The Salon and English Letters: Chapters on the Interrelations of Literature and Society in the Age of Johnson

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Macmillan, 1915 - 290 páginas
 

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Página 251 - In short, every summer one lives in a state of mutiny and murmur, and I have found the reason : it is because we will affect to have a summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our poets learnt . their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms of their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams, and cooling breezes, and we get sore throats and agues with attempting to realize these visions.
Página 235 - Whatever merit they have, must be imputed, in a great measure, to the education which I may be said to have had under Dr. Johnson. I do not mean to say, though it certainly would be to the credit of these Discourses, if I could say it with truth, that he contributed even a single sentiment to them ; but he qualified my mind to think justly.
Página 112 - tis out of pure good humour ; and I take it for granted, they deal exactly in the same manner with me.
Página 60 - Versailles; gives suppers twice a week; has everything new read to her; makes new songs and epigrams, ay, admirably, and remembers every one that has been made these fourscore years. She corresponds with Voltaire, dictates charming letters to him. contradicts him, is no bigot to him or anybody, and laughs both at the clergy and the philosophers.
Página 50 - There is, however, a real satisfaction in living at Paris, from the great number of sensible, knowing, and polite company with which that city abounds above all places in the universe. I thought once of settling there for life.
Página 107 - On Monday I was at a very great assembly at the Bishop of St. Asaph's. Conceive to yourself one hundred and fifty or two hundred people met together, dressed in the extremity of the fashion ; painted as red as bacchanals ; poisoning the air with perfumes ; treading on each other's gowns ; making the crowd they blame ; not one in ten able to get a chair ; protesting they are engaged to ten other places, and lamenting the fatigue they are not obliged to endure ; ten 'or a dozen card-tables crammed...
Página 115 - Then let us study to preserve it so: and while Hope pictures to us a flattering scene of future bliss, let us deny its pencil those colours which are too bright to be lasting. — When hearts deserving happiness would unite their fortunes, Virtue would crown them with an unfading garland of modest hurtless flowers; but ill-judging Passion will force the gaudier rose into the wreath, whose thorn offends them when its leaves are dropped!
Página 193 - Here pause, my Gothic lyre, a little while. The leisure hour is all that thou canst claim. But on this verse if Montagu should smile, New strains ere long shall animate thy frame.
Página 273 - I have often thought, that if I kept a seraglio, the ladies should all wear linen gowns, — or cotton ; I mean stuffs made of vegetable substances. I would have no silk ; you cannot tell when it is clean : It will be very nasty before it is perceived to be so. Linen detects its own dirtiness.
Página 264 - Hold you your potato-jaw, my dear," cried the Duke, patting her ; but, recollecting himself, he took her hand and pretty abruptly kissed it, and then, flinging it hastily away, laughed aloud, and called out, " There ! that will make amends for anything, so now I may say what I will. So here...

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