Characteristic Anecdotes of Men of Learning and Genius: Natives of Great Britain and Ireland, During the Last Three Centuries. Indicative of Their Manners, Opinions, Habits, and Peculiarities, Interspersed with Reflections, and Historical and Literary Illustrations

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J. Cundee, 1808 - 552 páginas
Includes accounts of Sir Thomas More, Sir Walter Raleigh, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Sir Issac Newton, Oliver Goldsmith, Samuel Johnson and many others.

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Página 546 - I had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that I could, and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
Página 547 - Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help...
Página 220 - I have a particular reason," says he, " to remember ; for whereas I had the perusal of it from the very beginning, for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time (which, being written by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction as to the orthography and pointing...
Página 546 - World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the publick, were written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished, is an honour, which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge. When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, I was overpowered, like the...
Página 83 - Richard, I do not give, but lend you my horse : be sure you be honest, and bring my horse back to me at your return this way to Oxford. And I do now give you ten groats, to bear your charges to Exeter ; and here is ten groats more, which I charge you to deliver to your Mother and tell her I send her a Bishop's benediction with it, and beg the continuance of her prayers for me. And if you bring my horse back to me, I will give you ten groats more, to carry you on foot to the College : and so God bless...
Página 547 - I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has enabled me to do for myself.
Página 365 - This was the case too of the prologuewriter,* who was clapped into a staunch whig, at almost every two lines. I believe you have heard, that, after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, between one of the acts, and presented him with fifty guineas ; in acknowledgment (as he expressed it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator.
Página 304 - 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.
Página 365 - Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours ; and though all the foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly in the world be applied to him on this occasion, * Envy itself is dumb, in wonder lost, And factions strive who shall applaud him most.
Página 106 - Thus he left the poor man: and at his coming to his musical friends at Salisbury, they began to wonder that Mr. George Herbert...

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