Outlines of English Literature

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Sheldon & Company, 1866 - American literature - 465 pages

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Page 71 - Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to bide ; To lose good days that might be better spent ; To waste long nights in pensive discontent; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow ; To feed on hope ; to pine with fear and sorrow ; To have thy Prince's grace, yet want her peers...
Page 241 - Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike...
Page 191 - ... of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their history...
Page 234 - I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives, to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.
Page 244 - Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
Page 168 - Homer, and those other two of Virgil and Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief model: or whether the rules of Aristotle herein are strictly to be kept, or nature to be...
Page 51 - Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine : I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.
Page 288 - It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains.
Page 134 - Invest me in my motley ; give me leave To speak my mind, and I will through and through Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, If they will patiently receive my medicine.
Page 168 - Gods; and what resounds In fable or romance of Uther's son Begirt with British and Armoric knights ; And all who since, baptized or infidel, Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore, When Charlemain with all his peerage fell By Fontarabbia.

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