The Works of Samuel Johnson: LL.D. A New Edition in Twelve Volumes. With an Essay on His Life and Genius, by Arthur Murphy, Esq, Volume 6F. C. and J. Rivington, 1823 |
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Page 411 - power obey. From harmony, from heavenly harmony, This universal frame began; From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full in man. The conclusion is likewise striking; but it includes an image so awful in itself, that it can owe little to poetry; and I could wish the antithesis of
Page 411 - untuning had found some other place. As from the power of sacred lays The spheres began to move, And sung the great Creator's praise To all the bless'd above: So, when the last and dreadful hour This crumbling pageant shall devour, The trumpet shall be heard on high, } And musick shall untune the sky.
Page 64 - His spear, the trunk was of a lofty tree, Which Nature meant some tall ship's mast should be. Milton of Satan: His spear, to equal which the tallest pine Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be
Page 410 - atoms lay, And could not heave her head, The tuneful voice was heard from high, Arise ye more than dead. Then cold and hot, and moist and dry, In order to their stations leap, And
Page 329 - the flood to fire: The weaver, charm'd with what his loom design'd, Goes on to sea, and knows not to retire. With roomy decks, her guns of mighty strength, Whose low-laid mouths each mounting billow laves, Deep in her draught, and warlike in her length, " What a wonderful pother is here, to make all these poetical
Page 439 - us the true bounds of a translator's liberty. What was said of Rome, adorned by Augustus, may be applied by an easy metaphor to English poetry embellished by Dryden, " lateritiam invenit, marmoream reliquit." He found it brick, and he left it marble. THE invocation before the Georgicks is here
Page 37 - speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon Hope shews an unequalled fertility of invention: Hope, whose weak being ruin'd is, • Alike if it succeed and if it miss; Whom good or ill does equally confound, And both the horns of Fate's dilemma wound;
Page 416 - Such souls as shards produce, such beetle things As only buz to Heaven with evening wings; Strike in the dark, offending but by chance; Such are the blindfold blows of ignorance. They know no being, and but hate a name ; To them the Hind and Panther are the
Page 42 - After this says Bentley *. Who travels in religious jars, Truth mix'd with error, shade with rays, Like Whiston wanting pyx or stars, In ocean wide or sinks or strays. Cowley seems to have had what Milton is believed to have wanted, the skill to rate his own performances by their just value, and has therefore
Page 269 - shewn as it is; suppression and addition equally corrupt it; and such as it is, it is known already. From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy ; but this is rarely to be hoped by Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great, desirable, or