Lexiphanes: A Dialogue : Imitated from Lucian, and Suited to the Present Times : Being an Attempt to Restore the English Tongue to Its Antient Purity : and to Correct as Well as Expose the Affected Style, Hard Words, and Absurd Phraseology of Many Late Writers, and Particularly of Our English Lexiphanes, the Rambler

Front Cover
R. Faulder ... and J. Fielding, 1783 - English language - 185 pages

From inside the book

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 167 - A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.
Page 12 - Another cause of the gaiety and sprightliness of the dwellers in garrets is probably the increase of that vertiginous motion, with which we are carried round by the diurnal revolution of the earth. The power of agitation upon the spirits is well known; every man has felt his heart lightened in a rapid vehicle, or on a galloping horse ; and nothing is plainer, than that he who towers to the fifth story, is whirled through more space by every circumrotation, than another that grovels upon the ground-floor.
Page 74 - Elfe wherefore burns In mortal bofoms this unquenched hope, That breathes from day to day fublimer things, And mocks pofleffion ? wherefore darts the mind, With fuch refiftlefs ardour to embrace 1 70 Majeftic forms ; impatient to be free, Spurning the grofs control of wilful might ; Proud of the ftrong contention of her toils ; Proud to be daring...
Page 68 - Breaks the reluftant fhades of Gothic night Which yet involve the nations ! Long they groan'd Beneath the furies of rapacious force ; Oft...
Page 72 - But still the rage Of dire Ambition and gigantic Power, From public aims and from the busy walk Of civil Commerce, drove the bolder train Of penetrating Science to the cells, Where studious Ease consumes the silent hour In shadowy searches and unfruitful care. Thus from their guardians torn, the tender arts Of mimic Fancy and harmonious Joy...
Page 54 - Making it hideous ; and us FOOLS of NATURE So horribly to {hake our difpofitions With. thoughts beyond the reaches of our fouls, Wherefore, what may this mean ? " Whilft thus ejaculating, Hypertatus with that magnanimity of fentiment, that undauntednefs of refolution, and that intrepidity of courage, derived from his habitation in the elevated regions of a garret, approached the place where the apparition feemed to lie, fixed in torpid immobility. But at his approximation it...
Page 104 - I have laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms, and irregular combinations. Something, perhaps, I have added to the elegance of its construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence.
Page 24 - Megaera, and Tysiphone — May all these, and all such ladies, whether sick or sound, high or low, of blood and title, or ditch and dunghill; natives, foreign, or infernal — May this glorious group of Torrismond's angels, these gorgons, furies, harpies, leaches, syrens, centaurmaking syrens! paid, or unpaid, keeping or kept, on fire or quenched; genevaed or citroned, in closet or cellar, in tavern, bagnio, brothel, round-house, bridewell, or newgate — Oh! may they cease from this hour, to sing...
Page 56 - It is not to be conceived, what length a habit of activity in affairs will carry fome men. Let a ftranger, or let any perfon to whom the fight is not familiar, attend the chancellor of Great Britain through the labours but of one day, during a feflion of parliament : how great will be his aftonifhment ! what multiplicity of law-bufinefs, what deep thinking, and what elaborate application to matters of government ! The train of perceptions muft in...
Page 73 - Through life and death to dart his piercing eye, With thoughts beyond the limit of his frame ; But that th' Omnipotent might send him forth In sight of mortal and immortal powers, As on a boundless theatre, to run The great career of justice ; to exalt His...

Bibliographic information