English Literature: With an Appendix on American Literature

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D. Appleton and Company, 1880
 

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Page 124 - It was said of Socrates, that he brought Philosophy down from Heaven to inhabit among Men ; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought Philosophy out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-tables, and in Coffee-houses.
Page 5 - we mean the written thoughts and feelings of intelligent men and women arranged in a way that shall give pleasure to the reader.
Page 125 - Johnson, though, indeed, upon a smaller scale. At this time I think he had published nothing with his name, though it was pretty generally known that one Dr. Goldsmith was the author of An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, and of The Citizen of the World, a series of letters supposed to be written from London by a Chinese.
Page 104 - I may one day hope to have ye in a still time, when there shall be no chiding ; not in these noises...
Page 15 - I spent my whole life in the same monastery," he says, "and while attentive to the rule of my order and the service of the Church, my constant pleasure lay in learning, or teaching, or writing.
Page 39 - I see Baucis and Philemon as perfectly before me as if some ancient painter had drawn them; and all the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales, their humours, their features, and the very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped with them at the Tabard in Southwark.
Page 76 - Heroical Epistles, 1598. Not content with these, he set himself to glorify the whole of his land in the Polyolbion, thirty books, and more than 30,000 lines. It is a description in Alexandrines of the "tracts, mountains, forests, and other parts of this renowned isle of Britain, with intermixture of the most remarkable stories, antiquities, wonders, pleasures, and commodities of the same, digested into a poem.
Page 7 - Every English man and woman has good reason to be proud of the work done by their forefathers in prose and poetry. Every one who can write a good book or a good song may say to himself:' I belong to a great company which has been teaching and delighting men for more than a thousand years.

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