An Essay on Comedy: And the Uses of the Comic Spirit

Front Cover
C. Scribner's Sons, 1918 - Comedy - 324 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 248 - Why, so can I ; or so can any man : But will they come, when you do call for them ? Glend.
Page 280 - Who in their nightly watchful spheres Lead in swift round the months and years. The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, Now to the moon in wavering morrice move; And on the tawny sands and shelves Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.
Page 210 - ... the more he will engage his attention, and the more he will charm him. As a genius of the highest rank observes in his fifth chapter of the Bathos, " The great art of all poetry is to mix truth with fiction, in order to join the credible with the surprising.
Page 215 - I have fostered, thou bosom traitress that I raised from nothing! Begone, begone, begone, go, go; that I took from washing of old gauze and weaving of dead hair, with a bleak blue nose, over a chafing-dish of starved embers, and dining behind a traver's rag, in a shop no bigger than a bird-cage.
Page 280 - In regions mild of calm and serene air, Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call Earth, and, with low-thoughted care.
Page 142 - Men's future upon earth does not attract s it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present does; and whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them selfdeceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning short-sightedly, plotting dementedly...
Page 192 - And for a discerning man, somewhat too passionate a lover; for I like her with all her faults, nay, like her for her faults. Her follies are so natural, or so artful, that they become her, and those affectations which in another woman would be odious serve but to make her more agreeable.
Page 281 - OBSCUREST night involved the sky, The Atlantic billows roared, When such a destined wretch as I, Washed headlong from on board, Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, His floating home for ever left. No braver chief could Albion boast Than he with whom he went, Nor ever ship left Albion's coast With warmer wishes sent. He loved them both, but both in vain, Nor him beheld, nor her again. Not long beneath the whelming brine, Expert to swim, he lay ; Nor soon he felt his strength decline...
Page 171 - ... general use among the members or open to the public, of public museums and galleries of...
Page 181 - D'Urfey, with a view to recommend him to the public notice for a benefitplay, tells us, that he remembered king Charles II. leaning on Tom D'Urfey's shoulder more than once, and humming over a song with him.

Bibliographic information