Critical and Miscellaneous Essays

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Phillips, Sampson,, 1855 - 368 pages
 

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Page 330 - Is not a Patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.
Page 331 - Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less ; for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself with so much exultation, " My Lord, " Your Lordship's most humble " Most obedient servant,
Page 67 - Audacious ; but, that seat soon failing, meets A vast vacuity : all unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops Ten thousand' fathom deep, and to this hour Down had been falling, had not by ill chance The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud, Instinct with fire and nitre, hurried him As many miles aloft...
Page 105 - A wish (I mind its power), A wish, that to my latest hour Shall strongly heave my breast, — That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake, Some usefu' plan or book could make, Or sing a sang at least.
Page 108 - Among the men who were the most learned of their time and country, he expressed himself with perfect firmness, but without the least intrusive forwardness ; and when he differed in opinion, he did not hesitate to express it firmly, yet at the same time with modesty.
Page 107 - Burns seemed much affected by the print, or rather by the ideas which it suggested to his mind. He actually shed tears. He asked whose the lines were, and it chanced that nobody but myself remembered that they occur in a halfforgotten poem of Langhorne's, called by the unpromising title of
Page 328 - At Edial, near Lichfield, in Staffordshire, young gentlemen are boarded and taught the Latin and Greek languages, by SAMUEL JOHNSON.
Page 335 - He then burst into such a fit of laughter, that he appeared to be almost in a convulsion ; and, in order to support himself, laid hold of one of the posts at the side of the foot pavement, and sent forth peals so loud, that in the silence of the night his voice seemed to resound from Temple-bar to Fleet-ditch.
Page 97 - ... a soul like an ^Eolian harp, in whose strings the vulgar wind, as it passed through them, changed itself into articulate melody." And this was he for whom the world found no fitter business than quarrelling with smugglers and vintners, computing...
Page 107 - I may truly say Virgilium vidi tantum. I was a lad of fifteen in 1786 — 7, when he came first to Edinburgh, but had sense and feeling enough to be much interested in his poetry, and would have given the world to know him : but I had very little acquaintance with any literary people ; and still less with the gentry of the west country, the two sets that he most frequented. Mr. Thomas Grierson was at that time a clerk of my father's. He knew Burns, and promised to ask him to his lodgings to dinner,...

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