An Account of the Life and Writings of James Beattie: Including Many of His Original Letters, Volumen2

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Archibald Constable and Company, 1807
 

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Página 199 - My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone...
Página 199 - Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, The rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; The time of the singing of birds is come, And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell, Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
Página 314 - Montagu should smile, New strains ere long shall animate thy frame. And her applause to me is more than fame ; For still with truth accords her taste refined. At lucre or renown let others aim, I only wish to please the gentle mind, Whom Nature's charms inspire, and love of human kind.
Página 320 - Beattie, — the most agreeable and amiable writer I * Hayley's « Life of Cowper,| Vol. III. p. 247. ever met with ; the only author I have seen, whose critical and philosophical researches are diversified and embellished by a poetical imagination, that makes even the driest subject and the leanest, a feast for an epicure in books.
Página 188 - I have had several conversations with him on the subject of the voyage, and once asked him, whether he had ever read the history of it ? He told me, he had read all the history, except the description of their sufferings during the run from...
Página 164 - We are slaves to the language we write, and are continually afraid of committing gross blunders ; and, when an easy, familiar, idiomatical phrase occurs, dare not adopt it, if we recollect no authority, for fear of Scotticisms. In a word, we handle English, as a person who cannot fence handles a sword...
Página 179 - When I first read Young, my heart was broken to think of the poor man's afflictions. Afterwards, I took it in my head, that where there was so much lamentation, there could not be excessive suffering ; and I could not help applying to him sometimes those lines of a song, " Believe me, the shepherd but feigns ; " He's wretched, to show he has wit." On talking with some of Dr Young's particular friends in England, I have since found that my conjecture was right; for that, while he was composing the...
Página 163 - We who live in Scotland are obliged to study English from books, like a dead language. Accordingly, when we write, we write it like a dead language, which we understand, but cannot speak...
Página 371 - Boswell's book is arrived at last, and I have just gone through it. He is very good to me, as Dr Johnson always was; and I am very grateful to both. But I cannot approve the plan of such a work. To publish a man's letters, or his conversation, without his consent, is not, in my opinion, quite fair : for how many things, in the hour of relaxation, or in friendly correspondence, does a man throw out, which he would never wish to hear of again ; and what a restraint would it be on all social intercourse,...
Página 10 - ... day ; and the exhilarating song of " the lyric lark" in the mornings of summer used to fill him with delight. In 1755, his loneliness was cheered by the arrival of his brother David, who came to settle himself at the village of Fordoun. The celebrated and eccentric Francis Garden, Esq. (afterwards one of the judges of the supreme courts of civil and criminal law in Scotland, by the title of Lord Gardenstone,) who was then sheriff of the county of Kincardine, and occasionally resided in the neighbourhood...

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