The Life of Richard Cumberland, Esq: Embracing a Critical Examination of His Various Writings. With an Occasional Literary Inquiry Into the Age in which He Lived, and the Contemporaries with Whom He Flourished

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Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1812 - 621 pages

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Page 24 - Why has not Man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n? Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, To smart and agonize at ev'ry pore? Or quick effluvia darting thro' the brain, Die of a rose in aromatic pain?
Page 326 - The chariest maid is prodigal enough, If she unmask her beauty to the moon : Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes : The canker galls the infants of the spring Too oft before their buttons be disclosed, And in the morn and liquid dew of youth Contagious blastments are most imminent.
Page 270 - Here Cumberland lies, having acted his parts, The Terence of England, the mender of hearts; A flattering painter, who made it his care To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.
Page 263 - THE Life of Dr. PARNELL is a task which I should very willingly decline, since it has been lately written by Goldsmith, a man of such variety of powers, and such felicity of performance, that he always seemed to do best that which he was doing ; a man who had the art of being minute without tediousness, and general without confusion ; whose language was copious without exuberance, exact without constraint, and easy without weakness.
Page 271 - Like a tragedy queen he has dizen'd her out, Or rather like tragedy giving a rout. His fools have their follies so lost in a crowd Of virtues and feelings, that folly grows proud; And coxcombs, alike in their failings alone, Adopting his portraits, are pleased with their own.
Page 600 - Testator as and for his last Will and Testament in the Presence of us who in his presence and at his request and in the presence of each other have subscribed our names as Witnesses thereto.
Page 327 - Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off ; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind.
Page 265 - It was upon a proposal started by Edmund Burke, that a party of friends, who had dined together at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and my house, should meet at the St. James's Coffee-House, which accordingly took place, and was occasionally repeated with much festivity and good fellowship. Dr.
Page 329 - Hermit hoar, in solemn cell, Wearing out life's evening gray; Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell, What is bliss? and which the way?" BOSWELL: "But why smite his bosom, Sir?" JOHNSON: "Why, to shew he was in earnest
Page 304 - For the saying which he cried by the word of the LORD against the altar in Beth-el, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the cities of Samaria, shall surely come to pass.

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