The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature. In a Series of Essays

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G.G. and J. Robinson, 1797 - 481 pages
 

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Page 394 - Memory and her siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases.
Page 297 - These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel.
Page 417 - ... childish peevishness, if we undervalue the advantages of our knowledge, and neglect to improve it to the ends for which it was given us, because there are some things that are set out of the reach of it.
Page 410 - Besides, that it is many times as troublesome to make good the pretence of a good quality, as to have it ; and if a man have it not, it is ten to one, but he is discovered to want it, and then all his pains and labour to seem to have it is lost.
Page 246 - To help me thro' this long disease, my Life, To second, Arbuthnot! thy Art and Care, And teach, the Being you preserv'd, to bear. But why then publish? Granville the polite, And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write; Well-natur'd Garth inflam'd with early praise, And Congreve lov'd, and Swift endur'd my lays; The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read, Ev'n mitred Rochester would nod the head, And St.
Page 396 - ... not to count him fit to print his mind without a tutor and examiner, lest he should drop a schism, or something of corruption, is the greatest displeasure and indignity to a free and knowing spirit, that can be put upon him.
Page 393 - But much latelier in the private academies of Italy, whither I was favoured to resort, perceiving that some trifles which I had in memory, composed at under twenty or thereabout...
Page 393 - ... an inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labour and intent study, which I take to be my portion in- this life, joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die.
Page 407 - The dialect of conversation is now-adays so swelled with vanity and compliment, and so surfeited (as I may say) of expressions of kindness and respect, that if a man that lived an age or two ago should return into the world again, he would really want a dictionary to help him to understand his own language...
Page 372 - Now, if nature should intermit her course, and leave altogether though it were but for a while the observation of her own laws; if those principal and mother elements of the world, whereof all things in this lower world are made, should lose the qualities which now they have; if the frame of that heavenly arch erected over our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres should forget their wonted motions, and by irregular volubility turn themselves any way as it might happen; if...

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