The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., Volume 9

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Page 74 - 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.
Page 73 - Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault and hesitate dislike; Alike...
Page 375 - DRYDEN may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition. Of our former poets, the greatest dramatist wrote without rules, conducted through life and nature by a genius that rarely misled, and rarely deserted him. Of the rest, those who knew the laws of propriety had neglected to teach them.
Page 35 - To move, but doth if th' other do. And though it in the center sit, Yet when the .other far doth roam, It leans and hearkens after it, And grows erect as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run: Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.
Page 206 - At the moment in which he expired, he uttered, with an energy of voice, that expressed the most fervent devotion, two lines of his own version of Dies Ira; : My God, my father, and my friend, Do not forsake me in my end.
Page 144 - It is not to be considered as the effusion of real passion ; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethuse and Mincius, nor tells of rough satyrs and fauns with cloven heel.
Page 404 - Blest above; So when the last and dreadful hour This crumbling pageant shall devour, The trumpet shall be heard on high, The dead shall live, the living die, And Music shall untune the sky!
Page 130 - Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked his reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current, through fear and silence. I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and waiting without impatience, the vicissitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of a future generation.
Page 394 - To see this fleet upon the ocean move, Angels drew wide the curtains of the skies; And Heaven, as if there wanted lights above, For tapers made two glaring comets rise.
Page 19 - Their attempts were always analytic ; they broke every image into fragments: and could no more represent, by their slender conceits 'and laboured particularities, the prospects of nature or the scenes of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer noon.

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