Theatrum Poetarum Anglicanorum: Containing the Names and Characters of All the English Poets, from the Reign of Henry III. to the Close of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth

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Simmons and Kirby, 1800 - English poetry - 342 pages

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Page 172 - Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice Art In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain...
Page 171 - But it is absurd to think of judging either Ariosto or Spenser by precepts which they did not attend to. We who live in the days of writing by rule, are apt to try every composition by those laws which we have been taught to think the sole criterion of excellence. Critical taste is universally diffused, and we require the same order and design which every modern performance is expected to have, in poems where they never were regarded or intended.
Page xliii - He thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man of genius; he looks round on Nature and on Life with the eye which Nature bestows only on a poet; the eye that distinguishes, in...
Page 171 - Ariosto, did not live in an age of planning. His poetry is the careless exuberance of a warm imagination and a strong sensibility.
Page 140 - I esteem both the greatest poet and the noblest genius of any that have left writings behind them and published in ours or any other modern language— a person born capable not only of forming the greatest ideas, but of leaving the noblest examples, if the length of his life had been equal to the excellence of his wit and his virtues.
Page 300 - We are yet 200 men, and the rest of our fleet are reasonably strong; strong enough, I hope, to perform what we have undertaken, if the diligent care at London, to make our strength known to the Spanish king by his ambassador, have not taught the Spanish king to fortify all the entrances against us.
Page 173 - If there be any poem whose graces please because they are situated beyond the reach of art, and where the force and faculties of creative imagination delight, because they are unassisted and unrestrained by those of deliberate judgment, it is this.
Page 140 - Shakespeare, indeed, was not the only violator of chronology, for in the same age Sidney, who wanted not the advantages of learning, has in his Arcadia confounded the pastoral with the feudal times, the days of innocence, quiet, and security with those of turbulence, violence, and adventure. In his...
Page 245 - When the King came in England, at that time the pest was in London, he being in the country at Sir Robert Cotton's house with old Camden, he saw in a vision his eldest son (then a child and at London) appear unto him with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cut with a sword, at which amazed he prayed unto God, and in the morning he came to Mr.
Page 245 - In the meantime comes there letters from his wife of the death of that Boy in the plague.

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