The Essays of Elia

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Grant Richards, 1901 - 382 pages

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Page 284 - like this. His extravaganzas do not strike at the sky, though he takes leave to adopt the pale Dian into a fellowship with his mortal passions. With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies How silently ; and with how wan a face ! What! may it be, that even in heavenly place That
Page 116 - The mind, that ocean, where each kind Withdraws into its happiness. Does straight its own resemblance find; Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds and other seas; Annihilating all that's made Here at the fountain's sliding foot
Page 270 - is at the greatest and the best but like a froward child, that must be played with, and humoured a little, to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.' BARBARA S ON the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, I forget which it was, just as the clock had struck one,
Page 116 - There, like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and claps its silver wings, And, till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light How well the skilful gardener drew Of flowers and herbs, this dial new Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run: And, as it works, the industrious bee
Page 216 - reckon Court Calendars, Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered on the back, Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large : the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie, Soame Jenyns, and generally, all those volumes which ' no gentleman's library should be without' : the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With
Page 163 - You graceless whelp, what have you got there devouring ? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you! but you must be eating fire, and I know not what—what have you got there, I say
Page 220 - up the Fairy Queen for a stop-gap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes' sermons? Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile thoughts, and purged ears. Winter evenings—the world shut out—with less
Page 42 - sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself— do these things go out with life
Page 352 - state, was no great judge of architecture. To the same effect, in a Hymn in honour of Beauty, divine Spenser platonising sings :— And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure
Page 116 - gardener drew Of flowers and herbs, this dial new Where, from above, the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run: And, as it works, the industrious bee How could such sweet and wholesome hours Computes its time as well as we. Be

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