Studies of a Biographer, Volume 1Duckworth and Company, 1899 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Adam Smith admirable admit agriculture anecdotes appears Arthur Young became become Ben Caunt biographer Boswell Boswell's Buononcini Byrom career century character characteristic charm chess problems circle Coleridge Conyers Middleton course critics Defoe dictionary doubt editor England English enthusiasm example fact famous fancy fortune French friends genius George III Gibbon give Grub Street Hawkins hero historian Horace Walpole human instinct interest John Byrom Johnson kind labours later least less letters literary literature lives London look Lord Lord Sheffield Macaulay Malebranche modern monomania moral nature never newspaper obscure observes once paper passion period person philosopher Piozzi poem political Pope preters printer probably published readers remarks rival Salisbury Plain seems sentiments shorthand simply Sinclair society started suggested tells thing thought tion told travels turn Tutchin Voltaire Walpole Wordsworth worth writing
Popular passages
Page 132 - There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind, In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind.
Page 183 - Now was excited his delight in rural pleasures, and his ambition of rural elegance : he began from this time to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters ; which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made his little domain the envy of the great, and the admiration of the skilful ; a place to be visited by travellers, and copied by designers.
Page 137 - I was never summoned to attend even the ceremony of a lecture; and, excepting one voluntary visit to his rooms during the eight months of his titular office, the tutor and pupil lived in the same college as strangers to...
Page 69 - Come hither, poor fellow, and patted his head : \ But now, when he's fawning, I, with a sour look, Cry, Sirrah...
Page 104 - ... continued advancing to the last — till he had acquired every advantage that high birth or title could bestow, except the precedence of going into a room; but, when he was there, he was treated with as much attention as the first man at the table. It is to the credit of Garrick that he never laid any claim to this distinction; it was as voluntarily allowed, as if it had been his birth-right. In this, I confess, I looked on David with some degree of envy, not so much for the respect he received,...
Page 240 - The tears into his eyes were brought. And thanks and praises seemed to run So fast out of his heart, I thought They never would have done. — I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning; Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning.
Page 186 - This prospect, which contains a semicircle of a hundred miles diameter, has an oceanic vastness, in which the eye loses itself; an almost boundless scene of cultivation; an animated, but confused mass of infinitely varied parts — melting gradually into the distant obscure from which emerges the amazing frame of the Pyrenees, rearing their silvered heads far above the clouds.
Page 105 - If all this had happened to me, I should have had a couple of fellows with long poles walking before me, to knock down everybody that stood in the way. Consider, if all this had happened to Gibber or Quin, they'd have jumped over the moon. Yet Garrick speaks to us" (smiling). BOSWELL : " And Garrick is a very good man, a charitable man.
Page 204 - Versailles. 1788 THE long journey I had last year taken in France suggested a variety of reflections on the agriculture and on the sources and progress of national prosperity in that kingdom; in spite of myself, these ideas fermented in my mind; and while I was drawing conclusions relative...
Page 117 - Her affection for her children makes her amiable to me. But I confess she ought, for the sake of her children, to conform to the strict ideas of the world. How strangely do we colour our own vices. I startle when you talk of keeping another man's wife. Yet that was literally my scheme, though my imagination represented it just as being fond of a pretty, lively, black little lady who, to oblige me, stayed in Edinburgh, and I very genteelly paid her expenses.