Lives of the novelists, Volumes 1-2

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Page 106 - Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please...
Page 100 - ... Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork into the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me that he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced to me. I looked into it, and saw its merit; told the landlady I should soon return, and having gone to a bookseller sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged his rent, not without rating his landlady in a high tone for having used...
Page 90 - Yet when the sense of sacred presence fires, And strong devotion to the skies aspires, Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind, Obedient passions, and a will resign'd...
Page 4 - ... letters ; nor did any one of them ever know that I was the secretary to the others. I have been directed to chide, and even repulse, when an offence was either taken or given, at the very time that the heart of the chider or repulser was open before me, overflowing with esteem, and affection, and the fair repulser, dreading to be taken at her word, directing this word, or that expression, to be softened or changed. One, highly gratified with her lover's...
Page 106 - How often have I blest the coming day, When toil remitting lent its turn to play, And all the village train, from labour free, Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree, While many a pastime circled in the shade, The...
Page 266 - Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights, Wherein you spend your folly : There's nought in this life sweet If man were wise to see't, But only melancholy, O sweetest Melancholy...
Page 98 - I may possibly acquire a genteel independence for life; when I think of that dignity which philosophy claims, to raise itself above contempt and ridicule ; when I think thus, I eagerly long to embrace every opportunity of separating myself from the vulgar, as much in my circumstances as I am already in my sentiments.
Page 64 - The character of Lothario seems to have been expanded by Richardson into Lovelace ; but he has excelled his original in the moral effect of the fiction. Lothario, with gaiety which cannot be hated, and bravery which cannot be despised, retains too much of the spectator's kindness.
Page 172 - He loved the world that hated him : the tear That dropped upon his Bible was sincere : Assailed by scandal and the tongue of strife, His only answer was, a blameless life ; And he that forged, and he that threw the dart, Had each a brother's interest in his heart.
Page 126 - We take it for a translation ; and should believe it to be a true story, if it were not for St. Nicholas.

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