Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century

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C. Scribner's Sons, 1904 - 337 pages
 

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Page 317 - What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unused.
Page 181 - Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried, What hell it is in suing long to bide ; To lose good days that might be better spent ; To waste long nights in pensive discontent ; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow ; To feed on hope ; to pine with fear and sorrow ; To have thy Prince's grace, yet want her peer?
Page 280 - Soul of the age! The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage! My Shakespeare, rise! I will not lodge thee by Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie A little further, to make thee a room: Thou art a monument without a tomb, And art alive still while thy book doth live And we have wits to read and praise to give.
Page 213 - I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do with all this) ; and, by degrees, with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers, so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet as immediately as a child is made an eunuch.
Page 302 - In such a night Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew And saw the lion's shadow ere himself And ran dismay'd away. Lor. In such a night Stood Dido with a willow in her hand Upon the wild sea banks and waft her love To come again to Carthage.
Page 136 - What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! Heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtle flame As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life.
Page 221 - To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil business, it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear and round dealing is the honour of man's nature, and that mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it...
Page 57 - Besides, this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking off...
Page 68 - That though I lived with him and knew him from a child, yet I never knew him other than a man; with such staidness of mind, lovely and familiar gravity as carried grace and reverence above greater years. His talk ever of knowledge, and his very play tending to enrich his mind.
Page 177 - There a strange shepherd chanced to find me out, Whether allured with my pipe's delight, Whose pleasing sound yshrilled far about, Or thither led by chance, I know not right : Whom when I asked from what place he came, And how he hight, himself he did ycleepe The Shepherd of the Ocean by name, And said he came far from the main-sea deep.

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