English Past and Present |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
adopted altogether Anglo-Saxon ARSENE HOUSSAYE Beaumont and Fletcher become Ben Jonson black guard called century changes character Chaucer COMPOSITE LANGUAGE derived Dictionary Douay doubt Dryden earlier early edition employed English language English words etymology example exist express fact familiar female feminine foreign words found place French words gain German German language grammar Greek guage illustrate instance Jeremy Taylor kind Latin language Latin words lecture letters living loss matter meaning merely Milton modern nation nature never noun number of words observe once original passage perfuga period persons Plutarch poems poet popular possess present pronunciation reader REDFIELD RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH Romance Saxon seeking sense Shakespeare shape sound speak speech spelling spelt Spenser spoken strong pręterites suppose survives things tion tongue translation vast number verb Version whole Wiclif Wiclif's Bible write written
Popular passages
Page 108 - Deliver me not over into the will of mine adversaries : for there are false witnesses risen up against me, and such as speak wrong.
Page 36 - By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. 16 But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
Page 35 - Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. . . The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words.
Page 48 - words of art" as he calls them, which Philemon Holland, a voluminous translator at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century...
Page 67 - Yet it must be allowed to the present age, that the tongue in general is so much refined since Shakspeare's time that many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse ; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure.
Page 33 - cocoon' (to speak by the language applied to silkworms), which the poem spins for itself. But on the other hand, where the motion of the feeling is by and through the ideas, where (as in religious or meditative poetry — Young's, for instance, or Cowper's), the pathos creeps and kindles underneath the very tissues of the thinking, there the Latin will predominate ; and so much so that, whilst the flesh, the blood, and the muscle, will be often almost exclusively Latin, the articulations only, or...
Page 102 - With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort And savour, beasts of chase, or fowl of game, In pastry built, or from the spit, or boil'd, Gris-amber-steam'd ; all fish from sea or shore, Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin, And exquisitest name, for which was drain'd Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast.
Page 26 - THE LORD is my shepherd ; therefore can I lack nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort. He shall convert my soul, and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Page 178 - But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? "No," ('tis replied) "the first Almighty Cause Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws; Th' exceptions few; some change since all began: And what created perfect?