Hermes; Or, A Philosophical Inqviry Concerning Vniversal Grammar

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F. Wingrave, 1806 - Grammar, Comparative and general - 442 pages

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Page 124 - Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard Celestial voices, to the midnight air, Sole, or responsive...
Page 53 - Dire was the tossing, deep the groans : Despair Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch ; And over them triumphant Death his dart Shook, but delay'd to strike, though oft invoked With vows, as their chief good, and final hope.
Page 46 - First in his east the glorious lamp was seen, Regent of day, and all the horizon round Invested with bright rays, jocund to run His longitude through heaven's high road ; the gray Dawn and the Pleiades before him danced, Shedding sweet influence.
Page 425 - To be competently skilled in antient learning, is by no 'means a work of such insuperable pains. The very progress itself is attended with delight, and resembles a Journey through some pleasant Country, where every mile we advance, new charms arise. It is certainly as easy to be a Scholar, as a Gamester, or many other Characters equally illiberal and low. The same application, the same quantity of habit will fit us for one, as completely as for the other.
Page 422 - How exquisitely is this all performed -in Greek? Let those, who imagine it may be done as well in another Language, satisfy themselves, either by attempting to translate him, or by perusing his translations already made by men of learning.
Page v - He thinks nothing more absurd than the common notion of Instruction, as if Science were to be poured into the Mind, like water into a cistern, that passively waits to receive all that comes.
Page 421 - Mimnermus or Sappho ; for the rural lays of a Theocritus or Bion ; and for the sublime conceptions of a Sophocles or Homer. The same in prose. Here Isocrates was enabled to display his art, in all the accuracy of periods, and the nice counterpoise of diction. Here Demosthenes found materials for that nervous composition, that manly force of unaffected eloquence, which rushed, like a torrent, too impetuous to be withstood.
Page 392 - First comes that huge Body the sensible World. Then this and its Attributes beget sensible Ideas. Then out of sensible Ideas, by a kind of lopping and pruning, are made Ideas intelligible, whether specific or general. Thus should they admit that MIND was coeval with BODY, yet till BODY gave it Ideas, and awakened its dormant Powers," it could at best have been nothing more, than a sort of dead Capacity ; for INNATE IDEAS it could not possibly have any.
Page 267 - So as to Motion and Rest, only with this difference, that here the Preposition varies its character with the Verb. Thus if we say, that Lamp hangs FROM the Ceiling, the Preposition, FROM, assumes a Character of Quiescence. But if we say, that Lamp is falling FROM the Ceiling, the Preposition in such case assumes a Character of Motion.
Page 417 - ... From considering the Romans, let us pass to the Greeks. The Grecian commonwealths, while they maintained their liberty, were the most heroic confederacy that ever existed. They were the politest, the bravest, and the wisest of men. In the short space of little more than a century, they became such statesmen, warriors, orators, historians, physicians, poets, critics, painters, sculptors, architects, and, last of all, philosophers, that one can hardly help considering that golden period as a providential...

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