The lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff, Volume 2

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1754

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Page 286 - That it should come to this! But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly.
Page 241 - ... he saw two women of a larger stature than ordinary approaching towards him. One of them had a very noble air, and graceful deportment ; her...
Page 295 - The finest authors of antiquity have taken him on the more advantageous side. They cultivate the natural grandeur of the soul, raise in her a generous ambition, feed her with hopes of immortality and perfection, and do all they can to widen the partition between the virtuous and the vicious, by making the difference betwixt them as great as between gods and brutes.
Page 302 - It happened, that the very next who was brought before me was one of her admirers, who was indicted upon that very head. A letter which he acknowledged to be his own hand was read, in which were the following words, " Cruel creature, I die for you.
Page 245 - ... first. Our passions and inclinations come over next ; and our reason surrenders itself with pleasure in the end. Thus the whole soul is insensibly, betrayed into morality, by bribing the fancy with beautiful and agreeable images of those...
Page 82 - ... many hearers as you find it has in dissenting congregations, for no reason in the world but because it is spoken extempore. For ordinary minds are wholly governed by their eyes and ears, and there is no way to come at their hearts, but by power over their imaginations.
Page 318 - ... and keeping down the swellings of his grief, for fear of disturbing her in her last moments ; and the wife even at that time concealing; the pains she endured, for fear of increasing his affliction.
Page 164 - I must confess my heart shrunk within me at the sight of these ghastly appearances : but on a sudden, the voice of the trumpet came more full upon us, so that we felt a new resolution reviving in us ; and in proportion as this resolution grew, the terrors before us seemed to vanish. Most of the company, who had swords in their hands, marched on with great spirit, and an air of defiance, up the road that was commanded by Death ; while others, who had thought and contemplation in their looks, went...
Page 286 - That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on ; and yet, within a month — Let me not think on't.
Page 231 - Mrs. Mary is now sixteen, and would make him as fine a widow as the best of them.

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