Essays, Biographical, Critical, and Historical: Illustrative of the Rambler, Adventurer, & Idler, and of the Various Periodical Papers Which, in Imitation of the Writings of Steele and Addison, Have Been Published Between the Close of the Eighth Volume of the Spectator, and the Commencement of the Year 1809, Volume 2

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J. Seeley, 1810 - Adventurer - 499 pages

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Page 230 - Here Reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind, He has not left a wiser or better behind : His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand : His manners were gentle, complying, and bland ; Still born to improve us in every part, His pencil our faces, his manners our heart : To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, When they judged without skill he was still hard of hearing.
Page 32 - ... at the reflection : but let not this be read as something that relates only to another ; for a few years only can divide the eye that is now reading from the hand that has written.
Page 427 - Wales : together with their provisional allowance during confinement ; as reported to the society for the discharge and relief of small debtors, in April, May, June, &c., 18oo. 4to., 18oo. An account of the rise, progress and present state of the society for the discharge and relief of persons imprisoned for small debts throughout England and Wales.
Page 470 - Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow.
Page 281 - I sat down, and began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate. The work grew on my hands, and I grew fond of it— add, that I was very glad to think of anything, rather than politics.
Page 280 - I waked one morning in the beginning of last June from a dream, of which all I could recover was, that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head filled like mine with Gothic story) and that on the uppermost bannister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour. In the evening I sat down and began to write, without knowing in the least what I intended to say or relate.
Page 178 - And fretted shrines, with hoary trophies hung, Her dark illumination wide she flung, With new solemnity, the nooks profound, The caves of death, and the dim arches frown'd.
Page 119 - A thousand widows' shrieks I hear. Give me another horse, I cry, Lo ! the base Gallic squadrons fly. Whence is this rage ? what spirit, say, To battle hurries me away? Tis Fancy, in her fiery car, Transports me to the thickest war, There whirls me o'er...
Page 300 - Annals of Scotland' have not that painted form which is the taste of this age ; but it is a book which will always sell, it has such a stability of dates, such a certainty of facts, and such a punctuality of citation. I never before read Scotch history with certainty.
Page 103 - A physician in a great city seems to be the mere play-thing of fortune ; his degree of reputation is, for the most part, totally casual : they that employ him know not his excellence ; they that reject him know not his deficience. By any acute observer, who had looked on the transactions of the medical world for half a century, a very curious book might be written on the " Fortune of

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