The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: Illustrated by Anecdotes, Volume 1

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Knight, 1830 - Intellectuals - 427 pages

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Page 23 - He scarce had ceased, when the superior fiend Was moving toward the shore: his ponderous shield, Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, Behind him cast; the broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views, At evening, from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe.
Page 307 - This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask Content though blind, had I no better guide.
Page 305 - Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine...
Page 390 - The collection of Songs was my vade mecum. I pored over them, driving my cart, or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse ; carefully noting the true tender, or sublime, from affectation and fustian. I am convinced I owe to this practice much of my critic craft, such as it is.
Page 227 - I have been the more particular in this description of my journey, and shall be so of my first entry into that city, that you may in your mind compare such unlikely beginnings with the figure I have since made there.
Page 387 - ... who, as he was a happie imitator of Nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. His mind and hand went together; and what he thought, he uttered with that easinesse that wee have scarse received from him a blot in his papers.
Page 224 - ... and a glass of water, had the rest of the » time till their return for study, in which I made the greater progress, from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.
Page 307 - Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt. Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair. And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
Page 223 - By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them ; but I sometimes had the pleasure of fancying that, in certain particulars of small import, I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language, and this encouraged me to think I might possibly in time come to be a tolerable English writer, of which I was extremely ambitious.
Page 228 - I came in, to which I went for a draught of the river water; and, being filled with one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that came down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther.

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