The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [856]
Il fut le maitre de Moliere
Et la Nature fut le sien.
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A curious passage in a letter from Cicero to his literary friend Papyrius Paetus, shows that our custom of annexing a farce or pantomime to a tragic drama existed among the Romans.
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In Cary's "Dante" is the following passage —
And pilgrim newly on his road with love
Thrills if he hear the vesper bell from far
That seems to mourn for the expiring day.
Gray has also
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
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Marmontel in the "Encyclopedie" declares that the Italians did not possess a single comedy worth reading — therein displaying his ignorance. Some of the greatest names in Italian Literature were writers of comedy. Baretti mentions a collection of four thousand dramas made by Apostolo Zeno, of which the greater part were comedies — many of a high order.
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A comedy or opera by Andreini was the origin of "Paradise Lost." Andreini's Adamo was the model of Milton's Adam.
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Milton has the expression "Forget thyself to marble." Pope has the line "I have not yet forgot myself to stone."
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The noble simile of Milton, of Satan with the rising sun in the first book of the Paradise Lost, had nearly occasioned the suppression of that epic: it was supposed to contain a treasonable allusion.
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Campbell's line
Like angel visits few and far between,
is a palpable plagiarism. Blair has
Its visits
Like angel visits short and far between.
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In Hudibras are these lines —
Each window like the pillory appears
With heads thrust through, nailed by the ears.
Young in his "Love of Fame" has the following —
An opera, like a pillory, may be said
To nail our ears down and expose our head.
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Goldsmith's celebrated lines
Man wants but little here below
Nor wants that little long,
are stolen from Young; who has
Man wants but little, nor that little long.
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The character of the ancient Bacchus, that graceful divinity, seems to have been little understood by Dryden. The line in Virgil
Et quocunque deus circum caput egit honestum
is thus grossly mistranslated,
On whate'er side he turns his honest face.
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There are about one thousand lines identical in the Iliad and Odyssey.
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Macrobius gives the form of an imprecation by which the Romans believed whole towns could be demolished and armies defeated. It commences "Dis Pater sive Jovis mavis sive quo alio nomine fas est nominare," and ends "Si haec ita faxitis ut ego sciam, sentiam, intelligamque, tum quisquis votum hoc faxit recte factum esto, ovibus atris tribus, Tellus mater, teque Jupiter, obtestor."
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The "Courtier" of Baldazzar Castiglione, 1528, is the first attempt at periodical moral Essay with which we are acquainted. The Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius cannot be allowed to rank as such.
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These lines were written over the closet door of M. Menard,
Las d'esperer, et de me plaindre
De l'amour, des grands, et du sort
C'est ici que J'attends la mort
Sans la desirer ou la craindre.
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Martin Luther in his reply to Henry VIIIth's book by which the latter acquired the title of "Defender of the Faith," calls the monarch very unceremoniously "a pig, an ass, a dunghill, the spawn of an adder, a basilisk, a lying buffoon dressed in a king's robes, a mad fool with a frothy mouth and a whorish face."
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The Psalter of Solomon, which contains 18 psalms, is a work which was found in Greek in the library of Ausburg, and has been translated into Latin by John Lewis de la Cerda. It is supposed not to be Solomon's, but the work of some Hellenistical Jew, and composed in imitation of David's Psalms. The Psalter was known to the ancients, and was formerly in the famous Alexandrian MS.
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An unshaped kind of something first appeared,
is a line in Cowley's famous description of the Creation.
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It is probable that the queen of Sheba was Balkis — that Sheba was a kingdom in the Southern part of Arabia Felix, and that the people were called