Bell's Edition: The Poets of Great Britain Complete from Chaucer to Churchill ...

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J. Bell, 1782

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Página 133 - Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity, their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling and their breeding — such as are becoming of them and of them only.
Página 133 - The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different educations, humours and callings, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth.
Página 133 - Tis true, I cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of him; for he would make us believe the fault is in our ears, and that there were really ten syllables in a verse where we find but nine...
Página 133 - And who had Canace to wife, That own'd the vertuous Ring and Glass, And of the wondrous Hors of Brass, On which the Tartar King did ride...
Página 133 - Tacitus commends, it was auribus istius temporis accommodata : they who lived with him, and some time after him, thought it musical ; and it continues so even in our judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lydgate and Gower, his contemporaries : there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect.
Página 133 - Catullus, as much as betwixt a modest behaviour and affectation. The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us ; but 'tis like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends, it was auribus...
Página 133 - We can only say that he lived in the infancy of our poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first. We must be children before we grow men. There was an Ennius, and in process of time a Lucilius and a Lucretius, before Virgil and Horace...
Página 121 - Realme much alteration both of our langage and lawes, and there withall a certain martiall barbarousnes, whereby the study of all good learning was so much decayd, as long time after no man or very few entended to write in any laudable science : so as beyond that time there is litle or nothing worth commendation to be founde written in this arte. And those of the first age were Chaucer and Gower both of them as I suppose Knightes.
Página 113 - To sette an ende of al his werke, As he whiche is myn owne clerke, Do make his Testament of Love, As thou hast done thy shrift above, So that my courte yt may recorde.
Página 121 - ... at all. Some that make Chaucer in English and Petrarch in Italian, their Gods in verses, and yet be not able to make trew difference, what is a fault, and what is a iust prayse, in those two worthie wittes, will moch mislike this my writyng.

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