The Spectator, Volume 1

Front Cover
George Atherton Aitken
John C. Nimmo, 1898

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 227 - Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon, Making night hideous, and we fools of nature So horridly to shake our disposition With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?
Page 226 - Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thou com'st in such a questionable shape, That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane, O, answer me!
Page 9 - All who know that shire are very well acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir Roger. He is a gentleman that is very singular in his behaviour, but his singularities proceed from his good sense, and are contradictions to the manners of the world, only as he thinks the world is in the wrong.
Page 14 - ... the gallant Will Honeycomb, a gentleman who, according to his years, should be in the decline of his life, but having ever been very careful of his person, and always had a very easy fortune, time has made but very little impression, either by wrinkles on his forehead, or traces in his brain.
Page 386 - Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come, His men in armour bright ; Full twenty hundred Scottish spears All marching in our sight ; All men of pleasant Teviotdale, Fast by the river Tweed...
Page 15 - He is very ready at that sort of discourse with which men usually entertain women. He has all his life dressed very well, and remembers habits as others do men. He can smile when one speaks to him, and laughs easily. He knows the history of every mode, and can inform you from which of the French king's wenches our wives and daughters had this manner of curling their hair...
Page 40 - A screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a cricket hath struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable, which may not appear dreadful to an imagination that is filled with omens and prognostics: a rusty nail or a crooked pin shoot up into prodigies.
Page 357 - In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow, Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow ; Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee, There is no living with thee, nor without thee.
Page 3 - I had not been long at the university before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence ; for during the space of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an hundred words ; and indeed do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life.
Page 136 - English admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state.

Bibliographic information