The Miscellaneous Prose Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, Volume 6

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R. Cadell, 1834

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Page 343 - Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts ; Into a thousand parts divide one man, And make imaginary puissance ; Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth : — For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings; Carry them here and there ; jumping o'er times, Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass...
Page 343 - On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object; can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt?
Page 350 - I saw Hamlet Prince of Denmark played, but now the old plays began to disgust this refined age, since his Majesties being so long abroad.
Page 279 - And let those that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them : for there be of them, that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too ; though, in the mean time, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered: that's villainous; and . shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.
Page 307 - Time is of all modes of existence most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. In contemplation we easily contract the time of real actions and therefore willingly permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation.
Page 361 - I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many things he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine, which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them.
Page 282 - For ordinary it is that two young princes fall in love; after many traverses she is got with child, delivered of a fair boy, he is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is ready to get another child, — and all this in two hours...
Page 276 - But, besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither right tragedies nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by head and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion; so as neither the admiration and commiseration, nor the right sportfulness, is by their mongrel tragi-comedy obtained.
Page 307 - It is false that any representation is mistaken for reality, that any dramatic fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a single moment, was ever credited.
Page 54 - Call you that desperate, which, by a line Of institution, from our ancestors Hath been derived down to us, and received In a succession for the noblest way Of breeding up our youth, in letters, arms, Fair mien, discourses, civil exercise, And all the blazon of a gentleman...

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