The lives of the English poetsF. C. and J. Rivington, 1823 |
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Absalom and Achitophel admired Æneid afterwards appears beauties better blank verse called censure character Charles Charles Dryden Clarendon composition Comus considered Cowley criticism death delight diction dramatick Dryden Duke Earl elegance English English poetry epick Euripides excellence fancy favour friends genius heroick honour hope Hudibras images imagination imitation Jacob Tonson John Dryden kind King knowledge known labour Lady language Latin learning lines Lord Lord Roscommon Marriage à-la-mode Milton mind musick nature never NIHIL numbers opinion Paradise Lost Parliament passions performance perhaps Philips Pindar play pleasure poem poet poetical poetry pounds praise preface produced publick published reader reason relates remarks rhyme satire says seems sentiments shew shewn sometimes Sprat style supposed thee thing thou thought tion tragedy translation truth Tyrannick Love verses versification Virgil virtue Waller words write written wrote
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Page 417 - untuning had found some other place. As from the power of sacred lays The spheres began to move, And sung the great Creator's praise To all the bless'd above : So, when the last and dreadful hour This crumbling pageant shall devour, The trumpet shall be heard on high,
Page 79 - sometimes such as will not bear a rigorous enquiry. The four verses, which, since Dryden has commended them, almost every writer for a century past has imitated, are generally known: " O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull; Strong without rage, without overflowing full.
Page 153 - as the effusion of real passion ; for passion runs not ! after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of rough satyrs and fauns with cloven heel. Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief.
Page 275 - as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights. The topicks of devotion are few, and being few are universally known ; but, few as they are, they can be made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression. Poetry pleases by exhibiting an idea more grateful
Page 20 - they just; and the reader, far from wondering that he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found. \ But wit, abstracted from its effects upon the hearer, -^ may be more rigorously and philosophically considered as a kind of
Page 415 - him now exalted into trust; His counsels oft convenient, seldom just. Ev'n in the most sincere advice he gave, He had a grudging still to be a knave. The frauds he learnt in his fanatick years, Made him uneasy in his lawful gears: At least as little honest as he cou'd; And, like white witches, mischievously
Page 104 - Areopagitka, a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing." The danger of such unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of government^ which human understanding seems hitherto unable to solve.
Page 153 - In this poem there is no nature, for there is no ' truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral: easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting; whatever images it can supply
Page 9 - Non haec, O Palla, dederas promissa parenti, Cautius ut saevo v'elles te credere Marti. Haud ignarus eram, quantum nova gloria in armis, Et praedulce decus primo certamine posset. Primitiae juvenis miserae, bellique propinqui Dura rudimenta, et nulli exaudita Deorum, Vota precesque meae!
Page 148 - be suspected, that his predominant desire was to de\stroy rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority. It has been observed, that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.