English Prose: Its Elements, History, and UsageSmith, Elder & Company, 1890 - 530 pages |
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English Prose: Its Elements, History, and Usage (Classic Reprint) John Earle No preview available - 2018 |
Common terms and phrases
Adjectives admiration Adverb andlang appear better Bible called Carlyle cause character classical clause composition cyng diction discourse distinction Dryden E. A. Freeman Edward Thring effect elements English language English prose Euphuism example exercise exhibit expression faculty Fifteenth century following quotation forto French German Grammar Greek habit hath haue idiom imitation John Bright Johnson king kynges learned less literary literature Lord manner matter Matthew Arnold Max Müller means ment mind modern native nature never noun novelty observe pæt paragraph perhaps Philology phrase poet poetic poetry Polybius preposition present preterite Pronoun quaintness quoted reader reason Reginald Pecock rule Saxon Genitive SAXON ROMANIC LATIN seems sense sentence Sermons Sir Ector sometimes speak speech style Subjunctive Mood tence term things thought tion tongue translation true tyme usage verb vocabulary whole words writing
Popular passages
Page 189 - It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in— glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy.
Page 354 - I was confirmed in this opinion, that he, who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem, that is a composition and pattern of the best and honourablest things, not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy.
Page 474 - At all the watery margins they have been present, not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp they have been and made their tracks. Thanks to all. For the great Republic — for the principle it lives by and keeps alive — for man's vast future — thanks to all.
Page 252 - Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent than itself.
Page 517 - Metaphors are her stuff : examine Language; what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Metaphors, recognised as such, or no longer recognised...
Page 354 - Next (for hear me out now, readers), that I may tell ye whither my younger feet wandered ; I betook me among those lofty fables and romances, which recount in solemn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded by our victorious kings, and from hence had in renown over all Christendom.
Page 444 - ... on hard to that high and happy emulation to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people...
Page 340 - Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion to a known story, or in seasonable application of a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale ; sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking advantage from the ambiguity of their sense, or the affinity of their sound ; sometimes it is wrapped in a dress of...
Page 458 - ... been improved in the foregoing hundred: And this is what I design chiefly to enlarge upon, leaving the former evils to your animadversion. " But instead of giving you a list of the late refinements crept into our language, I here send you...
Page 344 - Criticism, either didactic or defensive, occupies almost all his prose, except those pages which he has devoted to his patrons ; but none of his prefaces were ever thought tedious. They have not the formality of a settled style, in which the first half of the sentence betrays the other.