Essays and Addresses

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The University Press, 1907 - Literary Criticism - 648 pages

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Page 480 - PENSION [an allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country'].
Page 483 - MACPHERSON, I received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence offered me I shall do my best to repel ; and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat, by the menaces of a ruffian.
Page 489 - I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of Romance might have delighted to feign. I had indeed no trees to whisper over my head, but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me, and on either side, were high hills, which by hindering the eye from ranging, forced the mind to find entertainment for itself. Whether I spent the hour well I know not; for here I first conceived the thought of this narration.
Page 642 - I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.
Page 567 - Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past That shrunk thy streams ; return, Sicilian Muse, And call the vales, and bid them hither cast Their bells and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Page 500 - ... is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite are always catching modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of speech in hope...
Page 487 - IT is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that if all the misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy, would prefer the share they are already possessed of before that which would fall to them by sucb a division.
Page 483 - That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow • warmer among the ruins of lona.
Page 27 - And speech, and wind-swift thought, and all the moods that mould a state, hath he taught himself...
Page 483 - What would you have me retract ? I thought your book an imposture ; I think it an imposture still. For this opinion I have given my reasons to the public, which I here dare you to refute.

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