The Life of Edward Gibbon: With Selections from His Correspondence and Illustrations

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Baudry's European Library, 1840 - 357 páginas

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Página 11 - It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.
Página 67 - My ardour, which soon became conspicuous, seldom failed of procuring me a ticket. The habits of pleasure fortified my taste for the French theatre, and that taste has perhaps abated my idolatry for the gigantic genius of Shakespeare, which is inculcated from our infancy as the first duty of an Englishman.
Página 94 - The discipline and evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the phalanx and the legion ; and the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers (the reader may smile) has not been useless to the historian of the Roman empire.
Página 151 - History. At the outset all was dark and doubtful ; even the title of the work, the true era of the " Decline and Fall of the Empire," the limits of the introduction, the division of the chapters, and the order of the narrative ; and I was often tempted to cast away the labour of seven years.
Página 194 - Well, if the use be mine, can it concern one, Whether the name belong to Pope or Vernon?
Página 115 - It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins, of the Capitol, while the bare-footed friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter', that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Página 165 - I can never forget the delight with which that diffusive and ingenious orator, Mr. Burke, was heard by all sides of the house, and even by those whose existence he proscribed.
Página 40 - I was admitted to the society of the fellows, and fondly expected that some questions of literature would be the amusing and instructive topics of their discourse. Their conversation stagnated in a round of college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and private scandal: their dull and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of youth ; and their constitutional toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty for the house of Hanover.
Página 68 - After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son; my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself; and my love subsided in friendship and esteem.
Página 40 - The fellows or monks of my time were decent easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder : their days were filled by a series of uniform employments — the chapel and the hall, the coffee-house and the common room, till they retired, weary and well satisfied, to a long slumber. From the toil of reading, or thinking, or writing, they had absolved their consciences...

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