The Works of the English Poets: With Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, Volume 17

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Samuel Johnson
C. Bathurst, 1779
 

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Page 245 - ... verum ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis offendar maculis, quas aut incuria fudit aut humana parum cavit natura.
Page 161 - All with united force combine to drive The lazy drones from the laborious hive; With envy stung, they view each other's deeds; The fragrant work with diligence proceeds. "Thrice happy you, whose walls already rise...
Page 273 - The striving artists, and their arts' renown ; He saw, in order painted on the wall, Whatever did unhappy Troy befall": The wars that fame around the world had blown, All to the life, and ev'ry leader known.
Page 86 - Nor is the profit small, the peasant makes, Who smooths with harrows, or who pounds with rakes, The crumbling clods : nor Ceres, from on high, Regards his labours with a grudging eye ; Nor his, who ploughs across the furrow'd grounds, And on the back of earth inflicts new wounds ; For he, with frequent exercise, commands Th' unwilling soil, and tames the stubborn lands.
Page 257 - But every man cannot distinguish between pedantry and poetry: every man, therefore, is not fit to innovate. Upon the whole matter, a poet must first be certain that the word he would introduce is beautiful in the Latin, and is to consider, in the next place, whether it will agree with the English idiom: after this, he ought to take the opinion of judicious friends, such as are learned in both languages: and, lastly, since no man...
Page 252 - ... yet these are they who have the most admirers. But it often happens, to their mortification, that as their readers improve their stock of sense (as they may by reading better books, and by...
Page 305 - Go thou from me to fate, And to my father my foul deeds relate. Now die!
Page 131 - The fiery courser, when he hears from far The sprightly trumpets and the shouts of war, Pricks up his ears; and, trembling with delight, Shifts place, and paws, and hopes the promis'd fight.
Page 125 - Or, stript for wrestling, smears his limbs with oil, And watches with a trip his foe to foil. Such was the life the frugal Sabines led; So Remus and his brother god were bred: From whom th' austere Etrurian virtue rose, And this rude life our homely fathers chose.
Page 195 - Caesar, thus injured, and unable to resist the faction of the nobles which was now uppermost, (for he was a Marian,) had recourse to arms ; and his cause was just against Pompey, but not against his country, whose constitution ought to have been sacred to him, and never to have been violated on the account of any private wrong. But he prevailed ; and, heaven declaring for him, he became a providential monarch, under the title of perpetual dictator.

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