An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope ...

Front Cover
R. and J. Dodsley, 1762

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 40 - Pollute with sinful blame, The saintly veil of maiden white to throw; Confounded, that her Maker's eyes Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
Page 225 - Where the bee sucks, there suck I; In a cowslip's bell I lie: There I couch when owls do cry. On the bat's back I do fly, After summer, merrily : Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
Page 310 - How oft, when press'd to marriage, have I said, Curse on all laws but those which love has made! Love, free as air, at sight of human ties, Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies...
Page 314 - Ah no! instruct me other joys to prize, With other beauties charm my partial eyes, Full in my view set all the bright abode, And make my soul quit Abelard for God.
Page 134 - ... faces to make one excellent. Such personages, I think, would please nobody but the painter that made them ; not but I think a painter may make a better face than ever was ; but he must do it by a kind of felicity, (as a musician that maketh an excellent air in music,) and not by rule.
Page 38 - The oracles are dumb; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving: No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
Page 13 - See a long race thy spacious courts adorn ; See future sons, and daughters yet unborn, In crowding ranks on every side arise, Demanding life, impatient for the skies ! See barbarous nations at thy gates attend, Walk in thy light, and in thy temple bend...
Page 184 - But see! each Muse, in Leo's golden days, Starts from her trance, and trims her wither'd bays! Rome's ancient Genius, o'er its ruins spread, Shakes off the dust, and rears his rev'rend head. Then Sculpture and her sister-arts revive; Stones leap'd to form, and rocks began to live; With sweeter notes each rising Temple rung; A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung.
Page 97 - The Art of Criticism, which was published some months since, and is a master-piece in its kind. The observations follow one another like those in Horace's Art of Poetry, without that methodical regularity which would have been requisite in a prose author.
Page 153 - Where a new world leaps out at his command, And ready nature waits upon his hand ; When the ripe colours soften and unite, And sweetly melt into just shade and light ; When mellowing years their full perfection give( And each bold figure just begins to live, The treacherous colours the fair art betray, And all the bright creation fades away...

Bibliographic information