John Tickell, the son of the Rev. Richard Tickell, was born in 1686, at Bridekirk, in Cumberland, and in 1701 became a member of Queen's College in Oxford; in 1708 he was made Master of Arts, and two years afterwards was chosen Fellow, for which, as he did not comply with the statutes by taking orders, he obtained a dispensation from the Crown. He held his fellowship till 1726, and then vacated it by marrying, in that year, at Dublin. Tickell was not one of those scholars who wear away their lives in closets; he entered early into the world...
Nonfictions - Post by : gfranklin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Samuel Johnson - Read : 1996
John Gay, descended from an old family that had been long in possession of the manor of Goldworthy, in Devonshire, was born in 1688, at or near Barnstaple he was educated by Mr. Luck, who taught the school of that town with good reputation, and, a little before he retired from it, published a volume of Latin and English verses. Under such a master he was likely to form a taste for poetry. Being born without prospect of hereditary riches, he was sent to London in his youth, and placed apprentice with a silk mercer. How long...
Nonfictions - Post by : gfranklin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Samuel Johnson - Read : 2236
Nicholas Rowe was born at Little Beckford, in Bedfordshire, in 1673. His family had long possessed a considerable estate, with a good house, at Lambertoun in Devonshire. The ancestor from whom he descended in a direct line received the arms borne by his descendants for his bravery in the Holy War. His father, John Rowe, who was the first that quitted his paternal acres to practise any part of profit, professed the law, and published Benlow's and Dallison's Reports in the reign of James the Second, when, in opposition to the notions then diligently propagated of dispensing power, he...
Nonfictions - Post by : gfranklin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Samuel Johnson - Read : 2593
Samuel Garth was of a good family in Yorkshire, and from some school in his own county became a student at Peter House, in Cambridge he resided till he became Doctor of Physic on July the 7th, 1691. He was examined before the College at London on March the 12th, 1691-2, and admitted Fellow June 26th, 1693. He was soon so much distinguished by his conversation and accomplishments as to obtain very extensive practice; and, if a pamphlet of those times may be credited, had the favour and confidence of one party, as Radcliffe had of the other....
Nonfictions - Post by : gfranklin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Samuel Johnson - Read : 1435
William King was born in London in 1663; the son of Ezekiel King, a gentleman. He was allied to the family of Clarendon. From Westminster School he was a scholar on the foundation under the care of Dr. Busby, he was at eighteen elected to Christ Church in 1681; where he is said to have prosecuted his studies with so much intenseness and activity, that before he was eight years' standing he had read over, and made remarks upon, twenty-two thousand odd hundred books and manuscripts. The books were certainly not very long, the manuscripts not very difficult,...
Nonfictions - Post by : gfranklin - Date : May 2012 - Author : Samuel Johnson - Read : 1696
This volume contains a record of twenty lives, of which only one-- that of Edward Young--is treated at length. It completes our edition of Johnson's Lives of the Poets, from which a few only of the briefest and least important have been omitted. The eldest of the Poets here discussed were Samuel Garth, Charles Montague (Lord Halifax), and William King, who were born within the years 1660-63. Next in age were Addison's friend Ambrose Philips, and Nicholas Rowe the dramatist, who was also the first editor of Shakespeare's plays after the four folios had appeared. Ambrose Philips and...
Nonfictions - Post by : redbrad0 - Date : May 2012 - Author : Samuel Johnson - Read : 1196
An account of Dr. Swift has been already collected, with great diligence and acuteness, by Dr. Hawkesworth, according to a scheme which I laid before him in the intimacy of our friendship. I cannot therefore be expected to say much of a life, concerning which I had long since communicated my thoughts to a man capable of dignifying his narrations with so much elegance of language and force of sentiment. Jonathan Swift was, according to an account said to be written by himself, the son of Jonathan Swift, an attorney, and was born at Dublin on St. Andrew's day, 1667:...
Nonfictions - Post by : redbrad0 - Date : May 2012 - Author : Samuel Johnson - Read : 2627
It has been observed in all ages that the advantages of nature or of fortune have contributed very little to the promotion of happiness: and that those whom the splendour of their rank, or the extent of their capacity, has placed upon the summit of human life, have not often given any just occasion to envy in those who look up to them from a lower station; whether it be that apparent superiority incites great designs, and great designs are naturally liable to fatal miscarriages; or that the general lot of mankind is misery, and the misfortunes of those whose eminence...
Nonfictions - Post by : redbrad0 - Date : May 2012 - Author : Samuel Johnson - Read : 2858
Joseph Addison was born on the 1st of May, 1672, at Milston, of which his father, Lancelot Addison, was then rector, near Ambrosebury, in Wiltshire, and, appearing weak and unlikely to live, he was christened the same day. After the usual domestic education, which from the character of his father may be reasonably supposed to have given him strong impressions of piety, he was committed to the care of Mr. Naish at Ambrosebury, and afterwards of Mr. Taylor at Salisbury. Not to name the school or the masters of men illustrious for literature, is a kind of historical fraud, by...
Nonfictions - Post by : redbrad0 - Date : May 2012 - Author : Samuel Johnson - Read : 2455
Johnson's "Lives of the Poets" were written to serve as Introductions to a trade edition of the works of poets whom the booksellers selected for republication. Sometimes, therefore, they dealt briefly with men in whom the public at large has long ceased to be interested. Richard Savage would be of this number if Johnson's account of his life had not secured for him lasting remembrance. Johnson's Life of Savage in this volume has not less interest than the Lives of Addison and Swift, between which it is set, although Savage himself has no right at all to be...
Nonfictions - Post by : redbrad0 - Date : May 2012 - Author : Samuel Johnson - Read : 2861
CHAPTER XVII. BRANWELL'S ENDThe autumn of the year 1848 was tempestuous and wild, with sudden and frequent changes of temperature, and cold penetrating wind. Those chilling blasts whirling round the small grey parsonage on its exposed hill-top, brought sickness in their train. Anne and Charlotte drooped and languished; Branwell, too, was ill. His constitution seemed shattered by excesses which he had not the resolution to forego. Often he would sleep most of the day; or at least sit dosing hour after hour in a lethargy of weakness; but with the night this apathy would change to violence and suffering. "Papa, and...
Nonfictions - Post by : beetee - Date : May 2012 - Author : A. Mary F. Robinson - Read : 3673
CHAPTER XVI. 'SHIRLEY'While 'Wuthering Heights' was still in the reviewer's hands, Emily Bronte's more fortunate sister was busy on another novel. This book has never attained the steady success of her masterpiece, 'Villette,' neither did it meet with the _furor which greeted the first appearance of 'Jane Eyre.' It is, indeed, inferior to either work; a very quiet study of Yorkshire life, almost pettifogging in its interest in ecclesiastical squabbles, almost absurd in the feminine inadequacy of its heroes. And yet 'Shirley' has a grace and beauty of its own. This it derives from the charm of its heroines--Caroline Helstone, a...
Nonfictions - Post by : beetee - Date : May 2012 - Author : A. Mary F. Robinson - Read : 2052
CHAPTER XV. 'WUTHERING HEIGHTS:' THE STORYOn the summit of Haworth Hill, beyond the street, stands a grey stone house, which is shown as the original of 'Wuthering Heights.' A few scant and wind-baffled ash-trees grow in front, the moors rise at the back stretching away for miles. It is a house of some pretensions, once the parsonage of Grimshaw, that powerful Wesleyan preacher who, whip in hand, used to visit the "Black Bull" on Sunday morning and lash the merrymakers into chapel to listen to his sermon. Somewhat fallen from its former pretensions, it is a farmhouse now, with much such...
Nonfictions - Post by : beetee - Date : May 2012 - Author : A. Mary F. Robinson - Read : 2707
CHAPTER XIV. 'WUTHERING HEIGHTS:' ITS ORIGINA grey old Parsonage standing among graves, remote from the world on its wind-beaten hill-top, all round the neighbouring summits wild with moors; a lonely place among half-dead ash-trees and stunted thorns, the world cut off on one side by the still ranks of the serried dead, and distanced on the other by mile-long stretches of heath: such, we know, was Emily Bronte's home. An old, blind, disillusioned father, once prone to an extraordinary violence of temper, but now grown quiet with age, showing his disappointment with life by a melancholy cynicism that was quite sincere;...
Nonfictions - Post by : beetee - Date : May 2012 - Author : A. Mary F. Robinson - Read : 1345
CHAPTER XIII. TROUBLESWhile Emily Bronte was striving to create a world of fancy and romance natural to her passionate spirit, the real, everyday existence in which she had to work and endure was becoming day by day more anxious and troubled. An almost unliveable life it seems, recalling it, stifled with the vulgar tragedy of Branwell's woes, the sordid cares that his debts entailed, the wearing anxiety that watched the oncoming blindness of old Mr. Bronte. These months of 1846 during which, let us remember, Emily was writing 'Wuthering Heights,' must have been the heaviest and dreariest of her days; it...
Nonfictions - Post by : beetee - Date : May 2012 - Author : A. Mary F. Robinson - Read : 2765
CHAPTER XII. WRITING POETRYWhile Emily Bronte's hands were full of trivial labour, while her heart was buried with its charge of shame and sorrow, think not that her mind was more at rest. She had always used her leisure to study or create; and the dreariness of existence made this inner life of hers doubly precious now. There is a tiny copy of the 'Poems' of Ellis, Currer, and Acton Bell, which was Emily's own, marked with her name and with the date of every poem carefully written under its title, in her own cramped and tidy writing. It has been...
Nonfictions - Post by : beetee - Date : May 2012 - Author : A. Mary F. Robinson - Read : 1707
CHAPTER XI. BRANWELL'S FALLAs the spring grew upon the moors, dappling them with fresh verdant shoots, clearing the sky overhead, loosening the winds to rush across them; as the beautiful season grew ripe in Haworth, every one of its days made clearer to the two anxious women waiting there in what shape their blurred foreboding would come true at last. They seldom spoke of Branwell now. It was a hard and anxious time, ever expectant of an evil just at hand. Minor troubles, too, gathered round this shapeless boded grief: Mr. Bronte was growing blind; Charlotte, ever nervous, feared the same...
Nonfictions - Post by : beetee - Date : May 2012 - Author : A. Mary F. Robinson - Read : 3230
CHAPTER X. THE PROSPECTUSESGradually Charlotte's first depression wore away. Long discussions with Emily, as they took their walks over the moors, long silent brooding of ways and means, as they sat together in the parlour making shirts for Branwell, long thinking, brought new counsel. She went, moreover, to stay with her friend Ellen, and the change helped to restore her weakened health. She writes to her friend:-- "March 25 "DEAR NELL, "I got home safely and was not too much tired on arriving at Haworth. I feel rather better to-day than I have been, and in time I hope to...
Nonfictions - Post by : beetee - Date : May 2012 - Author : A. Mary F. Robinson - Read : 2332
CHAPTER VII. IN THE RUE D'ISABELLEThe Rue d'Isabelle had a character of its own. It lies below your feet as you stand in the Rue Royale, near the statue of General Beliard. Four flights of steps lead down to the street, half garden, half old houses, with at one end a large square mansion, owning the garden that runs behind it and to the right of it. The house is old; a Latin inscription shows it to have been given to the great Guild of Cross-bowmen by Queen Isabelle in the early years of the 17th century. The garden is older;...
Nonfictions - Post by : beetee - Date : May 2012 - Author : A. Mary F. Robinson - Read : 1221
CHAPTER VI. GIRLHOOD AT HAWORTHThe next two years passed very solitarily for Emily at Haworth; the Brontes were too poor for all to stay at home, and since it was definitely settled that Emily could not live away, she worked hard at home while her sisters went out in the world to gain their bread. She had no friend besides her sisters; far-off Anne was her only confidant. Outside her own circle the only person that she cared to meet was Charlotte's friend Ellen, and, of course, Ellen did not come to Haworth while Charlotte was away. Branwell, too, was absent....
Nonfictions - Post by : beetee - Date : May 2012 - Author : A. Mary F. Robinson - Read : 2214
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Johnson's Lives Of Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, Mallet, Gray, Lyttelton,... - Tickell
