Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Henry Felton

Raw and injudicious writers propose one thing for their subject, and run off to another.

In comparison of these divine writers the noblest wits of the heathen world are low and dull.

Enlarging an author’s sense, and building fancies of our own upon his foundation, we may call paraphrasing: but more properly, changing, adding, patching, piecing.

All these together are the foundation of all those heaps of comments, which are piled so high upon authors that it is difficult sometimes to clear the text from the rubbish.

The obscurity is brought over them by ignorance and age, made yet more obscure by their pedantical elucidators.

The best writers have been perplexed with notes and obscured with illustrations.

Mr. Dryden wrote more like a scholar; and, though the greatest master of poetry, he wanted that easiness, that air of freedom and unconstraint which is more sensibly to be perceived than described.

In some who have run up to men without education we may observe many great qualities darkened and eclipsed: their minds are crusted over, like diamonds in the rock.

False eloquence passeth only where true is not understood.

In English I would have all Gallicisms avoided, that our tongue may be sincere, and that we may keep to our own language.

There is a vast treasure in the old English, from whence authors may draw constant supplies; as our officers make their surest remits from the coal-works and the mines.

The great disadvantage our historians labour under is too tedious an interruption by the insertion of records in their narration.

I do not apprehend any difficulty in collecting and commonplacing a universal history from the historians.

Languages, like our bodies, are in a perpetual flux, and stand in need of recruits to supply those words that are continually falling through disuse.

The French have indeed taken worthy pains to make classic learning speak their language: if they have not succeeded, it must be imputed to a certain talkativeness and airiness represented in their tongue; which will never agree with the sedateness of the Romans or the solemnity of the Greeks.

Rules and critical observations improve a good genius, where nature leadeth the way, provided he is not too scrupulous: for that will introduce a stiffness and affectation which are utterly abhorrent from all good writing.

Catullus, though his lines be rough and his numbers inharmonious, I could recommend for the softness and delicacy, but must decline for the looseness of his thoughts.

Horace hath exposed those trifling poetasters that spend themselves in glaring descriptions and sewing here and there some cloth of gold on their sackcloth.

The first qualification of a good translator is an exact understanding, an absolute mastery, of the language he translateth from and the language he translateth to.

The most literal translation of the Scriptures, in the most natural signification of the word, is generally the best, and the same punctualness which debaseth other writings preserveth the spirit and majesty of the sacred text.

Truth, of all things the plainest and sincerest, is forced to gain admittance in disguise and court us in masquerade.

Scholars are close and frugal of their words, and not willing to let any go for ornament, if they will not serve for use.

There is another extreme in obscure writers which some empty conceited heads are apt to run into, out of a prodigality of words and a want of sense.

Images are very sparingly to be introduced: their proper place is in poems and orations, and their use is to move pity or terror, compassion, and resentment.