Date: 1774
"A learned parson, rusting in his cell, at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what; and yet, unfortunately, h...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"As you found your brain considerably affected by the cold, you were very prudent not to turn it to poetry in that situation; and not less judicious in declining the borrowed aid of a stove, whose fumigation, instead of inspiration, would at best have produced what Mr. Pope calls a souterkin<...
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"I will show your letter to Duval, by way of justification for not answering his challenge; and I think he must allow the validity of it; for a frozen brain is as unfit to answer a challenge in poetry, as a blunt sword is for a single combat."
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1774
"His virtues and his vices, his reason and his passions, did not blend themselves by a gradation of tints, but formed a shining and sudden contrast. Here the darkest, there the most splendid colors; and both rendered more shining from their proximity."
preview | full record— Stanhope, Philip Dormer, fourth earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773)
Date: 1782
"Vanity is a shoot from self-love--and self-love, Pope declares to be the spring of motion in the human breast."
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)
Date: 1782
"The Prologue is well--the Epilogue worth the whole--such is my criticism--read--stare--and conclude your friend mad--tho' a more Christian supposition would be--(what's true at the same time) that my ideas are frozen, much more frigid than the play;--but allowing that--and although I confess mys...
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)
Date: 1782
"In regard to thy N----, thou art right--guard her well--but chiefly guard her from the traitor in her own fair breast, which, while it is the seat of purity and unsullied honor--fancies its neighbours to be the same--nor sees the serpent in the flowery foliage--till it stings--and then farewell ...
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)
Date: 1782
"David, whose heart and affections were naturally of the first kind (and who indeed had experienced blessings without number) pours fourth the grateful sentiments of his enraptured soul in the sweetest modulations of pathetic oratory;--the tender mercies of the Almighty are not less to many of hi...
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)
Date: 1782
"Oh! lads, beware the month of May;--for you blest girls--nature decked out--as in a birth-day suit--courts you with all its sweets--where-e'er you tread--the grass and wanton flowerets fondly kiss your feet--and humbly bow their pretty heads--to the gentle sweepings of your under-petticoats--the...
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)
Date: 1782
"I have heard it more than once observed of fortunate adventurers--they have come home enriched in purse--but wretchedly barren in intellects--the mind, my dear Jack, wants food--as well as the stomach--why then should not one wish to increase in knowledge as well as money?"
preview | full record— Sancho, Charles Ignatius (1729-1780)