The Life of John Milton: Containing, Besides the History of His Works, Several Extraordinary Characters of Men, and Books, Sects, Parties, and Opinions; with Amyntor; Or a Defense of Milton's Life; and Various Notes Now Added. London, Printed for I. Darby, 1699

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Reprinted for A. Millar, 1761 - 259 pages
 

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Page 122 - Or of the eternal co-eternal beam, May I express thee unblamed ? since God is light, And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate. Or hear'st thou rather pure ethereal stream, Whose fountain who shall tell? before the sun, Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest The rising world of waters dark and deep, Won from the void and formless infinite.
Page 47 - Licence they mean when they cry Liberty; For who loves that must first be wise and good ; But from that mark how far they rove we see, For all this waste of wealth and loss of blood.
Page 108 - But ye shall not be so : but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger ; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.
Page 121 - Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.
Page 33 - I understood them ; others were the smooth elegiac poets, whereof the schools are not scarce, whom both for the pleasing sound of their numerous writing, which in imitation I found most easy, and most agreeable to nature's part in me, and for their matter, which what it is, there be few who know not, I was so allured to read, that no recreation came to me better welcome...
Page 24 - God rarely bestowed, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every nation : and are of power, beside the office of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune...
Page 121 - Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn; The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, The next in majesty; in both the last. The force of Nature could no further go, To make a third she joined the former two.
Page 239 - ... upon my misery with thine eye of mercy, and let thine infinite power vouchsafe to limit out some proportion of deliverance unto me, as to thee shall seem most convenient.
Page 34 - I deplored; and above them all, preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but honor of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts, without transgression.
Page 122 - Thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovran vital lamp ; but thou Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn ; So thick a drop serene hath quenched their orbs, Or dim suffusion veiled.

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