The Microcosm: A Periodical Work, Volume 2John Smith, George Canning, Robert Percy Smith, John Hookham Frere C. Knight, 1809 |
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Page 28 - Let others better mould the running mass Of metals, and inform the breathing brass, And soften into flesh, a marble face ; Plead better at the bar ; describe the skies, And when the stars descend, and when they rise. But Rome ! 'tis thine alone, with awful sway, To rule mankind, and make the world obey. Disposing peace and war, thy own majestic way : To tame the proud, the fetter'd slave to free: — These are imperial arts and worthy thee.
Page 118 - His prose is the model of the middle style; on grave subjects not formal, on light occasions not grovelling; pure without scrupulosity, and exact without apparent elaboration; always equable, and always easy, without glowing words or pointed sentences. Addison never deviates from his track to snatch a grace; he seeks no ambitious ornaments, and tries no hazardous innovations. His page is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendour.
Page 119 - To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess.
Page 118 - What he attempted, he performed ; he is never feeble, and he did not wish to be energetic ; he is never rapid, and he never stagnates. His sentences have neither studied amplitude, nor affected brevity ; his periods, though not diligently rounded, are voluble and easy. 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, HUGHES.
Page 80 - ALL night the chiefs before their vessels lay, And lost in sleep the labours of the day; All but the king : with various thoughts oppress'd, His country's cares lay rolling in his breast.
Page 45 - But let that man with better sence advize, That of the world least part to us is red: And daily how through hardy enterprize Many great regions are discovered, Which to late age were never mentioned. Who ever heard of th
Page 24 - Flows through each member of th ' embodied state, Sure, not unconscious of the mighty blessing, Her grateful sons shine bright with ev'ry virtue ; Untainted with the LUST OF INNOVATION ; Sure, all unite to hold her league of rule. Unbroken, as the sacred chain of nature, That links the jarring elements in peace.
Page 147 - July present, in the twenty-seventh year of the reign of His Majesty George the Third, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, do hereby commit my body to the press, from whence it came; my spirit to the comprehension of my readers. ' Of my Worldly Effects, consisting chiefly of Essays, Poems, Letters, &c.
Page 109 - ... man, with a very serious countenance and exceeding foul linen. After smoothing his approaches to my acquaintance by some introductory compliments, he informed me, as indeed I might have guessed, " that he was by profession an author, that he had been for many years a literary projector ; that owing to a kind of fatality which had hitherto attended his attempts, and a firm resolution on his own side never to indulge the trivial taste of an ill-judging age in which it was his misfortune to be born...
Page 45 - That all this famous antique history, Of some th' aboundance of an idle braine Will...