The Edinburgh Review: Or Critical Journal, Volume 2

Front Cover
A. Constable, 1804

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 464 - One asylum of free discussion is still inviolate. There is still one spot in Europe where man can freely exercise his reason on the most important concerns of society ; where he can boldly publish his judgment on the acts of the proudest and most powerful tyrants.
Page 503 - H. Fielding has given a true picture of himself and his first wife in the characters of Mr. and Mrs. Booth, some compliments to his own figure excepted ; and I am persuaded, several of the incidents he mentions are real matters of fact.
Page 459 - OBSERVE when mother earth is dry, She drinks the droppings of the sky, And then the dewy cordial gives To ev'ry thirsty plant that lives. The vapors, which at evening weep, Are beverage to the swelling deep ; And when the rosy sun appears, He drinks the ocean's misty tears. The moon too quaffs her paly stream Of lustre, from the solar beam. Then, hence with all your sober thinking! Since Nature's holy...
Page 503 - They place a merit in extravagant passions, and encourage young people to hope for impossible events, to draw them out of the misery they choose to plunge themselves into, expecting legacies from unknown relations, and generous benefactors to distressed virtue, as much out of nature as fairy treasures.
Page 502 - That emperor erected a temple to himself, where he was his own high-priest, preferred his horse to the highest honours in the state, professed enmity to the human race, and at last lost his life by a nasty jest on one of his inferiors, which I dare swear Swift would have made in his place. There can be no worse picture made of the Doctor's morals than he has given us himself in the letters printed by Pope. We...
Page 504 - ... so. There is a quiet after the abandoning of pursuits, something like the rest that follows a laborious day. I tell you this for your comfort. It was formerly a terrifying view to me, that I should one day be an old woman. I now find that Nature has provided pleasures for every state. Those are only unhappy who will not be contented with what she gives, but strive to break through her laws, by affecting a perpetuity of youth, which appears to me as little desirable at present as the babies do...
Page 382 - Mr. Edgeworth seems to possess the sentiments of an accomplished gentleman, the information of a scholar, and the vivacity of a first-rate harlequin. He is fuddled with animal spirits, giddy with constitutional joy ; in such a state he must have written on, or burst. A discharge of ink was an evacuation absolutely necessary, to avoid fatal and plethoric congestion.
Page 494 - ... ways ; you would find an easy equality of temper you do not expect, and a thousand faults you do not imagine. You think if you married me, I should be passionately fond of you one month, and of somebody else the next : neither would happen.
Page 498 - I WRITE to you at this time piping-hot from the birth-night; my brain warmed with all the agreeable ideas that fine clothes, fine gentlemen, brisk tunes, and lively dances, can raise there. It is to be hoped that my letter will entertain you ; at least you will certainly have the freshest account of all passages on that glorious day. First you must know that I led up the ball, which you...
Page 492 - I have never had any great esteem for the generality of the fair sex ; and my only consolation for being of that gender, has been the assurance it gave me of never being married to any one among them...

Bibliographic information