Amenities of Literature: Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature, Volume 1

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Page 43 - So stretch'd out huge in length the arch-fiend lay, Chain'd on the burning lake : nor ever thence Had risen, or heaved his head ; but that the will And high permission of all-ruling Heaven Left him at large to his own dark designs...
Page 42 - Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, Confounded though immortal: but his doom Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him : round he throws his baleful eyes...
Page 42 - And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.
Page 1 - But his learned and able (though unfortunate) successor, is he who hath filled up all numbers, and performed that in our tongue, which may be compared or preferred either to insolent Greece, or haughty Rome.
Page 44 - In billows, leave i' the midst a horrid vale. Then with expanded wings he steers his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air That felt unusual weight, till on dry land He lights, if it were land that ever...
Page 45 - ... the Hebrew (and I think the Syriac), the Greek, the Latin, the Italian, Spanish, and French. All which sorts of books to be confined to read, without understanding one word, must needs be a trial of patience almost beyond endurance.
Page 205 - It is a very striking circumstance, that the high-minded inventors of this great art tried at the very outset so bold a flight as the printing an entire Bible, and executed it with astonishing success.
Page 313 - Since in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt As well as I, may spend his time in vain : And graven with diamonds in letters plain, There is written her fair neck round about : " Noli me tangere ; for Caesar's I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
Page 257 - ... that William of Malmesbury tells us that " he learned more than from books written expressly for the information of posterity," though he will not answer for their precise truth. They had also political ballads. A memorable one, free as a lampoon, made by one of the adherents of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, in the fugitive day of his victory in 1264, occasioned a statute against " slanderous reports or tales to cause discord betwixt king and people...
Page 124 - The emancipation of the national language was subsequently confirmed by another monarch. A curious anecdote in our literary history has recently been disclosed of Henry V. To encourage the use of the vernacular tongue, this monarch, in a letter missive to one of the city companies, declared that '' the English tongue hath in modern days begun to be honourably enlarged and adorned, and for the better understanding of thepeople the common idiom should be exercised in writing:" this was at once setting...

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