The Plain Speaker: Opinions on Books, Men, and Things, Volume 1 |
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abstract admiration affectation animals artist beauty better brain character Cockney colour common conceive conversation Correggio craniology delight envy ESSAY excellence eyes face faculties fancy favourite feeling friends Gateacre genius Gil Blas give GRANVILLE SHARP greatest hand head hear heart human idea idle imagination impressions indifference instance JOHN EVELYN labour live London look Lord Lord Byron Lord Castlereagh Lord Keppel Malebranche mean MEMOIRS ment mind moral nature ness never Northcote object opinion organ ourselves pain painter painting particular passion person picture pleasure poet poetry Portraits pretend PRINCE HOARE principle prose racter Raphael reason Rembrandt Scots wha hae seems sense sentiment Shakespear Sir Joshua sitter sleep sort speak spirit spleen Spurzheim style talk taste thing thought throw tion Titian truth turn understanding vanity vols words write
Popular passages
Page 146 - As fast as they are made, forgot as soon As done : Perseverance, dear my lord, Keeps honour bright : To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail In monumental mockery.
Page 147 - For emulation hath a thousand sons, That one by one pursue. If you give way. Or hedge aside from the direct forth-right, Like to an enter'd tide, they all rush by, And leave you hindmost : — Or like a gallant horse, fall'n in first rank, Lie there for pavement to the abject rear, O'er-run and trampled. Then what they do in present, Though less than yours in past, must o'ertop yours : For time is like a fashionable host, That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretch'.!...
Page 173 - Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seen Full many a sprightly race Disporting on thy margent green The paths of pleasure trace; Who foremost now delight to cleave With pliant arm, thy glassy wave? The captive linnet which enthral? What idle progeny succeed To chase the rolling circle's speed, Or urge the flying ball?
Page 407 - And time and place are lost: where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal Anarchy, amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four champions fierce Strive here for mastery...
Page 402 - Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days, Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise ; Born with whate'er could win it from the wise, 'Women and fools must like him, or he dies : Though wondering senates hung on all he spoke, The club must hail him master of the joke.
Page 147 - That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretch'd, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer : welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing. O ! let not virtue seek Remuneration for the thing it was ; For beauty, wit, High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service, Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all To envious and calumniating time. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin...
Page 57 - Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread, Never sees horrid night, the child of hell, But, like a lackey, from the rise to set Sweats in the eye of Phoebus, and all night Sleeps in Elysium...
Page 295 - 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 137 - The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colors and their forms were then to me An appetite: a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.
Page 135 - A jest's prosperity lies in the ear • Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it : then, if sickly ears, Deaf 'd with the clamours of their own dear groans.