The Works of the English Poets: Pope's Homer

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Samuel Johnson
H. Hughs, 1779

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Page 195 - Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground ; Another race the following spring supplies; They fall successive, and successive rise : So generations in their course decay; So flourish these, when those are pass'd away.
Page 21 - Homer, and that of his work ; but when they come to assign the causes of the great reputation of the Iliad, they found it upon the ignorance of his times and the prejudice of...
Page 208 - My soul impels me to the embattled plains! Let me be foremost to defend the throne, And guard my father's glories, and my own. "Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates! (How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!) The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend, And see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.
Page 15 - We ought to have a certain knowledge of the principal character and distinguishing excellence of each: it is in that we are to consider him, and in proportion to his degree in that we are to admire him. No author or man...
Page 132 - Apollo's altars in his native town. Now with full force the yielding horn he bends, Drawn to an arch, and joins the doubling ends ; (.'lose to his breast he strains the nerve below, Till the barb'd point approach the circling bow ; The impatient weapon whizzes on the wing ; Sounds the tough horn, and twangs the quivering string.
Page 26 - far-shooting," is capable of two explications, one literal in respect of the darts and bow, the ensigns of that god, the other allegorical with regard to the rays of the sun; therefore in such places where Apollo is represented as a god in person, I would use the former interpretation, and where the effects of the sun are described, I would make choice of the latter.
Page 14 - Nothing is more absurd or endless, than the common method of comparing eminent writers by an opposition of particular passages in them, and forming a judgment from thence of their merit upon the whole.
Page 33 - That the Earl of Halifax was one of the first to favour me; of whom it is hard to say whether the advancement of the polite arts is more owing to his generosity or his example...
Page 5 - If he has given a regular catalogue of an army, they all draw up their forces in the same order.
Page 5 - ... of both Homer's poems into one, which is yet but a fourth part as large as his. The other epic poets have...

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