The Life of Thomas Holcroft: Written by Himself, Volume 1

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Constable, Limited, 1925
 

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Page 2 - It's a little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old monsters of Acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards. It's a place that has an ancient monopoly in suits about people's wills and people's marriages, and disputes among ships and boats.
Page 182 - And twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault Set roaring war; to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt; the strong-bas'd promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up The pine and cedar...
Page 28 - the cold and wretched manner in which I was clothed ; and the excessive weariness I endured, in following these animals, day after day, and being obliged to drive creatures perhaps still more weary than myself, were miseries much too great, and loaded my little heart with sorrows, far too pungent ever to be forgotten.
Page lxii - How much he had it at heart," says the editor of the manuscript, which was given to the world some years after the death of the author, " may, however, be inferred from the extraordinary pains he then took to make some progress in it. He told his physicians that he did not care what severity of treatment he was subjected to, provided he could live six months longer to complete what he had begun. By dictating a word at a time, he succeeded in bringing it down to his fifteenth year. When the clearness,...
Page 87 - Between this and the chair, Elephant, in consequence of hard whipping, got some little way before him, while Forester exerted every possible power to recover at least his lost equality ; till finding all his efforts ineffectual, he made one sudden spring, and caught Elephant by the under jaw, which he...
Page 9 - The task at first I found difficult, till the idea one day suddenly seized me of catching all the sounds I had been taught from the arrangement of the letters ; and my joy at this amazing discovery was so great, that the recollection of it has never been effaced. After that, my progress was so rapid, that it astonished my father. He boasted of me to every body ; and that I might lose no time, the task he set me was eleven chapters a day in the Old Testament. I might indeed have deceived my father...
Page 182 - To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid (Weak masters though ye be,) I have be-dimm'd The noon-tide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, And 'twixt the green sea and the...
Page 149 - Boys and the Frogs, which entirely turned the tide of popular opinion in her favour. What must the feelings of the same mother have been, when this child (afterwards Mrs.
Page 182 - twixt the green sea, and the azur'd vault Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifled Jove's stout oak, With his own bolt...
Page 155 - They appear to be a set of merry, thoughtless beings, who laugh in the midst of poverty and who never want a quotation or a story to recruit their spirits. When they get any money they seem in haste to spend it, lest some tyrant in the shape of a dun should snatch it from them.

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