Essays of John Dryden, Volym 2

Framsida
Clarendon Press, 1926

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Sida 272 - I shall say the less of Mr Collier, because in many things he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph ; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance.
Sida 280 - Then said he, Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee ? and now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia : and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come. But I will shew thee that which is noted in the scripture of truth : and there is none that holdeth with me in these things, but Michael your prince.
Sida 258 - They who lived with him, and some time after him, thought it musical; and it continues so even in our judgment, if compared with the numbers of Lidgate and Gower, his contemporaries: there is the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect.
Sida 247 - Milton was the poetical son of Spenser, and Mr Waller of Fairfax ; for we have our lineal descents and clans as well as other families. Spenser more than once insinuates that the soul of Chaucer was transfused into his body, and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease.
Sida 272 - House has eaten him up ; but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners and civility.
Sida 258 - For this reason, though he must always be thought a great poet, he is no longer esteemed a good writer; and for ten impressions, which his works have had in so many successive years, yet at present a hundred books are scarcely purchased once a twelvemonth; for, as my last Lord Rochester said, though somewhat profanely, Not being of God, he could not stand.
Sida 258 - Chaucer followed Nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her; and there is a great difference of being poeta and nimis poeta, if we may believe Catullus, as much as betwixt a modest behaviour and affectation. The verse of Chaucer, I confess, is not harmonious to us; but...
Sida 255 - Tales, their humours, their features, and the very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped with them at the Tabard in Southwark.
Sida 267 - ... by the innovation of words; in the first place, not only their beauty but their being is lost where they are no longer understood, which is the present case. I grant that something must be lost in all transfusion, that is, in all translations; but the sense will remain, which would otherwise be lost, or at least be maimed, when it is scarce intelligible; and that but to a few.
Sida 93 - ... there is still a vast difference betwixt the slovenly butchering of a man, and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place. A man may be capable, as Jack Ketch's wife said of his servant, of a plain piece of work, a bare hanging; but to make a malefactor die sweetly was only belonging to her husband.

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