The British Essayists: WorldJames Ferguson J. Richardson and Company, 1823 - English essays |
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Common terms and phrases
acquaintance Æneid agreeable ancient appear assure bad company beauty Belphegor Berkshire called character Cicero Clarinda confess consequence consider correspondent cuckold desire dress drink endeavour entertainment Epaminondas eyes fashion father favour Fitz-Adam folly fortune frequently garden gentleman give happy heart highwaymen honour hope humble servant husband Iliad imagine improve instance kind lady language late least letter Libertine lived lord Louis the Fourteenth mankind manner marriage means ment mind modern moral nature neighbours neral never obliged observed occasion opinion OVID panegyric paper Paradise Lost particular passion perhaps person Plato pleased pleasure polite portunity present readers reason received ridicule romantic love seems spirit stept sure talked taste thing Thomas Scot thought THURSDAY tion town truth turn virtue whole wife wine woman women words writing young
Popular passages
Page 285 - ... and better breakfasted than he whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop trading all day without his religion.
Page 183 - I give my vote for Mr. Johnson, to fill that great and arduous post, and I hereby declare, that I make a total surrender of all my rights and privileges in the English language, as a free-born British subject, to the said Mr. Johnson, during the term of his dictatorship.
Page 217 - Much of the Soul they talk, but all awry, And in themselves seek virtue, and to themselves All glory arrogate, to God give none, Rather accuse him under usual names, Fortune and Fate, as one regardless quite Of mortal things.
Page 183 - It must be owned, that our language is, at present, in a state of anarchy, and hitherto, perhaps, it may not have been the worse for it. During our free and open trade, many words and expressions have been imported, adopted, and naturalized from other languages, which have greatly enriched our own. Let it still preserve what...
Page 184 - ... Johnson to fill that great and arduous post. And I hereby declare, that I make a total surrender of all my rights and privileges in the English language, as a free-born British subject, to the said Mr. Johnson, during the term of his dictatorship. Nay, more ; I will not only obey him like an old Roman, as my dictator, but, like a modern Roman, I will implicitly believe in him as my Pope, and hold him to be infallible while in the chair, but no longer. More than this he cannot well require ; for,...
Page 191 - I seriously advise him to publish, by way of appendix to his great work, a genteel Neological dictionary, containing those polite, though perhaps not strictly grammatical, words and phrases, commonly used, and sometimes understood, by the beau monde.
Page 173 - The handcuffs and fetters in which the hero commonly appears at the end of the second, or the beginning of the third...
Page 285 - What does he therefore, but resolves to give over toiling, and to find himself out some factor, to whose care and credit he may commit the whole managing of his religious affairs; some divine of note and estimation that must be.
Page 320 - You therefore never hear her repeating her own grievances, or those of her neighbours ; or, (what is worst of all) their faults and imperfections. If any thing of the latter kind be mentioned in her hearing, she has the address to turn it into entertainment, by changing the most odious railing into a pleasant raillery. Thus Melissa, like the bee, gathers honey from every weed ; while Arachne, like the spider, sucks poison from the fairest flowers.
Page 110 - Roger's; it is usual in all other places, that servants fly from the parts of the house through which their master is passing; on the contrary, here they industriously place themselves in his way; and it is on both sides, as it were, understood as a visit, when the servants appear without calling.