Boswell's Life of Johnson: Life

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Clarendon Press, 1887

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Página 87 - He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily : when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too.
Página 80 - I happened soon after to attend one of his sermons, in the course of which I perceived he intended to finish with a collection, and I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the copper.
Página 344 - The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Página 40 - Majesty with profound respect, but still in his firm manly manner, with a sonorous voice, and never in that subdued tone which is commonly used at the levee and in the drawing-room.
Página 35 - When asked by another friend, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, whether he made any reply to this high compliment, he answered, " No, Sir. When the king had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my sovereign.
Página 366 - It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter,* that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Página 451 - You are sure you are welcome ; and the more noise you make, the more trouble you give, the more good things you call for, the welcomer you are. No servants will attend you with the alacrity which waiters do, who are incited by the prospect of an immediate reward in proportion as they please.
Página 121 - Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, he said, was the only book that ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise.
Página 5 - The style of Dryden is capricious and varied; that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind; Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid; Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle.
Página 5 - He saw ; but blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night. Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car Wide o'er the fields of Glory bear Two coursers of ethereal race, . With necks in thunder clothed, and long-resounding pace.

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