Lectures on the English Language

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C. Scribner, 1860 - English language - 697 pages

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Page 358 - OF man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, heavenly Muse...
Page 71 - But solemn and sublime ; whom not to offend, With reverence I must meet, and thou retire.' He ended : and the archangel soon drew nigh, Not in his shape celestial, but as man Clad to meet man ; over his lucid arms...
Page 72 - At once on the eastern cliff of Paradise He lights; and to his proper shape returns A seraph wing'd : six wings he wore, to shade His lineaments divine ; the pair that clad Each shoulder, broad, came mantling o'er his breast With regal ornament ; the middle pair Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold, And colours dipt in heaven; the third his feet Shadow'd from either heel with feather'd mail, Sky-tinctured grain. Like Maia's son he stood, And shook...
Page 630 - Oxford. 13. The directors in each company to be the Deans of Westminster and Chester for that place, and the king's professors in the Hebrew or Greek in either university. 14. These translations to be used when they agree better with the text than the Bishops' Bible: Tindale's, Matthew's, Coverdale's, Whitchurch's, Geneva.
Page 132 - In one corner was a stagnant pool of water, surrounding an island of muck; there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable, crest-fallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit, his drooping tail matted, as it were, into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back...
Page 335 - AN EPITAPH ON THE ADMIRABLE DRAMATIC POET W. SHAKESPEARE. WHAT needs my Shakespeare for his honour'd bones The labour of an age in piled stones ? Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid Under a star-ypointing pyramid...
Page 73 - In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, Where most may wonder at the workmanship ; It is for homely features to keep home, They had their name thence ; coarse complexions, And cheeks of sorry grain, will serve to ply The sampler, and to tease the housewife's wool. What need a vermeil-tinctured lip for that, Love-darting eyes, or tresses like the morn? There was another meaning in these gifts ; Think what, and be advised : you are but young yet.
Page 90 - Another will say, it wanteth grammar. Nay, truly, it hath that praise, that it wanteth not grammar; for grammar it might have, but it needs it not; being so easy in itself, and so void of those cumbersome differences of cases, genders, moods, and tenses; which, I think, was a piece of the Tower of Babylon's curse, that a man should be put to school to learn his mother tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly the conceits of the mind, which is the end of speech, that hath it equally with...
Page 562 - Well I remember the day ! once saved my life in a skirmish; Here in front you can see the very dint of the bullet Fired point-blank at my heart by a Spanish arcabucero. Had it not been of sheer steel, the forgotten bones of Miles Standish Would at this moment be mould, in their grave in the Flemish morasses.
Page 165 - For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind : it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.

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