Miscellaneous and Fugitive Pieces, Volume 2 |
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Popular passages
Page 136 - Shakespeare's text; of whom one ridicules his errors with airy petulance, suitable enough to the levity of the controversy; the other attacks them with gloomy malignity, as if he were dragging to justice an assassin or incendiary. The one stings like a fly, sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter, and returns for more; the other bites like a viper, and would be glad to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him.
Page 322 - Enquirer, cease, petitions yet remain, Which heav'n may hear, nor deem religion vain. Still raise for good the supplicating voice, But leave to heav'n the measure and the choice, Safe in his pow'r, whose eyes discern afar The secret ambush of a specious pray'r.
Page 203 - Content with science in the vale of peace. Calmly he look'd on either life ; and here Saw nothing to regret, or there to fear ; From Nature's temperate feast rose satisfied, Thank'd Heaven that he had liv'd, and that he died.
Page 120 - The work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses ; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity.
Page 237 - He had employed his mind chiefly upon works of fiction, and subjects of fancy; and, by indulging some peculiar habits of thought, was eminently delighted with those flights of imagination which pass the bounds of nature, and to which the mind is reconciled only by a passive acquiescence in popular traditions. He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters ; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the water-falls of Elysian...
Page 301 - But all whom hunger spares, with age decay: Here malice, rapine, accident, conspire, And now a rabble rages, now a fire; Their ambush here relentless ruffians lay, And here the fell attorney prowls for prey; Here falling houses thunder on your head, And here a female atheist talks you dead.
Page 127 - He has scenes of undoubted and perpetual excellence; but perhaps not one play, which, if it were now exhibited as the work of a contemporary writer, would be heard to the conclusion. I am indeed far from thinking, that his works were wrought to his own ideas of perfection; when they were such as would satisfy the audience, they satisfied the writer. It is...
Page 107 - He carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate, for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place.
Page 293 - And chase the new-blown bubbles of the day. Ah ! let not Censure term our fate our choice, The stage but echoes back the public voice ; The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give, For we that live to please, must please to live. Then prompt no more the follies you decry, As tyrants doom their tools of guilt to die...
Page 317 - On what foundation stands the warrior's pride, How just his hopes let Swedish Charles decide ; A frame of adamant, a soul of fire, No dangers fright him, and no labours tire...
Bibliographic information
| Title | Miscellaneous and Fugitive Pieces, Volume 2 Miscellaneous and Fugitive Pieces, Thomas Davies |
| Author | Samuel Johnson |
| Editor | Thomas Davies |
| Compiled by | Thomas Davies |
| Edition | 2 |
| Publisher | T. Davies, 1774 |
| Original from | the New York Public Library |
| Digitized | 8 Dec 2006 |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |