The Works of John Dryden,: Now First Collected in Eighteen Volumes

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Archibald Constable and Company Edinburgh; and Hurst, Robinson, and Company London, 1821 - English literature

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Page 335 - But deeds, and language, such as men do use, And persons, such as comedy would choose, When she would show an image of the times, And sport with human follies, not with crimes Except we make them such, by loving still Our popular errors, when we know they're ill.
Page 347 - Besides Morose, there are at least nine or ten different characters, and humours in The Silent Woman; all which persons have several concernments of their own, yet are all used by the poet to the conducting of the main design to perfection. I shall not waste time in commending the writing of this play; but I will give you my opinion, that there is more wit and acuteness of fancy in it than in any of. Ben Jonson's.
Page 335 - To make a child now swaddled, to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords, And help of some few foot and half-foot words, Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars, And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars.
Page 311 - Though I see many excellent thoughts in Seneca, yet he, of them who had a genius most proper for the stage, was Ovid ; he had a' way of writing so fit to stir up a pleasing admiration and concernment, which are the objects of a tragedy, and to...
Page 336 - I hope I have already proved in this discourse, that though we are not altogether so punctual as the French in observing the laws of comedy, yet our errors are so few, and little, and those things wherein we excel them so considerable, that we ought of right to be preferred before them.
Page 303 - CEdipus, knew as well as the poet, that he had killed his father by a mistake, and committed incest with his mother, before the play; that they were now to hear of a great plague, an oracle, and the ghost of Laius: so that they sat with a yawning kind of expectation, till he was to come with his eyes pulled out, and speak a hundred or more verses in a tragic tone, in complaint of his misfortunes.
Page 341 - ... bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets, " Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.
Page 9 - Howls horrible from underneath, and fills His hollow palace with unmanly yells. The hero stands above, and from afar Plies him with darts, and stones, and distant war. He, from his nostrils and huge mouth, expires Black clouds of smoke, amidst his father's fires, Gath'ring, with each repeated blast, the night, To make uncertain aim, and erring sight.
Page 344 - Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language, 'twas that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially : perhaps too, he did a little too much Romanize our tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them : wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough comply with the idiom...
Page 91 - Mezentius sees him thro' the squadrons ride, Proud of the purple favors of his bride. Then, as a hungry lion, who beholds A gamesome goat, who frisks about the folds, Or beamy stag, that grazes on the plain — He runs, he roars, he shakes his rising mane, He grins, and opens wide his greedy jaws; The prey lies panting underneath his paws : He fills his famish'd maw ; his mouth runs o'er With unchew'd morsels, while he churns the gore...

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