The British Essayists: Spectator

Front Cover

From inside the book

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 256 - But shadows, clouds, and darkness, rest upon it. Here will I hold. If there's a power above us (And that there is, all Nature cries aloud Through all her works), he must delight in virtue ; And that which he delights in must be happy.
Page 256 - The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the war of elements, The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.
Page 71 - Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.
Page 114 - Who would not rather read one of his plays, where there is not a single rule of the stage observed, than any production of a modern critic, where there is not one of them violated...
Page 113 - ... there is more beauty in the works of a great genius, who is ignorant of all the rules of art, than in the works of a little genius, who not only knows but scrupulously observes them.
Page 269 - ... them. So that pure and unsullied thoughts are naturally suggested to the mind, by those objects that perpetually encompass us, when they are beautiful and elegant in their kind. In the east, where the warmth of the climate makes cleanliness more immediately necessary than in colder countries, it is made one part of their religion : the Jewish law, and the Mahometan, which in some things copies after it, is filled with bathings, purifications, and other rites of the like nature. Though there is...
Page 62 - I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell ; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell : God knoweth ;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
Page 278 - And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?
Page 112 - In the next place, our critics do not seem sensible that there is more beauty in the works of a great genius who is ignorant of the rules of art, than in those of a little genius who knows and observes them.
Page 16 - First, How disconsolate is the Condition of an intellectual Being who is thus present with his Maker, but, at the same time, receives no extraordinary Benefit or Advantage from this his Presence! ''Secondly, How deplorable is the Condition of an intellectual Being who feels no other Effects from this his Presence but such as proceed from Divine Wrath and Indignation!

Bibliographic information