Annual Register, Volume 33

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Edmund Burke
1824

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Page 401 - I have been lately informed by the proprietor of ' The World,' that two papers, in which my ' Dictionary ' is recommended to the public, were written by your lordship. To be so distinguished, is an honour, which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, I know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge. " When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address, and could not...
Page 404 - Johnson having now explicitly avowed his opinion of Lord Chesterfield, did not refrain from expressing himself concerning that nobleman with pointed freedom : ' This man (said he) I thought had been a Lord among wits ; but, I find, he is only a wit among Lords !' And when his Letters to his natural son were published, he observed, that ' they teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.
Page 402 - I had done all that I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. Seven years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms or was repulsed from your door...
Page 411 - Why, Sir, you \ find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. \ No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life ; for there is in London all that life can afford.
Page 435 - Here was exemplified what Goldsmith said of him, with the aid of a very witty image from one of Gibber's Comedies: "There is no arguing with Johnson: for if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.
Page 427 - We can do nothing without the blue stockings ; ' and thus by degrees the title was established.
Page 407 - When asked by another friend, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, whether he made any reply to this high compliment, he answered " No, sir. When the king had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my sovereign.
Page 415 - Johnson said, he thought he had already done his part as a writer. " I should have thought so too (said the king), if you had not written so well.
Page 440 - Lordship's offer raises in me not less wonder than gratitude. Bounty so liberally bestowed, I should gladly receive if my condition made it necessary ; for to such a mind, who would not be proud to own his obligations ? But it has pleased God to restore me to so great a measure of health, that if I should now appropriate so much of a fortune destined to do good, I could not escape from myself the charge of advancing a false claim. My journey to the Continent...
Page 394 - Indeed I cannot conceive a more perfect mode of writing any man's life, than not only relating all the most important events of it in their order, but interweaving what he privately wrote, and said, and thought ; by which mankind are enabled as it were to see him live, and to " live o'er each scene" with him, as he actually advanced through the several stages of his life.

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