The Works of the English Poets: Prefaces

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Page 237 - From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began : When Nature underneath a heap of jarring atoms lay, And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high. Arise ye more than dead. Then cold and hot, and moist and dry, In order to their stations leap, And music's power obey. From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began : From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in man.
Page 212 - 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 181 - They have not the formality of a settled style, in which the first half of the sentence betrays the other. The clauses are never balanced, nor the periods modelled: every word seems to drop by chance, though it falls into its proper place. Nothing is cold or languid; the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is little, is gay; what is great, is splendid.
Page 283 - Next to argument, his delight was in wild and daring sallies of sentiment, in the irregular and eccentric violence of wit. He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to mingle ; to approach the precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy.
Page 140 - Of this kind of meanness he never seems to decline the practice or lament the necessity : he considers the great as entitled to encomiastic homage ; and brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift, more delighted with the fertility of his invention than mortified by the prostitution of his judgment.
Page 252 - Proffering the Hind to wait her half the way ; That, since the sky was clear, an hour of talk Might help her to beguile the tedious walk. With much good-will the motion was embrac'd...
Page 244 - composition of great excellence in its kind, in which the familiar is very properly diversified with the solemn, and the grave with the humorous ; in which metre has neither weakened the force, nor clouded the perspicuity of...
Page 164 - Learning once made popular is no longer learning ; it has the appearance of something which we have bestowed upon ourselves, as the dew appears to rise from the field which it refreshes.
Page 178 - Of him that knows much it is natural to suppose that he has read with diligence; yet I rather believe that the knowledge of Dryden was gleaned from accidental intelligence and various conversation; by a quick apprehension, a judicious selection, and a happy memory, a keen appetite of knowledge, and a powerful digestion...
Page 213 - And now approach'd their fleet from India, fraught With all the riches of the rising sun : And precious sand from Southern climates brought, The fatal regions where the war begun.

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