The Works of John Dryden: Illustrated, with Notes, Historical, Critical, and Explanatory, and a Life of the Author by Sir Walter Scott, Volume 4

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William Patterson, 1883
 

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Page 26 - I must therefore avow, in the first place, from whence I took the Character. The first image I had of him was from the Achilles of Homer; the next from Tasso's Rinaldo (who was a copy of the former), and the third from the Artaban of Monsieur Calprenede: (who has imitated both).
Page 247 - Melantha is as finished an impertinent as ever fluttered in a drawing-room, and seems to contain the most complete system of female foppery that could possibly be crowded into the tortured form of a fine lady.
Page 121 - We take them in, and they turn beauties here. Our author fears those critics as his fate ; And those he fears by consequence must hate, For they the traffic of all wit invade, As scriveners draw away the bankers
Page 129 - Forgiveness to the injured does belong ; But they ne'er pardon who have done the wrong.
Page 236 - Shakespeare, who many times has written better than any poet, in any language, is yet so far from writing wit always, or expressing that wit according to the dignity of the subject, that he writes, in many places, below the dullest writer of ours, or any precedent age. Never did any author precipitate himself from such height of thought to so low expressions as he often does. He is the very Janus of poets; he wears almost everywhere two faces; and you have scarce begun to admire the one ere you despise...
Page 228 - ... either in rejecting such old words, or phrases, which are ill sounding, or improper; or in admitting new, which are more proper, more sounding and more significant.
Page 259 - Why should a foolish marriage vow Which long ago was made, Oblige us to each other now When passion is decayed...
Page 260 - Twas pleasure first made it an oath. If I have pleasures for a friend, And further love in store, What wrong has he whose joys did end, And who could give no more ? 'Tis a madness that he should be jealous of me, Or that I should bar him of another: For all we can gain, is to give ourselves pain, When neither can hinder the other.
Page 224 - Fame then was cheap, and the first comer sped ; And they have kept it since, by being dead.
Page 224 - Tis not the poet, but the age is praised. Wit 's now arrived to a more high degree ; Our native language more refined and free. Our ladies and our men now speak more wit In conversation, than those poets writ.

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