An Essay on the Life, Character, and Writings, of Dr. Samuel Johnson

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C. Dilly, 1786 - 124 pages
 

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Page 67 - But here the main skill and groundwork will be to temper them such lectures and explanations, upon every opportunity, as may lead and draw them in willing obedience, inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue, stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God and famous to all ages...
Page 107 - When the radical idea branches out into parallel ramifications, how can a consecutive series be formed of senses in their own nature collateral?
Page 36 - I shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations, and distant ages, gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my labours afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle.
Page 67 - At the same time, some other hour of the day, might be taught them the rules of arithmetic and soon after the elements of geometry, even playing as the old manner was.
Page 68 - When all these employments are well conquered, then will the choice histories, heroic poems, and Attic tragedies of stateliest and most regal argument, with all the famous political orations, offer themselves; which if they were not only read, but some of them got by memory, and solemnly pronounced with right accent and grace, as might be taught, would endue them even with the spirit and vigor of Demosthenes or Cicero, Euripides or Sophocles.
Page 9 - I felt almost the last flutter of his pulse, and looked for the last time upon the face that for fifteen years had never been turned upon me but with respect or benignity.
Page 105 - Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.
Page 108 - I have laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations. Something, perhaps, I have added to the elegance of its construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence.
Page 70 - Physiological learning is of such rare emergence, that one man may know another half his life without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy ; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears.
Page 70 - ... or aftronomy ; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears. Thofe authors, therefore, are to be .read at fchools that fupply moft axioms .of prudence, moft principles of moral truth, and moft materials for converfation ; and thefe purpofes are beft ferved .by poets, orators, and hiftorians. Let -me not be cenfured for this digreffion as pedantick or paradoxical ; for if I have Milton againft me, I have Socrates on my fide.

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