A New and General Biographical Dictionary: Containing an Historical and Critical Account of the Lives and Writings of the Most Eminent Persons in Every Nation; Particularly the British and Irish; from the Earliest Accounts of Time to the Present Period ...

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G. G. and J. Robinson, 1798 - Biography

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Page 475 - Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty. We have our forefathers and great grand-dames all before us, as they were in Chaucer's days: their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in England, though they are called by other names than those of Monks, and Friars, and Canons, and Lady Abbesses, and Nuns; 'for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, though everything is altered.
Page 474 - The matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different educations, humours, and callings that each of them would be improper in any other mouth.
Page 360 - He was a great cherisher of wit and fancy and good parts in any man; and, if he found them clouded with poverty or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune...
Page 473 - In the first place, as he is the father of English poetry, so I hold him in the same degree of veneration as the Grecians held Homer or the Romans Virgil...
Page 357 - ... no single preservation could be worth so general a wound and corruption of human society as the cherishing such persons would carry with it.
Page 356 - ... as he was by degrees looked upon as an advocate for the court; to which he contributed so little, that he declined those addresses, and even those invitations which he was obliged almost by civility to entertain.
Page 227 - In this mist of obscurity passed the life of Butler, a man whose name can only perish with his language. The mode and place of his education are unknown ; the events of his life are variously. related ; and all that can be told with certainty is, that he was poor.
Page 475 - Chaucer's side ; for though the Englishman has borrowed many tales from the Italian, yet it appears that those of Boccace were not generally of his own making, but taken from authors of former ages, and by him only modelled ; so that what there was of invention in either of them, may be judged equal.
Page 361 - ... at Edgehill, when the enemy was routed, he was like to have incurred great peril, by interposing to save those who had thrown away their arms, and against whom, it may be, others were more fierce for their having thrown them away : so that a man might think, he came into the field chiefly out of curiosity to see the face of danger, and charity to prevent the shedding of blood.
Page 359 - Peace; and would passionately profess, 'that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart'.

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