Lectures on the English Comic WritersWiley and Putnam, 1845 - 222 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
absurdity admirable affectation amusing appearance beauty Ben Jonson Brass Caleb Williams character circumstances comedy comic writer common Congreve Conscious Lovers delightful Dick Don Quixote double entendre dramatic dress elegance equally excellence extravagance eyes face fancy farce feeling folly genius gentleman Gil Blas give grace heart Hogarth Hudibras human nature idea imagination imitation insipid instance interest invention Johnson kind Lady laugh laughter look Lord lover ludicrous Malaprop manners Millamant mind mistress moral novel object painted passion person piece play pleasure plot poet poetry pretensions reason refinement ridiculous satire scene School for Scandal seems sense sentiment serious Shakspeare sion Sir Andrew Ague-cheek sort Spectator spirit stage Stoops to Conquer story striking style Tartuffe Tatler thee things thought tion Tom Jones truth turn vice Volpone vulgar whole wife words Wycherley
Popular passages
Page 60 - Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prithee, why so pale? Will, when looking well can't move her. Looking ill prevail? Prithee, why so pale?
Page 22 - The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, That it had its head bit off by its young.
Page 35 - tis certain ; very sure, very sure : death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all ; all shall die.
Page 62 - Compar'd to that was next her chin (Some bee had stung it newly ;) But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face, I durst no more upon them gaze Than on the sun in July. Her mouth so small, when she does speak, Thou'dst swear her teeth her words did break, That they might passage get ; But she so handled still the matter, They came as good as ours, or better, And are not spent a whit.
Page 14 - Compound for sins they are inclined to By damning those they have no mind to.
Page 25 - ... expression ; sometimes it lurketh under an odd similitude ; sometimes it is lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cunningly diverting or cleverly retorting an objection ; sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, in a tart irony, in a lusty hyperbole, in a startling metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense...
Page 57 - tis my outward soul, Viceroy to that, which then to heaven being gone, Will leave this to control And keep these limbs, her provinces, from dissolution.
Page 65 - Thou dost drink, and dance, and sing, Happier than the happiest king! All the fields which thou dost see, All the plants belong to thee; All that summer hours produce, Fertile made with early juice. Man for thee does sow and plough; Farmer he, and landlord thou!
Page 12 - The sun had long since, in the lap Of Thetis, taken out his nap, And, like a lobster boil'd, the morn From black to red began to turn...
Page 65 - Drinks up the sea, and when he 's done. The Moon and Stars drink up the Sun: They drink and dance by their own light, They drink and revel all the night: Nothing in Nature 's sober found, But an eternal health goes round.