The Percy Anecdotes: Original and Select [by] Sholto and Reuben Percy, Brothers of the Benedictine Monastery, Mont Benger, Volume 17

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T. Boys, 1826 - Anecdotes

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Page 72 - His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world ; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers ; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions ; they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated,...
Page 106 - The times have been That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end ; but now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools.
Page 73 - They are the genuine progeny of common humanity such as the world will always supply and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual ; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.
Page 37 - The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark, When neither is attended ; and, I think The nightingale, if she should sing by day, When every goose is cackling, would be thought No better a musician than the wren.
Page 64 - Our women are defective, and so sized, You'd think they were some of the guard disguised ; For to speak truth, men act, that are between Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen ; With bone so large, and nerve so incompliant, When you call Desdemona, enter giant.
Page 72 - WHEN Learning's triumph o'er her barbarous foes First rear'd the stage, immortal Shakespeare rose; Each change of many-colour'd life he drew, Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new: Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign, And panting Time toil'd after him in vain.
Page 111 - Reason thus with life : If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep. A breath thou art (Servile to all the skyey influences) That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, Hourly afflict.
Page 74 - She was so well pleased with that admirable character of Falstaff, in The Two Parts of Henry the Fourth, that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to shew him in love. This is said to be the occasion of his writing The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Page 128 - Dives' gate, the dogs lick his sores. 12. The good angel and Death contend for Lazarus's life. 13. Rich Dives is taken sick, and dieth ; he is buried in great solemnity. 14. Rich Dives in hell, and Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, seen in a most glorious object, all in machines descending in a throne, guarded with multitudes of angels ; with the breaking of the clouds, discovering the palace of the sun, in double and treble prospects, to the admiration of all the spectators.
Page 77 - I should visit him upon no other footing than that of a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity. I answered, that had he been so unfortunate as to be a mere gentleman, I should never have come to see him; and I was very much disgusted at so unseasonable a piece of vanity.

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