A History of English Prose Fiction |
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Common terms and phrases
Accolon Addison admiration adventures amusement Anthony Trollope Arthur attained beauty Behn castle chap character charming chivalry church Clara Reeve classes coarseness corruption court crime criminal damoysels Defoe described effect eighteenth century Elizabeth England English fiction Euphues Euphuist evil Excalibur excited fictitious George Eliot Guenever hand heart heroes Horace Walpole Houyhnhnms human ideal imagination influence interest king King Arthur knights Lady Launcelot less licentious literary literature lived Lord Lord Hervey manners mediæval merit mind Moll Flanders moral Morte narrative nature never noble novel novelist Oroonoko Pamela passion person popular Puritanism queen ranks reader Richardson Robin Hood romance romantic fiction sayd scenes Scott sentiment society spirit story supernatural swerd Swift sword taste Thackeray Thenne thou thought tion Tom Jones Tristram vice virtue Walpole wife woman women writers wrote young
Popular passages
Page 86 - The Pilgrim's Progress, In The Similitude Of A Dream AS I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a Dream.
Page 186 - YE who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow ; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
Page 186 - He shall be supported, said my uncle Toby; He'll drop at last, said the corporal, and what will become of his boy? He shall not drop, said my uncle Toby, firmly. A-well-o'-day, do what we can for him, said Trim, maintaining his point, the poor soul will die : He shall not die, by G — , cried my uncle Toby.
Page 135 - He reads much ; He is a great observer and he looks Quite through the deeds of men ; he loves no plays, As thou dost, Antony ; he hears no music ; Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Page 139 - He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century, protesting •' it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, or ambition, could produce.
Page 140 - I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin, that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.
Page 162 - Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment.
Page 187 - To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation.
Page 85 - I also have with soberness considered since, did so offend the Lord, that even in my childhood he did scare and affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful visions. For often, after i had spent this and the other day in sin, I have in my bed been greatly afflicted, while asleep, with the apprehensions of devils, and wicked spirits, who still, as I then thought, laboured to draw me away with them; of which I could never be rid.
Page 130 - Through the whole piece you may observe such a similitude of manners in high and low life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable vices) the fine gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the road, or the gentlemen of the road the fine gentlemen.- Had the Play remain'd, as I at first intended, it would have carried a most excellent moral.