The Annual Register, Volume 22

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Longmans, Green, 1796 - History

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Page 19 - The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour; but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear; for the modulation was so imperfect, that they were only found to be verses, by counting the syllables.
Page 20 - ... wrote rather as beholders than partakers of human nature ; as beings looking upon good and evil, impassive and at leisure ; as Epicurean deities making remarks on the actions of men, and the vicissitudes of life, without interest and without emotion.
Page 19 - If by a more noble and more adequate conception that be considered as Wit which is at once natural and new, that which though not obvious is, upon its...
Page 351 - Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral to will and require the High Court of Admiralty of Great Britain, and the Lieutenant and Judge of the...
Page 19 - Wit, like all other things subject by their nature to the choice of man, has its changes and fashions, and at different times takes different forms. About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets; of whom, in a criticism on the works of Cowley, it is not improper to give some account.
Page 19 - Dryden confesses of himself and his contemporaries, that they fall below Donne in wit, but maintains that they surpass him in poetry. If Wit be well described by Pope, as being "that which has been often thought, but was never before so well expressed...
Page 25 - The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not satiate his appetite of greatness. To paint things as they are, requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy.
Page 320 - March, one thoufand feģen hundred and feventy-nine, upon lands> tenements, hereditaments, penfions, offices, and perfonal eftates, in that part of Great Britain called England, Wales, and the town of Berwick upon Tweed; and that a proportionable cefs, according...
Page 29 - But such airy beings are for the most part suffered only to do their natural office, and retire. Thus Fame tells a tale and Victory hovers over a general or perches on a standard; but Fame and Victory can do no more.
Page 160 - Tip his tongue with strange matter, his pen with fine taste ; That the rake and the poet o'er all may prevail, Set fire to the head, and set fire to the tail.

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