Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Volume 3

Front Cover
T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1812 - English language

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 321 - All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously but luckily: when he describes anything you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.
Page 150 - Swinging slow with sullen roar; Or if the air will not permit, Some still removed place will fit, Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom...
Page 153 - Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon : look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards.
Page 183 - That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment? Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds; Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he?
Page 157 - Clos'd o'er the head of your lov'd Lycidas? For neither were ye playing on the steep, Where your old Bards, the famous Druids, lie, Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream: Ay me!
Page 322 - Admirable scenes and passages, without number, there are in his Plays ; passages beyond what are to be found in any other Dramatic Writer; but there is hardly any one of his Plays which can be called altogether a good one, or which can be read with uninterrupted pleasure from beginning to end. Besides...
Page 148 - He thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man of genius; he looks round on Nature and on Life with the eye which Nature bestows only on a poet, the eye that distinguishes in...
Page 145 - But a true poet makes us imagine that we see it before our eyes : he catches the distinguishing features ; he gives it the colours of life and reality ; he places it in such a light that a painter could copy after him.
Page 3 - ... universal taste of mankind, proved and tried throughout the succession of so many ages. Imperfections in their works he may indeed point out; passages that are faulty he may show; for where is the human work that is perfect?
Page 115 - The fprightly Sylvia trips along the green, " She runs, but hopes fhe does not run unfeen ; " While a kind glance at her purfuer flies, " How much at variance are her feet and eyes !" There is nothing the writers of this kind of poetry are fonder of than defcriptions of paftoral Prefents.

Bibliographic information