The London encyclopaedia, or, Universal dictionary of science, art, literature, and practical mechanics, by the orig. ed. of the Encyclopaedia metropolitana [T. Curtis]., Part 2, Volume 17

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Thomas Curtis (of Grove house sch, Islington)
 

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Page 570 - We accordingly believe that poetry, far from injuring society, is one of the great instruments of its refinement and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from depressing cares, and awakens the consciousness of its affinity with what is pure and noble.
Page 394 - Yon cottager, who weaves at her own door, Pillow and bobbins all her little store: Content though mean, and cheerful if not gay, Shuffling her threads about the livelong day, Just earns a scanty pittance, and at night Lies down secure, her heart and pocket light...
Page 479 - Every thing that heard him play, Even the billows of the sea, Hung their heads, and then lay by. In sweet music is such art, Killing care and grief of heart Fall asleep, or hearing die.
Page 570 - ... with what is pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts, it has the same tendency and aim with Christianity ; that is, to spiritualize our nature. True, poetry has been made the instrument of vice, the pander of bad passions ; but, when genius thus stoops, it dims its fires, and...
Page 488 - O God ! that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains ; that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts.
Page 571 - But, passing over this topic, we would observe, that the complaint against poetry as abounding in illusion and deception, is in the main groundless. In many poems there is more of truth than in many histories and philosophic theories. The fictions of genius are often the vehicles of the sublimest verities, and its flashes often open new regions of thought, and throw new light on the mysteries of our being.
Page 679 - As soon as it was light again, which was not till the third day after this melancholy accident, his body was found entire, and without any marks of violence upon it, exactly in the same posture as that in which he fell, and looking more like a man asleep than dead.
Page 495 - When we mean to build, We first survey the plot, then draw the model ; And when we see the figure of the house, Then must we rate the cost of the erection ; Which if we find outweighs ability, What do we then but draw anew the model In fewer offices, or at least desist To build at all...
Page 743 - Why delight In human sacrifice ? Why burst the ties Of nature, that should knit their souls together In one soft bond of amity and love...
Page 570 - The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact; One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman; the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt; The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

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