Anecdotes and Reminiscences of Illustrious Men and Women of Modern Times

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Reeves and Turner, 1900 - Anecdotes - 357 pages

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Page 302 - We were all, at the first night of it, in great uncertainty of the event; till we were very much encouraged by overhearing the duke of Argyle, who sat in the next box to us, say, ' It will do — it must do ! I see it in the eyes of them.
Page 215 - I am persuaded his power and interest at that time were greater to do good or hurt than any man's in the kingdom, or than any man of his rank hath had in any time; for his reputation of honesty was universal, and his affections seemed so publicly guided, that no corrupt or private ends could bias them....
Page 15 - Does he not feel that it is as honorable to owe it to these, as to being the accident of an accident ? — To all these noble lords, the language of the noble duke is as applicable and as insulting as it is to myself. But I don't fear to meet it single and alone.
Page 15 - No one venerates the peerage more than I do ; but, my lords, I must say that the peerage solicited me, — not I the peerage.
Page 34 - The proverbs of several nations were much studied by Bishop Andrews, and the reason he gave was, because by them he knew the minds of several nations, which is a brave thing ; as we count him a wise man that knows the minds and insides of men, which is done by knowing what is habitual to them.
Page 75 - There goes the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever was.
Page 180 - I don't know what I may seem to the world ; but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Page 293 - DEAR Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but harmonious, opposites in this : — that every old ruin, hill, river, or tree called up in his mind a host of historical or biographical associations, — just as a bright pan of brass, when beaten, is said to attract the swarming bees ; — whereas, for myself, notwithstanding Dr.
Page 282 - Some of his epithets are particularly amusing; for instance, he calls Chorebus, one of the Trojan chiefs, a bedlamite; says that Old Priam girded on his sword morglay, the name of a sword in the Gothic romances ; that Dido would have been glad to have been brought to bed, even of a cockney, a dandiprat hop-thumb; and that Jupiter, in kissing his daughter, Venus, bust his pretty-prating parrot ; and that ^Eneas was fain to trudge out of Troy. We must, also, introduce a specimen, of his rhyme, taken...
Page 180 - I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

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