very little ceremony the tutor of her son.

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