Author: Walter Scott

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-07-19

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 9781331743316

Excerpt from The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 14 of 18: Illustrated With Notes, Historical, Critical, and Explanatory, and a Life of the Author Blaze is not so fierce as at the first; but the smoke is wholly vanished and your friends, who stand about you, are not only sensible of a cheerful warmth, but are kept at an awful distance by its force. In my small Observations of mankind, I have ever found, that such as are not rather too full of Spirit when they are young, degenerate to dul ness in their age. Sobriety in our riper years is the effect of a well-concocted warmth: but, where the principles are only phlegm, what can be expect ed from the waterish matter, but an insipid man hood, and a stupid Old infancy - discretion in lead ing-strings, and a confirmed ignorance on crutches? Virgil, in his Third Georgic, when he describes a colt, who promises a courser for the race, or for the field of battle, shews him the first to pass the bridge, which trembles under him, and to stem the torrent Of the flood. His beginnings must be in rashness - a noble fault: but time and experience will correct that error, and tame it into a deliberate and well-weighed courage, which knows both to be cautious and to dare, as occasion Offers. Your lordship is a man of honour, not only so unstained, but so unquestioned, that you are the living stand ard of that heroic virtue; so truly such, that if I would flatter you, I could not. It takes not from you, that you were born with principles of genero sity and probity; but it adds to you, that you have cultivated nature, and made those principles the rule and measure of all your actions. The world knows this, without my telling; yet poets have a right Of recording it to all posterity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.