A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century: Part First; in Two Volumes: Containing a Sketch of the Revolutions and Improvements in Science, Arts, and Literature During that Period, Volume 2

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T. and J. Swords, no. 160 Pearl-street., 1803 - Art, Modern - 510 pages

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Page 176 - Above all things, let him never touch a romance or novel : these paint beauty in colours more charming than nature, and describe happiness that man never tastes. How delusive, how destructive, are those pictures of consummate bliss ! They teach the youthful mind to sigh after beauty and happiness which never existed ; to despise the little good which fortune has mixed in our cup, by expecting more than she ever gave...
Page 77 - The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists...
Page 206 - Perhaps he was the most learned man in Europe. He was equally acquainted with the elegant and profound parts of science, and that not superficially, but thoroughly. He knew every branch of history, both natural and civil ; had read all the original historians of England, France, and Italy; and was a great antiquarian. Criticism...
Page 158 - Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment.
Page 199 - His numbers, his pauses, his diction, are of his own growth, without transcription, without imitation. He thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man of genius; he looks round on Nature and on Life with the eye which Nature bestows only on a poet; the eye that distinguishes, in...
Page 332 - It is further ordered, That where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the university...
Page 175 - There have been men, indeed, splendidly wicked, whose endowments threw a brightness on their crimes, and whom scarce any. villainy made perfectly detestable, because they never could be wholly divested of their excellencies ; but such have been in all ages the great corrupters of the world, and their resemblance ought no more to be preserved, than the art of murdering without pain.
Page 444 - And something previous even to taste - 'tis sense: Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven, And, though no science, fairly worth the seven: A light, which in yourself you must perceive ; Jones and Le Notre have it not to give.
Page 199 - The poet leads us through the appearances of things as they are successively varied by the vicissitudes of the year, and imparts to us so much of his own enthusiasm, that our thoughts expand with his imagery, and kindle with his sentiments.
Page 175 - Many writers, for the sake of following nature, so mingle good and bad qualities in their principal personages that they are both equally conspicuous...

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