'Let a man write never so well, there are now-a-days a sort of persons they call critics, that, egad, have no more wit in them than so many hobby-horses: but they'll laugh at you, Sir, and find fault, and censure things, that, ...
At the dark and melancholy period when Don Roderick the Goth and his chivalry were overthrown on the banks of the Guadalete, and all Spain was overrun by the Moors, great was the devastation of churches and convents throughout ...
It is the common lamentation of Spanish historiographers, that, for an obscure and melancholy space of time immediately succeeding the conquest of their country by the Moslems, its history is a mere wilderness of dubious facts,...
On the summit of a craggy hill, a spur of the mountains of Ronda, stands the castle of Allora, now a mere ruin, infested by bats and owlets, but in old times one of the strong border holds of the Christians, to keep watch upon ...
In the early part of the fifteenth century, when Prince Henry of Portugal, of worthy memory, was pushing the career of discovery along the western coast of Africa, and the world was resounding with reports of golden regions on ...
This day Dame Nature seem'd in love, The lusty sap began to move, Fresh juice did stir th' embracing vines, And birds had drawn their valentines. The jealous trout that low did lie,...
If that severe doom of Synesius be true, 'It is a greater offence to steal dead men's labor, than their clothes,' what shall become of most writers? - BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY.
'Who did not think, till within these foure yeares, but that these islands had been rather a habitation for Divells, than fit for men to dwell in? Who did not hate the name, when hee was on land, and shun the place when he was ...
'A tavern is the rendezvous, the exchange, the staple of good fellows. I have heard my great-grandfather tell, how his great-great-grandfather should say, that it was an old proverb when his great-grandfather was a child, that ...
I never heard Of any true affection, but 'twas nipt With care, that, like the caterpillar, eats The leaves of the spring's sweetest book, the rose. - MIDDLETON.
Lo, now is come our joyful'st feast! Let every man be jolly. Eache roome with yvie leaves is drest, And every post with holly. Now all our neighbours' chimneys smoke, And Christmas blocks are burning;...
During the minority of Louis XV., while the Duke of Orleans was Regent of France, a young Flemish nobleman, the Count Antoine Joseph Van Horn, made his sudden appearance in Paris, and by his character, conduct, and the subseque...
Break, Phantsie, from thy cave of cloud, And wave thy purple wings, Now all thy figures are allowed, And various shapes of things. Create of airy forms a stream; It must have blood and nought of phlegm;...