The Great Conversers: And Other EssaysS.C. Griggs, 1876 - 304 pages |
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army attack battle beauty Ben Jonson better Blucher brain brilliant Byron called century character Charles Lamb charming Cicero club Coleridge conversation critic declared discourses doubt dull eloquence enemy England English epigrams essays expression exquisite face fact fancy feelings France French Frenchman genius Grouchy happy heart Horace Smith Hougoumont human humor ideas intellectual Julius Cæsar La Haye Sainte labor laugh laughter learned less Ligny literary literature live logic look Lord mental mind Molière moral Napoleon nasum nature ness never nose once orator passion persons poem poet poetry political preacher profound Prussians pulpit remarks Roman says sermons Shakspeare Sir Walter Scott society soul sparkling speak speech style Sydney Smith talk talker taste tells things thought thousand tion troops true truth verse Victor Hugo Voltaire Waterloo Wavre Wellington whole words writer wrote
Popular passages
Page 96 - I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for not without dust and heat.
Page 64 - Even as those bees of Trebizond, — Which from the sunniest flowers that glad With their pure smile the gardens round, Draw venom forth that drives men mad...
Page 24 - No man ever spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion.
Page 32 - He always made the best pun and the best remark in the course of the evening. His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is his best. No one ever stammered out such fine, piquant, deep eloquent things in half a dozen half-sentences as he does. His jests scald like tears, and he probes a question with a play upon words.
Page 12 - Addison was the most timorous and awkward man that he ever saw." And Addison, speaking of his own deficience in conversation, used to say of himself, that, with respect to intellectual "wealth, he could draw bills for a thousand pounds, though he had not a guinea in his pocket.
Page 158 - These are deep questions, where great names militate against each other ; where reason is perplexed ; and an appeal to authorities only thickens the confusion. For high and reverend authorities lift up their heads on both sides ; and there is no sure footing in the middle. This point is the great Serbonian bog, Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk.
Page 4 - THERE are a hundred faults in this thing, and a hundred things might be said to prove them beauties. But it is needless. A book may be amusing with numerous errors, or it may be very dull without a single absurdity.
Page 40 - He sings rather than talks. He pours upon you a kind of satirical, heroical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally catching up near the beginning some singular epithet, which serves as a refrain when his song is full, or with which as with a knitting-needle he catches up the stitches if he has chanced now and then to let fall a row.
Page 66 - Ward has no heart, they say; but I deny it ; He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.
Page 61 - While Butler, needy wretch ! was yet alive, No generous patron would a dinner give. See him, when starved to death, and turned to dust, Presented with a monumental bust. The poet's fate is here in emblem shown — He asked for bread, and he received a stone.