Miscellaneous Essays ; Impressions of Theophrastus Such ; The Veil Lifted ; Brother Jacob

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Estes and Lauriat, 1887 - 518 pages

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Page 58 - of a man. How then should I and any man that lives Be strangers to each other ? " Young is astonished that men can make war on each other — that any one can " seize his brother's throat," while " The Planets cry,' Forbear.. " Cowper weeps because
Page 34 - Father of mercies! Why from silent earth Didst thou awake and curse me into birth ? Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night, And make a thankless present of thy light ? Push into being a reverse of thee, And animate a clod with misery 1
Page 51 - unlock her resolution more. The deep resounds; and hell, through all her glooms, Returns, in groans, the melancholy roar." This is one of the blessings for which Dr. Young thanks God "most:" — " For all I bless thee, most, for the severe ; Her death — my own at hand — the Jiery
Page 162 - mobs or numskulls, he scarcely ever passes from the humorous and external to the emotional and tragic, without becoming as transcendent in his unreality as he was a moment before in his artistic truthfulness. But for the precious salt of his humor, which compels him to reproduce external traits that serve in some degree as a corrective
Page 60 - the visible, which flies for its motives, its sanctities, and its religion, to the remote, the vague, and the unknown ; in Cowper we have the type of that genuine love which cherishes things in proportion to their nearness, and feels its reverence grow in proportion to the intimacy of its knowledge. PORTRAIT op HEINE.
Page 33 - night, while breaking dawn Roused the broad front, and called the battle on." And this wail of the lost souls is fine : — " And this for sin ? Could I offend if I had never been ? But still increased the senseless, happy mass, Flowed in the stream, or shivered in
Page 37 - should be barred in that." The description of the literary belle, Daphne, well prefaces that of Stella, admired by Johnson: — " With legs tossed high, on her sophee she sits. Vouchsafing audience to contending wits: Of each performance she's the final test; One act read o'er, she prophesies the rest; And then,
Page 142 - the movement was mainly silent, unargumentative, and insensible; that men came gradually to disbelieve in witchcraft, because they came gradually to look upon it as absurd; and that this new tone of thought appeared, first of all, in those who -were least subject to theological influences, and soon spread through the educated laity,
Page 32 - raptures court, The sense is short; But virtue kindles living joys, — " Joys felt alone! Joys asked of none! Which Time's and Fortune's arrows miss : Joys that subsist, Though fates resist, An unprecarious, endless bliss ! " Unhappy they ! And falsely gay! Who bask forever in success; A constant feast Quite palls the taste, And
Page 15 - and repartees." Unfortunately, the only specimen of Young's wit on this occasion, that has been preserved to us, is the epigram represented as an extempore retort (spoken aside, surely) to Voltaire's criticism of Milton's episode of sin and death : — " Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin, At once we think thce Milton, Death, and Sin;

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