The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including the Series Edited with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, Nide 9

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Alexander Chalmers
J. Johnson, 1810

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Sivu 491 - What he attempted, he performed ; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetic ; he is never rapid, and he never stagnates. His sentences have neither studied amplitude, nor affected brevity ; his periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison, HUGHES.
Sivu 13 - 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 : but this opinion is not worth confuting...
Sivu 13 - He is a perpetual fountain of good sense; learned in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects. As he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off; a continence which is practised by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients excepting Virgil and Horace.
Sivu 14 - He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into the compass of his " Canterbury Tales" the various manners and humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation, in his age.
Sivu 176 - James, whose skill in physic will be long remembered ; and with David Garrick, whom I hoped to have gratified with this character of our common friend. But what are the hopes of man ? I am disappointed by that stroke of death which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.
Sivu 528 - THE Lord my pasture shall prepare, And feed me with a shepherd's care ; His presence shall my wants supply, And guard me with a watchful eye : My noon-day walks he shall attend, And all my midnight hours defend.
Sivu 9 - Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, and Mr Waller of Fairfax ; for we have our lineal descents and clans as well as other families. Spenser more than once insinuates that the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body, and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease.
Sivu 160 - Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call to-day his own : He who, secure within, can say, ' To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day : Be fair or foul or rain or shine, The joys I have possess'd, in spite of Fate, are mine.
Sivu 13 - ... the reader would not find it. For this reason, though he must always be thought a great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer; and for ten impressions, which his works have had in so many successive years, yet at present a hundred books are scarcely purchased once a twelvemonth; for, as my last Lord Rochester said, though somewhat profanely, Not being of God, he could not stand.
Sivu 342 - To clear this doubt, to know the world by sight, To find if books, or swains, report it right, (For yet by swains alone the world he knew, Whose feet came wandering o'er the nightly dew...

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