New Biographies of Illustrious Men

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Whittemore, Niles, and Hall, 1857 - 408 pages
 

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Page 261 - It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter,* that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Page 67 - This he refused, saying, in his melancholy way, that " it was too late for him to try to support a falling church.
Page 39 - I confess that I have as vast contemplative ends, as I have moderate civil ends...
Page 230 - His narratives were always amusing, his descriptions always picturesque, his humour rich and joyous, yet not without an occasional tinge of amiable sadness. About everything that he wrote, serious or sportive, there was a certain natural grace and decorum...
Page 326 - It would be easy, on the other hand, to name several writers of the nineteenth century of whom the least successful has received forty thousand pounds from the booksellers. But Johnson entered on his vocation in the most dreary part of the dreary interval which separated two ages of prosperity. Literature had ceased to flourish under the patronage of the great, and had not begun to flourish under the patronage of the public.
Page 39 - I have taken all knowledge to be my province; and if I could purge it of two sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivolous disputations, confutations, and verbosities; the other with blind experiments and auricular traditions and impostures, hath committed so many spoils; I hope I should bring in industrious observations, grounded conclusions, and profitable inventions and discoveries ; the best state of that province. This, whether it be curiosity, or vain glory, or nature, or, if one take it...
Page 286 - France. I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can almost excuse his reverence for church establishments.
Page 158 - Probably no man ever went through more physical suffering than Mr. Hall ; he was a fine example of the triumph of the higher powers of mind exalted by religion, over the infirmities of the body.
Page 235 - England, by which he made £600; a History of Greece, for which he received £250; a Natural History, for which the booksellers covenanted to [570 pay him 800 guineas. These works he produced without any elaborate research, by merely selecting, abridging, and translating into his own clear, pure, and flowing language what he found in books well known to the world, but too bulky or too dry for boys and girls. He committed some strange blunders; for he knew nothing with accuracy. Thus in his History...
Page 398 - Every one who is acquainted either with the philosophers or critics, knows that there is nothing yet established in either of these two sciences, and that they contain little more than endless disputes, even in the most fundamental articles.

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