British Biography; Or, An Accurate and Impartial Account of the Lives and Writings of Eminent Persons: In Great Britain and Ireland; from Wickliff ... to the Present Time ...

Front Cover

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 105 - We can only say that he lived in the infancy of our poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first. We must be children before we grow men. There was an Ennius, and in process of time a Lucilius and a Lucretius, before Virgil and Horace; even after Chaucer there was a Spenser, a Harrington, a Fairfax, before Waller and Denham were in being; and our numbers were in their nonage till these last appeared.
Page 106 - Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity, their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling and their breeding — such as are becoming of them and of them only.
Page 106 - 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 106 - Porta could not have described their natures better, than by the marks which the poet gives them. 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 104 - 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 105 - Tis true, I cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of him; for he would make us believe the fault is in our ears, and that there were really ten syllables in a verse...
Page 106 - 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 105 - Tacitus commends, it was auribus istius temporis accommodata : they who lived with him, and some time after him, thought it musical ; and it continues so even in our judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lydgate and Gower, his contemporaries : there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect.
Page 125 - Prince of Peace, who sent out His soldiers to the subduing of nations, and gathering them Into His Church, not armed with the sword, or other instruments of force, but prepared with the Gospel of peace, and with the exemplary holiness of their conversation.
Page 105 - The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us ; but it is like the eloquence of one whom Tacitus commends, it was auribus istius temporis accommodata.

Bibliographic information