The history of Tom Jones, a foundling

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Jenson Society, 1907

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Page 261 - Comfort me by a solemn assurance, that when the little parlour in which I sit at this instant shall be reduced to a worse furnished box, I shall be read with honour by those who never knew nor saw me, and whom I shall neither know nor see.
Page 71 - Even such a man, so faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe-begone, Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night...
Page 26 - The foibles and vices of men, in whom there is great mixture of good, become more glaring objects from the virtues which contrast them and shew their deformity ; and when we find such vices attended with their evil consequence to our favourite characters, we are not only taught to shun, them for our own sake, but to hate them for the mischiefs they have already brought on those we love.
Page 260 - ... charming ages yet to come. Foretel me that some tender maid, whose grandmother is yet unborn, hereafter, when, under the fictitious name of Sophia, she reads the real worth which once existed in my Charlotte, shall from her sympathetic breast send forth the heaving sigh. Do thou teach me not only to foresee, but to enjoy, nay, even to feed on future praise. Comfort me by...
Page 264 - Nor with them only, but with every kind of character, from the minister at his levee, to the bailiff in his spunging-house; from the duchess at her drum, to the landlady behind her bar. From thee only can the manners of mankind be known; to which the recluse pedant, however great his parts or extensive his learning may be, hath ever been a stranger.
Page 24 - This work may, indeed, be considered as a great creation of our own ; and for a little reptile of a critic to presume to find fault with any of its parts, without knowing the manner in which the whole is connected, and before he comes to the final catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity.
Page 89 - Vice hath not, I believe, a more abject slave ; society produces not a more odious vermin ; nor can the devil receive a guest more worthy of him, nor possibly more welcome to him, than a slanderer.
Page 31 - Bath, to try his. luck with cards and the women. This young fellow lay in bed reading one of Mrs. Behn's novels; for he had been instructed by a friend, that he would find no more effectual method of recommending himself to the ladies, than the improving his understanding, and filling his mind with good literature.

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