The Edinburgh Review: Or Critical Journal, Volume 31

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A. Constable, 1819
 

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Page 146 - The parent storms; the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions ; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.
Page 477 - Anon they move In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood Of flutes and soft recorders...
Page 333 - THEY stand between the mountains and the sea ; *" Awful memorials, but of whom we know not ! The seaman, passing, gazes from the deck. The buffalo-driver, in his shaggy cloak, Points to the work of magic and moves on. Time was they stood along the crowded street, Temples of gods ! and on their ample steps What various habits, various tongues, beset The brazen gates for prayer and sacrifice...
Page 491 - As an individual, he was retired and weaned from the vanities of the world ; and, as an original writer, he left the ambitious and luxuriant subjects of fiction and passion, for those of real life and simple nature, and for the development of his own earnest feelings, in behalf of moral and religious truth. His language has such a masculine idiomatic strength, and his manner, whether he rises into grace or falls into negligence, has so much plain and familiar freedom, that we read no poetry with...
Page 326 - Mid many a tale told of his boyish days, The nurse shall cry, of all her ills beguiled, " 'Twas on these knees he sat so oft and smiled.
Page 326 - As with soft accents round her neck he clings, And cheek to cheek, her lulling song she sings, How blest to feel the beatings of his heart, Breathe his sweet breath, and kiss for kiss impart ; Watch o'er his slumbers like the brooding dove, And, if she can, exhaust a mother's love ! But soon a nobler task demands her care.
Page 148 - What is freedom, where all are not free ? where the greatest of God's blessings is limited, with impious caprice, to the colour of the body ? And these are the men who taunt the English with their corrupt Parliament, with their buying and selling votes. Let the world judge which is the most liable to censure — we who, in the midst of our rottenness, have torn off the manacles of slaves all over the world ; — or they who, with their idle purity, and useless perfection, have remained mute and careless,...
Page 474 - ... that no additional cantos could have rendered it less perplexed. But still there is a richness in his materials, even where their coherence is loose, and their disposition confused. The clouds of his allegory may seem to spread into shapeless forms, but they are still the clouds of a glowing atmosphere. Though his story grows desultory, the sweetness and grace of his manner still abide by him.
Page 84 - I agree with you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray ; he is the worst company in the world. From a melancholy turn, from living reclusely, and from a little too much dignity, he never converses easily. All his words are measured and chosen, and formed into sentences. His writings are admirable. He himself is not agreeable.
Page 470 - The thought, we own, is a little appalling ; and, we confess, we see nothing better to imagine than that they may find a comfortable place in some new collection of specimens — the centenary of the present publication.

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