The Miscellaneous Works of Tobias Smollett, M. D.: The adventures of Ferdinand, count Fathom

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J. Mundell & Company, Edinburgh, and for J. Mundell, College, Glasgow, 1796

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Page 218 - By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap, To pluck bright honour from the pale-fac'd moon ; Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowne'd honour by the locks...
Page viii - I declare my purpose is to set him up as a beacon for the benefit of the unexperienced and unwary, who, from the perusal of these memoirs, may learn to avoid the manifold snares with which they are continually surrounded in the paths of life...
Page vii - The impulses of fear, which is the most violent and interesting of all the passions, remain longer than any other upon the memory: and for one that is allured to virtue by the contemplation of that peace and happiness which it bestows, an hundred are deterred from the practice of vice, by that infamy and punishment to which it is liable, from the laws and regulations of mankind.
Page vi - ... person for whom I have the most perfect attachment and esteem, you have no cause to complain of the indelicacy with which your faults are reprehended. And as they are chiefly the excesses of a sanguine disposition and looseness of thought, impatient of caution or control, you may, thus stimulated, watch over your own intemperance and infirmity with redoubled vigilance and consideration, and for the future profit by the severity of my reproof.
Page 96 - The first steps he had taken for his preservation were the effects of mere instinct, while his faculties were extinguished or suppressed by despair ; but now, as his reflection began to recur, he was haunted by the most intolerable apprehensions. Every whisper of the wind through the thickets was swelled into the hoarse menaces of murder, the shaking of the boughs was construed into the brandishing of poniards, and every shadow of a tree became the apparition of a ruffian eager for blood. In short,...
Page vii - A novel is a large diffused picture, comprehending the characters of life, disposed in different groups, and exhibited in various attitudes, for the purposes of an uniform plan, and general occurrence, to which every individual figure is subservient. But this plan cannot be executed with propriety, probability, or success, without a principal personage to attract the attention, unite the incidents, unwind the clue of the labyrinth, and at last close the scene, by virtue of his own importance.

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