English Past and Present

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Redfield, 1855 - English language - 213 pages

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Page 106 - Deliver me not over into the will of mine adversaries : for there are false witnesses risen up against me, and such as speak wrong.
Page 34 - By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. 16 But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
Page 65 - Yet it must be allowed to the present age, that the tongue in general is so much refined since Shakspeare's time that many of his words, and more of his phrases, are scarce intelligible. And of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse ; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure.
Page 28 - The first and foremost step to all good works is the dread and fear of the Lord of heaven and earth, which through the Holy Ghost enlighteneth the blindness of our sinful hearts to tread the ways of wisdom, and lead our feet into the land of blessing."* This is not stiffer than the ordinary English of his time.
Page 31 - cocoon,' (to speak by the language applied to silk-worms,) which the poem spins for itself. But, on the other hand, where the motion of the feeling is by and through the ideas, where, (as in religious or meditative poetry — Young's, for instance, or Cowper's,) the pathos creeps and kindles underneath the very tissues of the thinking, there the Latin will predominate ; and so much so that, whilst the flesh, the blood and the muscle, will be often almost exclusively Latin, the articulations only,...
Page 94 - In former times, till about the reign of King Henry VIII., they were wont to be formed by adding en; thus, loven, sayen, complainen. But now (whatsoever is the cause) it hath quite grown out of use, and that other so generally prevailed, that I dare not presume to set this afoot again ; albeit (to tell you my opinion) 1 am persuaded that the lack hereof, well considered, will be found a great blemish to our tongue.
Page 122 - I might here observe, that the same single letter on many occasions does the office of a whole word, and represents the his and her of our forefathers.
Page 176 - But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? "No," ('tis replied) "the first Almighty Cause Acts not by partial, but by gen'ral laws; Th' exceptions few; some change since all began: And what created perfect?

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