The Works of the English Poets: Pope

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H. Hughs, 1779

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Page 24 - Poetry, he will find but few precepts in it which he may not meet with in Aristotle, and which were not commonly known by all the poets of the Augustan age. His way of expressing and applying them, not his invention of them, is what we are chiefly to admire.
Page 273 - He was not without hopes that, by manifesting the dulness of those who had only malice to recommend them, either the booksellers would not find their account in employing them, or the men themselves, when discovered, want courage to proceed in so unlawful an occupation. This it was that gave birth to the Dunciad...
Page 272 - ... all the great characters of the age, and this with impunity, their own persons and names being utterly secret and obscure.
Page 263 - Night primaeval and of Chaos old ! Before her, Fancy's gilded clouds decay, And all its varying rainbows die away. Wit shoots in vain its momentary fires, The meteor drops, and in a flash expires. As one by one, at dread Medea's strain, The sick'ning stars fade off th' ethereal plain ; As Argus
Page 81 - Close to those walls where Folly holds her throne, And laughs to think Monroe would take her down, Where o'er the gates, by his famed father's hand Great Gibber's brazen, brainless brothers stand ; One cell there is, conceal'd from vulgar eye, The cave of Poverty and Poetry. Keen hollow winds howl thro' the bleak recess, Emblem of music caus'd by emptiness.
Page 236 - Full in the midst of Euclid dip at once, And petrify a genius to a dunce ; Or, set on metaphysic ground to prance, Show all his paces, not a step advance.
Page 84 - Call forth each mass, a Poem or a Play : How hints, like spawn, scarce quick in embryo lie, How new-born nonsense first is taught to cry, 60 Maggots, half-form'd, in rhyme exactly meet, And learn to crawl upon poetic feet.
Page 24 - As for those which are the most known, and the most received, they are placed in so beautiful a light, and illustrated with such apt allusions, that they have in them all the graces of novelty, and make the reader, who was before acquainted with them, still more convinced of their truth and solidity.
Page 207 - Polly, till then obscure, became all at once the favourite of the town ; her pictures were engraved, and sold in great numbers ; her life written, books of letters and verses to her published, and pamphlets made even of her sayings and jests.
Page 207 - Furthermore, it drove out of England (for that season) the Italian Opera, which had carried all before it for ten years.

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