The life of Samuel Johnson ... including A journal of a tour to the Hebrides. With additions and notes, by J.W. Croker, Volume 4

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Page 436 - See what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command...
Page 27 - Why, sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life ; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Page 246 - Poor stuff! No, Sir, claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero (smiling) must drink brandy.
Page 402 - Lost broke into open view with sufficient security of kind reception. Fancy can hardly forbear to conjecture with what temper Milton surveyed the silent progress of his work, and marked its reputation stealing its way in a kind of subterraneous current through fear and silence. I cannot but conceive him calm and confident, little disappointed, not at all dejected, relying on his own merit with steady consciousness, and waiting without impatience the vicissitudes of opinion, and the impartiality of...
Page 118 - I will not be put to the question. Don't you consider, Sir, that these are not the manners of a gentleman ? I will not be baited with what and why; what is this? what is that? why is a cow's tail long? why is a fox's tail bushy ?" The gentleman, who was a good deal out of countenance, said, " Why, Sir, you are so good, that I venture to trouble you.
Page 407 - ... presented, he studied rather than felt; and produced sentiments not such as Nature enforces, but meditation supplies. With the simple and elemental passions as they spring separate in the mind, he seems not much acquainted. He is, therefore, with all his variety of excellence, not often pathetick; and had so little sensibility of the power of effusions purely natural, that he did not esteem them in others.
Page 78 - Accustom your children,' said he, ' constantly to this : if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it, say that it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check them : you do not know where deviation from truth will end.
Page 403 - King, was perhaps more than he hoped, seems not to have satisfied him; for no sooner is he safe, than he finds himself in danger, fallen on evil days and evil tongues, and with darkness and with danger compassed round. This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly deserved compassion: but to add the mention of danger was ungrateful and unjust.
Page 464 - Biron they call him; but a merrier man, Within the limit of becoming mirth, I never spent an hour's talk withal : His eye begets occasion for his wit; For every object that the one doth catch, The other turns to a mirth-moving jest ; Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor,) Delivers in such apt and gracious words, That aged ears play truant at his tales, And younger hearings are quite ravished ; So sweet and voluble is his discourse.
Page 473 - ... in one knows not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplicable, being answerable to the numberless rovings of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, a manner of speaking out of the simple and plain way — such as reason teacheth and proveth things by — which by a pretty surprising uncouthness in conceit or expression doth affect and amuse the fancy, stirring in it some wonder, and breeding some delight thereto.

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