The British Essayists: Spectator |
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Common terms and phrases
acquaint ADDISON admiration affectation agreeable appear audience beauty body character club consider conversation desire discourse dress English enter eyes face fall figure give greater half hand head hear heard heart honour hope humble humour Italian keep kind King lady learned less letter lion live looked manner MARCH means meet mention merit mind nature never night notice obliged observed occasion opera particular pass passion person piece play pleased poet present proper reader reason received reflections rules says scenes seen sense servant shew short society soon speak SPECTATOR stage taken talk tell thing thought tion told town tragedy turn understand virtue whole woman women writings young
Popular passages
Page 135 - When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.
Page 19 - I HAVE observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author.
Page 226 - Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me : the brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent any thing that tends to laughter*, more than I invent, or is invented on me : I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.
Page 132 - I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey ; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable.
Page 133 - ... and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass ; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of matter.
Page 48 - Lacedemonians, that honest people, more virtuous than polite, rose up all to a man, and with the greatest respect received him among them. The Athenians being suddenly touched with a sense of the Spartan virtue, and their own degeneracy, gave a thunder of applause ; and. the old man cried out, " The Athenians understand what is good, but the Lacedemonians practise it
Page 22 - Tree, and in the theatres both of Drury Lane and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the Exchange for above these ten years, and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock-jobbers at Jonathan's.
Page 29 - ... the gallant Will Honeycomb, a gentleman who, according to his years, should be in the decline of his life, but having ever been very careful of his person, and always had a very easy fortune, time has made but very little impression, either by wrinkles on his forehead, or traces in his brain.
Page 210 - What may this mean, That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon...
Page 100 - English; and the angry sounds that were turned to rage in the original, were made to express pity in the translation. It oftentimes happened, likewise, that the finest notes in the air fell upon the most insignificant words in the sentence. I have known the word "and" pursued through the whole gamut; have been entertained with many a melodious "the;" and have heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed upon "then," "for," and "from," to the eternal honour of our English particles.
Bibliographic information
| Title | The British Essayists: Spectator Volume 6 of The British Essayists: With Prefaces, Biographical, Historical and Critical, Lionel Thomas Berguer |
| Editor | Lionel Thomas Berguer |
| Publisher | T. and J. Allman, 1823 |
| Original from | Oxford University |
| Digitized | 13 Jun 2007 |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |