Lives of the English Poets: Cowley-Dryden

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Clarendon Press, 1905

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Página 163 - 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 are long ago exhausted ; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind.
Página 276 - ... bowers to lay me down ; To husband out life's taper at the close. And keep the flame from wasting by repose. I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, Amidst the swains to show my...
Página 20 - If by a more noble and more adequate conception that be considered as wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just...
Página 78 - 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 o'er-flowing full.
Página 100 - Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong ; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and Justice are virtues and excellencies of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance.
Página 141 - Paradise Lost," but what hast thou to say of
Página 88 - This he steadily denies, and it was apparently not true ; but it seems plain, from his own verses to Diodati, that he had incurred
Página 292 - Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than itself.
Página 136 - I have a particular reason," says he, " to remember ; for whereas I had the perusal of it " from the very beginning, for some years, as I " went from time to time to visit him, in parcels of " ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time (which, " being written by whatever hand came next, might " possibly want correction as to the orthography
Página 440 - From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began : When Nature underneath a heap Of jarring atoms lay, And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high, Arise, ye more than dead.

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