The Story of Some Famous Books

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E. Stock, 1887 - 208 pages
1888. Learned observations on the works of Sterne, Hawthorne, Walton, Milton, Chaucer, and many more. Obviously written by a man with a passion for books.
 

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Page 120 - It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter,* that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Page 149 - MY days among the Dead are past ; Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old: My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day.
Page 127 - There was a time when meadow, grove and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore ; — Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
Page 100 - So live, that, when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan that moves To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon ; but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
Page 120 - It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains.
Page 138 - Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.
Page 98 - ... therefore am obliged to desire you would make Dodsley print it immediately (which may be done in less than a week's time) from your copy, but without my name, in what form is most convenient for him, but on his best paper and character; he must correct the press himself, and print it without any interval between the stanzas, because the sense is in some places continued beyond them; and the title must be, — Elegy, written in a Country Churchyard.
Page 117 - Scotland, that it was Robert Bruce's march at the battle of Bannockburn. This thought, in my solitary wanderings, warmed me to a pitch of enthusiasm on the theme of liberty and independence, which I threw into a kind of Scottish ode, fitted to the air, that one might suppose to be the gallant Royal Scot's address to his heroic followers on that eventful morning.
Page 160 - They made her a grave, too cold and damp "For a soul so warm and true; "And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp, "Where, all night long, by a fire-fly lamp, "She paddles her white canoe. "And her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see, "And her paddle I soon shall hear; "Long and loving our life shall be, "And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree, "When the footstep of death is near.
Page 75 - I can be serious at seasonable times, yet the whole discourse is, or rather was, a picture of my own disposition ; especially in such days and times as I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing with honest Nat. and R. Roe : but they are gone, and with them most of my pleasant hours, even as a shadow that passeth away and returns not.

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