Mrs. Piozzi and Isaac Watts

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Grafton, 1734 - 48 pages

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Page 10 - He was one of the first authors that taught the dissenters to court attention by the graces of language. Whatever they had among them before, whether of learning or acuteness, was commonly obscured and blunted by coarseness and inelegance of style. He shewed them, that zeal and purity might be expressed and enforced by polished diction.
Page 33 - ... it shines as freely as they do, and receives and gives assistance to all of them, and joins to add glory to that illustrious place.
Page 15 - Mr. Thrale's sobriety, and the decency of his conversation, being wholly free from all oaths, ribaldry and profaneness, make him a man exceedingly comfortable to live with ; while the easiness of his temper and slowness to take offence add greatly to his value as a domestic man. Yet I think his servants do not much love him, and I am not sure that his children have much affection for him ; low people almost all indeed agree to...
Page 11 - A coalition like this, a state in which the notions of patronage and dependence were overpowered by the perception of reciprocal benefits, deserves a particular memorial ; and I will not withhold from the reader Dr.
Page 33 - Suppose a torch enclosed in a cell of earth, in the midst of ten thousand thousand torches that shine at large in a spacious amphitheatre. While it is enclosed, its beams strike only on the walls of its own cell, and it has no communion with those without. But let this cell fall down at once, and the torch that...
Page 10 - He was, as he hints in his Miscellanies, a maker of verses from fifteen to fifty, and in his youth he appears to have paid attention to Latin poetry. His verses to his brother, in the glyconic measure, written when he was seventeen, are remarkably easy and elegant.
Page 39 - God, and feels the restraint of His laws, that it may not be an eternal wanderer. But I call my thoughts to retire from these extravagant rovings beyond the limits of creation. What do these amusements teach us but the inconceivable grandeur, extent, and magnificence of the works and the power of God, the astonishing contrivances of His wisdom, and the poverty, the weakness, and narrowness of our own understandings, all which are lessons well becoming a creature...
Page 26 - O God our Maker, and teach us what thou art, that we may adore thee better ; nor fuffer us to wander in this thick Milt, wherein we can fcarce diftinguiih thee from that which has no Being.
Page 45 - Though printed in London, the " Anecdotes " had been written in Italy. It was at Venice that she learnt by a letter from Cadell, her publisher, that he never brought out a work the sale of which was so rapid, and that rapidity of so long continuance.2 With very pardonable exultation she says, " I suppose the fifth edition will meet me at my return.
Page 21 - We here but coasters, not discoverers, are. Faith's necessary rules are plain and few ; We many, and those needless, rules pursue : Faith from our hearts into our heads we drive, And make religion all contemplative. You on heaven's will may witty glosses feign ; But that which I must practise here is plain: If the All-great decree her life to spare, He will the means, without my crime, prepare.

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