The Unique: Or Biography of Many Distinguished Characters: with Fine Portraits

Voorkant
George Smeeton
Charles H. Peabody, 1830 - 254 pagina's

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Pagina 158 - Peace, Peace"— but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Pagina 80 - Each change of many-coloured life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new : Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting time toiled after him in vain.
Pagina 83 - This therefore is the praise of Shakespeare: that his drama is the mirror of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious ecstacies, by reading human sentiments in human language, by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions.
Pagina 59 - I loved her. Indeed I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labours ; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an /Eolian harp ; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles.
Pagina 82 - But love is only one of many passions ; and as it has no great influence upon the sum of life, it has little operation in the dramas of a poet, who caught his ideas from the living world, «nd exhibited only what he saw before him.
Pagina 81 - Shakespeare that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence ; yet his real power is not shown in the splendour of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable and the tenor of his dialogue ; and he that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen.
Pagina 59 - In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our dearest blessing here below ! How she caught the contagion I cannot tell.
Pagina 95 - Shakspeare, that, take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again.
Pagina 81 - In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.
Pagina 37 - They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms ? That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners'!

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