Dialogues Concerning Eloquence in General: And, Particularly that Kind which is Proper for the Pulpit

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Farrand, Mallory, & Company, 1810 - 174 pages
 

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Page 117 - First follow Nature, and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same : Unerring NATURE, still divinely bright, One clear, unchanged, and universal light, Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart, At once the source, and end, and test of Art.
Page 69 - True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd ; Something, whose truth convinc'd at sight we find, That gives us back the image of our mind.
Page 109 - Its gaudy colours spreads on every place ; The face of nature we no more survey, All glares alike, without distinction gay ; But true expression, like th' unchanging sun, Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon ; It gilds all objects, but it alters none.
Page 58 - ... unchanging sun, Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon ; It gilds all objects, but it alters none. Expression is the dress of thought, and still Appears more decent, as more suitable ; A vile conceit in pompous words express'd, Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd : For different styles with different subjects sort, As several garbs with country, town, and court. Some by old words to fame have made pretence : Ancients in phrase, mere moderns in their sense ! Such labour'd nothings, in...
Page 18 - Thee, bold Longinus ! all the Nine inspire, And bless their Critic with a Poet's fire. An ardent Judge, who zealous in his trust, With warmth gives sentence, yet is always just ; Whose own example strengthens all his laws ; And is himself that great Sublime he draws.
Page 75 - A work t* outlast immortal Rome design'd, Perhaps he seem'd above the Critic's law, And but from Nature's fountains scorn'd to draw: But when t' examine ev'ry part he came, Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.
Page 136 - It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, And the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; That stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, And spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: That bringeth the princes to nothing; He maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.
Page 22 - I said before, and concluding that eloquence ought to be banish'd out of all civil Societies, as a thing fatal to Peace and good Manners.
Page 49 - Fancy disgust the best things, if they come sound, and unadorn'd: they are in open defiance against Reason; professing, not to hold much correspondence with that; but with its Slaves, the Passions: they give the mind a motion too changeable, and bewitching, to consist with right practice.
Page 32 - Who can behold, without indignation, how many mists and uncertainties, these specious Tropes and Figures have brought on our Knowledg?

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