A Tale of a Tub: The Battle of the Books, and Other Early Works

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G. Bell and sons, 1907 - 334 pages

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Page xxiv - To Dr. Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age.
Page 60 - To conclude from all, what is man himself but a micro-coat, or rather a complete suit of clothes with all its trimmings? As to his body, there can be no dispute; but examine even the acquirements of his mind, you will find them all contribute in their order towards furnishing out an exact dress. To instance no more: is not religion a cloak, honesty a pair of shoes worn out in the dirt, selflove a surtout, vanity a shirt, and conscience a pair of breeches which, though a cover for lewdness as well...
Page 167 - ... end : he stormed and swore like a madman, and swelled till he was ready to burst. At length, casting his eye upon the bee, and wisely gathering causes from events (for they knew each other by sight),
Page 166 - The avenues to his castle were guarded with turnpikes and palisadoes, all after the modern way of fortification. After you had passed several courts you came to the centre, wherein you might behold the constable himself in his own lodgings, which had windows fronting to each avenue, and ports to sally out upon all occasions of prey or defence.
Page 331 - ... his green boughs, and left him a withered trunk : he then flies to art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, (all covered with powder,) that never grew on his head; but now, should this our broomstick pretend to enter the...
Page lxxxiv - Science, perhaps, was never made more attractive and easy of entrance into the youthful mind."— The Builder. "Altogether the volume is one of the most original, as well as one of the most useful,
Page 331 - This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest: it was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of boughs: but now, in vain does the busy art of man pretend to vie with nature, by tying that withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk: it is now, at best, but the reverse of what it was, a tree turned upside down, the branches on the earth, and the root in the air; it is now handled by every dirty wench, condemned...
Page 83 - Dining one day at an alderman's in the city, Peter observed him expatiating, after the manner of his brethren, in the praises of his sirloin of beef. Beef, said the sage magistrate, is the king of meat; beef comprehends in it the quintessence of partridge, and quail, and venison, and pheasant, and plum-pudding, and custard.
Page 118 - In the proportion that credulity is a more peaceful possession of the mind than curiosity; so far preferable is that wisdom, which converses about the surface, to that pretended -philosophy, which enters into the depth of things, and then comes gravely back with tl;e informations and discoveries, that in the inside they are good for nothing.
Page 166 - Beelzebub,'1) with all his legions, was come to revenge the death of many thousands of his subjects whom his enemy had slain and devoured. However, he at length valiantly resolved to issue forth and meet his fate. Meanwhile, the bee had acquitted himself of his toils, and, posted securely at some distance, was employed in cleansing his wings, and disengaging them from the rugged remnants of the cobweb.

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