The Augustan Ages, Volume 8

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W. Blackwood and Sons, 1914 - 427 pages
 

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Page 301 - And in the breasts of Kings and Heroes glows. Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age, Dull sullen pris'ners in the body's cage : Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres ; Like Eastern Kings a lazy state they keep, And close confin'd to their own palace, sleep.
Page 200 - Resolution, to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style: to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so many things, almost in an equal number of words. They have exacted from all their members, a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions, clear senses; a native easiness: bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that, of Wits,...
Page 159 - ... it is to be noted, that they have freely admitted men of different religions, countries, and professions of life. This they were obliged to do, or else they •would come far short of the largeness of their own declarations. For they openly profess, not to lay the foundation of an English, Scotch, Irish, Popish, or Protestant philosophy, but a philosophy of mankind.
Page 215 - But the excellence and dignity of it were never fully known till Mr. Waller taught it; he first made writing easily an art; first showed us to conclude the sense most commonly in distichs, which, in the verse of those before him, runs on for so many lines together that the reader is out of breath to overtake it.
Page 226 - The Sun grew low, and left the skies, Put down (some write) by ladies' eyes. The Moon pull'd off her veil of light, That hides her face by day from sight, (Mysterious veil, of brightness made, That's both her lustre and her shade !) And in the lantern of the night, With shining horns hung out her light ; For darkness is the proper sphere Where all false glories use t
Page 201 - The king had little or no literature, but true, and good sense ; and had got a right notion of style; for he was in France at a time, when they were much set on reforming their language. It soon appeared, that he had a true taste. So, this helped to raise the value of these men, when the king approved of the style their discourses generally ran in ; which was clear, plain, and short.
Page ii - Let us conceive of the whole group of civilised nations as being, for intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, bound to a joint action and working towards a common result; a confederation whose members have a due knowledge both of the past, out of which they all proceed, and of one another. This was the ideal of Goethe, and it is an ideal which will impose itself upon the thoughts of our modern societies more and more.
Page 257 - He had the misfortune to squander away a very good constitution in his younger days, and I think a man of sense and merit like him, is bound in conscience to preserve his health for the sake of his friends, as well as of himself. Upon his own account I could not much desire the continuance of his life, under so much pain, and so many infirmities.
Page 170 - The evolution of the world, as Plotinus calls it, is a.\ri6eaTfpov iro%ia, a truer poem; — and we mere histrionical actors upon the stage, who, notwithstanding, insert something of our own into the poem too; but God Almighty is that skilful dramatist, who always connecteth that of ours, which went before, with what of his follows after, into good, coherent sense...
Page 202 - Tasso, in relation to his similitudes, mai esce del bosco : that he never departed from the woods ; that is, all his comparisons were taken from the country. The same may be said of our Theocritus: he is softer than Ovid; he touches the passions more delicately, and performs all this out of his own fond, without diving into the arts and sciences for a supply.

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