The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Volume 2

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J. Murray, 1830 - Architects

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Page 143 - What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
Page 142 - TIGER! Tiger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?
Page 148 - Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me — Pipe a song about a lamb; So I piped with merry cheer. Piper, pipe that song again — So I piped — he wept to hear.
Page 269 - His composition always hastens to the most necessary point as its centre, and from that disseminates — to that leads back as rays all secondary ones. Group, form, and contrast are subordinate to the event, and commonplace is ever excluded. The line of Raphael has been excelled in correctness, elegance, and energy; his colour far surpassed in tone, in truth, and harmony ; his masses, in roundness, and his chiaro-scuro in effect ; but, considered as instruments of pathos, they have never been equalled...
Page 206 - ... with all the modes of life. His character requires that he estimate the happiness and misery of every condition, observe the power of all the passions in all their combinations, and trace the changes of the human mind as they are modified by various institutions and accidental influences of climate or custom, from the sprightliness of infancy to the despondence of decrepitude.
Page 142 - TO THE MUSES. WHETHER on Ida's shady brow Or in the chambers of the East, The chambers of the Sun, that now From ancient melody have ceased; Whether in heaven ye wander fair Or the green corners of the earth, Or the blue regions of the air, Where the melodious winds have birth...
Page 143 - Commission'd to this fatal field of Cressy. Methinks I see them arm my gallant soldiers, And gird the sword upon each thigh, and fit Each shining helm, and string each stubborn bow, And dance to the neighing of our steeds.
Page 163 - Of Chaucer's characters, as described in his Canterbury Tales, some of the names or titles are altered by time, but the characters themselves for ever remain unaltered ; and consequently they are the physiognomies or lineaments of universal human life, beyond which Nature never steps. Names alter, things never alter. I have known multitudes of those who would have been monks in the age of monkery, who in this deistical age are deists. As Newton numbered the stars, and as Linnaeus numbered the plants,...
Page 115 - ... indeed right Poets, of whom chiefly this question ariseth ; betwixt whom, and these second is such a kinde of difference, as betwixt the meaner sort of Painters, (who...
Page 155 - Here he forgot the present moment and lived in the past; he conceived, verily, that he had lived in other days, and had formed friendships with Homer and Moses; with Pindar and Virgil; with Dante and Milton. These great men, he asserted, appeared to him in visions, and even entered into conversation. Milton, in a moment of confidence, entrusted him with a whole poem of his, which the world had never seen; but unfortunately the communication was oral, and the poetry seemed to have lost much of its...

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