The British Essayists: Tatler

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J. Richardson and Company, 1823 - English essays

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Page 255 - And let those, that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them : for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too ; though, in the mean time, some necessary question}: of the play be then to be considered : that's villainous ; and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
Page 255 - ... twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others.
Page 255 - Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus ; but use all gently : for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say,- whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings...
Page 311 - Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. So when an angel, by divine command, With rising tempests shakes a guilty land (Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed), Calm and serene he drives the furious blast ; And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform. Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.
Page 254 - Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue : but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.
Page xiv - To teach the minuter decencies and inferior duties, to regulate the practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which are rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation...
Page xlvi - Lastly, his writings have set all our wits and men of- letters upon a new way of thinking, of which they had little or no notion before ; and though we cannot yet say that any of them have come up to the beauties of the original, I think we may venture to affirm, that every one of them writes and thinks much more justly than they did some time since.
Page 12 - All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment, shall be under the article of White's Chocolatehouse; poetry, under that of Will's Coffee-house; learning, under the title of Grecian; foreign and domestic news you will have from Saint James's Coffee-house ; and what else I have to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my own Apartment.
Page xlv - It would have been a jest, some time since, for a man to have asserted that any thing witty could be said in praise of a married state.; or that devotion and virtue were any way necessary to the character of a fine gentleman.
Page 255 - Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end both at the first, and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

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