Poems, Plays and Miscellaneous Essays of Charles Lamb

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Macmillan, 1884 - English literature - 408 pages

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Page 128 - O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand...
Page 132 - ... the flaying of his feelings alive, did not make a fair dismissal from the stage of life the only decorous thing for him. If he is to live and be happy after, if he could sustain this world's burden after, why all this pudder and preparation, why torment us with all this unnecessary sympathy ? As if the childish pleasure of getting his gilt robes and sceptre again could tempt him to act over again his misused station ; as if, at his years, and with his experience, anything was left but to die.
Page 128 - tis true I have gone here and there And made myself a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, Made old offences of affections new.
Page 140 - I never saw anything like the funeral dirge in this play for the death of Marcello, except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father, in the Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling which seems to resolve itself into the element which it contemplates.
Page 138 - The names, and some of the properties which the other author has given to his hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But, in a lesser degree, the witches of Middleton are fine creations. Their power too is, in some measure, over the mind. They raise jars, jealousies, strifes, ' like a thick scurf
Page 159 - But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature.
Page xxv - Seeking to find the old familiar faces. Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling? So might we talk of the old familiar faces. How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me ; all are departed ; All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
Page 146 - Thus this brook has conveyed his ashes into, Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over.
Page 147 - I was pleased with the reply of a gentleman, who being asked which book he esteemed most in his library, answered, — " Shakspeare: " being asked which he esteemed next best, replied, —
Page 148 - ... deformities, which figure (such is the power of true genius) neither acts nor is meant to act as a contrast, but diffuses through all and over each of the group a spirit of reconciliation and human kindness ; and even when the attention is no longer consciously directed to the cause of this feeling, still blends its tenderness with our laughter, and thus prevents the instructive merriment at the whims of Nature, or the foibles or humours of our fellow-men, from degenerating into the heart-poison...

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