Memoirs of Horace Walpole and His Contemporaries: Including Numerous Original Letters, Chiefly from Strawberry Hill, Volume 2

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Eliot Warburton
H. Colburn, 1851

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Page 141 - THE CURFEW tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds...
Page 212 - I waked, one morning, in the beginning of last June, from a dream, of which, all I could recover was, that I had thought myself in an ancient castle (a very natural dream for a head filled like mine with Gothic story), and that on the uppermost bannister of a great staircase I saw a gigantic hand in armour.
Page 149 - Wakes thee now ? though he inherit Nor the pride, nor ample pinion, That the Theban eagle bear, Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure deep of air : Yet oft before his infant eyes would run Such forms, as glitter in the Muse's ray With orient hues, unborrow'd of the sun : Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate ; Beneath the good how far— but far above the great ! ODE VL THE BARD.
Page 212 - I sat down and began to write, without knowing, in the least, what I intended to say, or relate. The work grew on my hands, and I grew fond of it.
Page 57 - ... clock that strikes tells me I am an hour nearer to yonder church — that church, into which I have not yet had courage to enter, where lies that mother on whom I doated, and who doated on me ! There are the two rival mistresses of Houghton, neither of whom ever wished to enjoy it! There too lies he who founded its greatness, to contribute to whose fall Europe was embroiled ; there he sleeps in quiet and dignity, while his friend and his foe, rather his false ally and real enemy, Newcastle and...
Page 161 - There is no character without some speck, some imperfection; and I think the greatest defect in his was an affectation in delicacy, or rather effeminacy, and a visible fastidiousness, or contempt and disdain of his inferiors in science.
Page 478 - I could send you volumes on the ghost, and I believe if I were to stay a little, I might send its life, dedicated to my lord Dartmouth, by the ordinary of Newgate, its two great patrons. A drunken parish clerk set it on foot out of revenge, the methodists have adopted it, and the whole town of London think of nothing else. Elizabeth Canning and the Rabbit-woman were modest impostors in comparison of this, which goes on without saving the least appearances. The archbishop, who would not suffer the...
Page 495 - THREE Poets, in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed; The next in majesty •, In both the last. The force of Nature could no further go ; To make a third, she joined the former two.
Page 471 - ... all this was very solemn. But the charm was the entrance of the abbey, where we were received by the dean and chapter in rich robes, the choir and almsmen bearing torches; the whole abbey so illuminated, that one saw it to greater advantage than by day; the tombs, long aisles, and fretted roof, all appearing distinctly, and with the happiest chiaro scuro.
Page 471 - There wanted nothing but incense, and little chapels here and there, with priests saying mass for the repose of the defunct; yet one could not complain of its not being Catholic enough.

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