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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: It was not very easy however for people not quite intimate with Dr. Johnson, to get exactly his opinion of a writer's merit, as he would now and then divert himself by confounding those who thought themselves obliged to say to-morrow what he had said yesterday; and even Garrick, who ought to have been better acquainted with his tricks, professed himself mortified, that one time when he was extolling Dryden in a rapture that I suppose disgusted his friend, Mr. Johnson suddenly challenged him to produce twenty lines in a series that would not disgrace the poet and his admirer. Garrick produced a passage that he had once heard the Doctor commend, in which he now found, if I remember rightly, sixteen faults, and made Garrick look silly at his own table. When I told Mr. Johnson the story, Why, what a monkey was David now (says he), to tell of his own disgrace I And in the course of that hour's chat he told me, how he used to teize Garrick by commendations of the tomb scene in Con- greve's Mourning Bride, protesting that Shakespeare had in the same line of excellence nothing as good: All which is strictly true (said he); but that is no reason for supposing Congreve is to stand in competition with Shakespeare: these fellows know not how to blame, nor how to commend I forced him one day, in a similar humour, to prefer Young's description of Night to the so much admired ones of Dryden and Shakespeare, as more forcible, and more general Every reader is not either a lover or a tyrant, but every reader is interested when he hears that Creation sleeps; 'tis as the general pulse Of life stood still, and nature made a pause; An awful pause?prophetic of its end. This (said he) is true; but remember that taking the compositions of Young in general, they are but like bright ste...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217496810 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217496814 |
| Weight | 1.02 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.70 In |
| List Price | $24.58 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 314 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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