The General Biographical Dictionary, Volume 15

Front Cover
Alexander Chalmers
J. Nichols, 1814
 

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Page 463 - 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. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, 1 Memoirs, p. 166. and all nature was silent.
Page 350 - Augustine, at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century. From that time forward the neuter gained ground in the Western Church till it altogether supplanted the masculine.
Page 454 - 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 472 - There is no instance of a man before Gibbons who gave to wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers, and chained together the various productions . of the elements with a free disorder natural to each species.
Page 89 - I was in my working dress, my best clothes being to come round by sea. I was dirty from my journey ; my pockets were stuffed out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul, nor where to look for lodging. I...
Page 195 - For they that led us away captive, required of us then a song, and melody in our heaviness : Sing us one of the songs of Sion. 4 How shall we sing the LORD'S song in a strange land?
Page 210 - In his fancy pictures, when he had fixed on his object of imitation, whether it was the mean and vulgar form of a wood-cutter, or a child of an interesting character, as he did not attempt to raise the one, so neither did he lose any of the natural grace and elegance, of the other ; such a grace, and such an elegance, as are more frequently found in cottages than in courts. This excellence was his own, the result of his particular observation and taste; for this he was certainly not indebted to the...
Page 113 - The history of physick; from the time of Galen, to the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Page 449 - The various articles of the Romish creed disappeared like a dream; and after a full conviction, on Christmas Day 1754, I received the sacrament in the church of Lausanne. It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries, acquiescing with implicit belief in the tenets and mysteries which are adopted by the general consent of Catholics and Protestants.
Page 312 - We are now in an age wherein impudent assertions must pass for arguments : and I do not question, but the same who has endeavoured here to prove, that he who wrote the Dispensary was no poet, will very suddenly undertake to shew, that he who gained the battle of Blenheim is no general.

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