A History of English Prose Fiction from Sir Thomas Malory to George Eliot |
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Common terms and phrases
Accolon Addison admiration adventures amusement Arcadia Arthur attained beauty Behn castle chap character Charles chivalry church Clara Reeve classes coarseness corruption court crime Defoe described Dickens effect eighteenth century Elizabeth England English fiction Euphues Euphuist evil excited female fictitious G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS George George Eliot Guenever heart hero Horace Walpole Houyhnhnms human ideas imagination influence interest king King Arthur knights Lady Launcelot licentious literary literature living Lord Lord Hervey manners merit mind Miss Burney Moll Flanders moral Morte narrative nature never noble novel novelist Oroonoko Pamela passion person popular Puritanism queen ranks reader refinement Richardson Robin Hood romance romantic fiction satire scenes Scott sentiment social society spirit story supernatural Swift taste Thackeray Thenne thou thought tion Tom Jones Tristram vice virtue Walpole wife woman women writers wrote young
Popular passages
Page 100 - The Pilgrim's Progress, In The Similitude Of A Dream AS I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a Dream.
Page 226 - YE who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow ; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.
Page 228 - The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow.
Page 226 - He shall be supported, said my uncle Toby; He'll drop at last, said the corporal, and what will become of his boy? He shall not drop, said my uncle Toby, firmly. A-well-o'-day, do what we can for him, said Trim, maintaining his point, the poor soul will die : He shall not die, by G — , cried my uncle Toby.
Page 163 - He reads much ; He is a great observer and he looks Quite through the deeds of men ; he loves no plays, As thou dost, Antony ; he hears no music ; Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort As if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spirit That could be moved to smile at any thing.
Page 167 - He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century, protesting •' it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, or ambition, could produce.
Page 168 - I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin, that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.
Page 194 - Why, Sir, if you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment.
Page 227 - To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation.
Page 99 - I also have with soberness considered since, did so offend the Lord, that even in my childhood he did scare and affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful visions. For often, after i had spent this and the other day in sin, I have in my bed been greatly afflicted, while asleep, with the apprehensions of devils, and wicked spirits, who still, as I then thought, laboured to draw me away with them; of which I could never be rid.