The Rambler, Volume 4

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W. Suttaby, 1809

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Page 42 - The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry 'Hold, hold!
Page 242 - When common words were less pleasing to the ear, or less distinct in their signification, I have familiarized the 'terms of philosophy, by applying them to popular ideas.
Page 2 - We are by our occupations, education, and habits of life, divided almost into different species, which regard one another for the most part with scorn and malignity.
Page 41 - IT has been observed by Boileau, ' that a mean or common thought expressed in pompous diction, generally pleases more than a new or noble sentiment delivered in low and vulgar language; because the number is greater of those whom custom has enabled to judge of words, than whom study has qualified to examine things.
Page 25 - It is particularly the duty of those who consign illustrious names to posterity, to take care lest their readers be misled by ambiguous examples. That writer may be justly condemned as an enemy to goodness, who suffers fondness or interest to confound right with wrong, or to shelter the faults which even the wisest and the best have committed from that ignominy which guilt ought always to suffer, and VOL.
Page 75 - The depravity of mankind is so easily discoverable, that nothing but the desert or the cell can exclude it from notice. The knowledge of crimes intrudes uncalled and undesired. They whom their abstraction from common occurrences hinders from seeing iniquity, will quickly have their attention awakened by feeling it. Even he who ventures not • into the world, may learn its corruption in his closet.
Page 42 - We are all offended by low terms, but are not disgusted alike by the same compositions, because we do not all agree to censure the same terms as low. No word is naturally or intrinsically meaner than another ; our opinion therefore of words, as of other things arbitrarily and capriciously established, depends wholly upon accident and custom.
Page 125 - Since then the imaginary right of vengeance must be at last remitted, because it is impossible to live in perpetual hostility, and equally impossible, that of two enemies, either should first think himself obliged by justice to submission, it is surely eligible to forgive early. Every passion is more easily...
Page 44 - ... of infernal darkness, escape the eye of Providence. This is the utmost extravagance of determined wickedness ; yet this is so debased by two unfortunate words, that while I endeavour to impress on my reader the energy of the sentiment, I can scarce check my risibility, when the expression forces itself upon my mind ; for, who without some relaxation of his gravity, can hear of the avengers of guilt peeping through a blanket...
Page 86 - Cantilenus turned all his thoughts upon old ballads, for he considered them as the genuine records of the national taste. He offered to show me a copy of " The Children in the Wood," which he firmly believed to be of the first edition, and, by the help of which the text might be freed from several corruptions, if this age of barbarity had any claim to such favours from him.

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