Tracts and Miscellaneous Criticisms of the Late Richard Porson, EsqPayne and Foss, 1815 - 407 Seiten |
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Seite l - After the Complutenses and Erasmus, who had but very ordinary MSS. it has become the property of booksellers. Robert Stephens's edition, set out and regulated by himself alone, is now become the standard. That text stands, as if an apostle was his compositor.
Seite 314 - ... and all the ornaments and furniture carried away. In this edifice it was determined I should lodge. The great gate fronting to the north was about four feet high, and almost two feet wide, through which I could easily creep.
Seite 11 - Among the ancients, plain-speaking was the fashion ; nor was that ceremonious delicacy introduced, which has taught men to abuse each other with the utmost politeness, and express the most indecent ideas in the most modest language.
Seite xxxix - Th' unfeeling for his own. Yet ah ! why should they know their fate ? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more ; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.
Seite 322 - Warburton, that when he had anything better than ordinary to say, and yet too bold, he always reserved it for a second or third edition, and then nobody took any notice of it.
Seite 108 - ... be the taste and discernment of a reader, or the genius and ability of a writer, neither the one nor the other can appear while the text remains deformed by the corruptions of blundering transcribers, and obscured by the glosses of ignorant grammarians. It is then that the aid of the verbal critic is required ; and though his minute labour, in dissecting syllables and analysing letters, may appear contemptible in its operation, it will be found important in its effect.
Seite 87 - MSS. and editions, — after examining what others have written relative to him professedly or accidentally, — after a constant perusal of other authors, with a special view to the elucidation of his own, — if, after all this, he must not be trusted with a discretionary power over the text, he never could be qualified to be an editor at all. Whatever editor (one, we mean, who aspires to that title,) .republishes a book from an old edition, when the text might be improved from subsequent discoveries,...
Seite 331 - Have you read that divine book, the ' Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., by Sir John Hawkins Knt.' ? Have E you done anything but read it since it was first published ? For my own part, I scruple not to declare that I could not rest till I had read it quite through, notes, digressions, index and all ; then I could not rest till I had gone over it a second time. I begin to think that increase of appetite grows by what it feeds on ; for I have been reading it ever since. I am now in the midst of the sixteenth...
Seite 328 - I shall not trespass upon your time with a long letter, occupied, as I take it for granted you must be, with the circumstances attendant on your elevation, and with the swarm of addresses that invade you from all quarters. Neither shall I amuse myself with foretelling the future glories of your reign. I never but once ventured on a similar prediction, and then my success was such as completely discouraged me from setting up for a prophet again. But a passage from Cicero had long...
Seite 107 - Criticks, we shall find that the first have been of no use whatever, and that the last have rendered the most important services to mankind. All persons of taste and understanding know, from their own feelings, when to approve, and disapprove, and therefore stand in no need of instructions from the Critick; and as for those who are destitute of such faculties, they can never be taught to use them ; for no one can be taught to exert faculties which he does not possess. Every dunce may, indeed, be...