Harrow School and Its Surroundings

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W.H. Allen & Company, 1885 - 483 pages
 

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Page 96 - So proud, so grand ; of that stupendous air, Soft and agreeable come never there. Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught As brings all Brobdignag before your thought. To compass this, his building is a town, His pond an ocean, his parterre a down : Who but must laugh, the master when he sees, A puny insect, shivering at a breeze ! Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around ! The whole, a labour'd quarry above ground.
Page 96 - His gardens next your admiration call, On every side you look, behold the wall ! No pleasing intricacies intervene, No artful wildness to perplex the scene ; Grove nods at grove, each valley has a brother, And half the platform just reflects the other.
Page 116 - Another age shall see the golden ear Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre, Deep harvests bury all his pride has plann'd, And laughing Ceres reassume the land.
Page 126 - Some, wrapped in blankets, erect in their stalls like mummies ; others asleep on cushions, like so many Gothic tombs. Here a red cap over a wig ; there a face lost in the cape of a rug. One blowing a chafing-dish with a surplice sleeve ; another warming a little negus, or sipping ' Coke upon Littleton,' ie tent and brandy. Thus did they combat the cold of that frosty night, which has not killed any of them, to my infinite surprize.
Page 97 - On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre, On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, And bring all paradise before your eye.
Page 96 - In books, not authors, curious is my lord; To all their dated backs he turns you round: These Aldus printed, those Du Sueil has bound. Lo! some are vellum, and the rest as good For all his lordship knows, but they are wood. For Locke or Milton 'tis in vain to look, These shelves admit not any modern book.
Page 208 - As a scholar he was greatly my superior ; as a declaimer and actor, I was reckoned at least his equal ; as a schoolboy, out of school, I was always in scrapes, and he never ; and in school, he always knew his lesson, and I rarely, — but when I knew it, I knew it nearly as well. In general information, history, &c. &c., I think I was his superior, as well as of most boys of my standing.
Page 96 - On every side you look, behold the wall! No pleasing intricacies intervene, No artful wildness to perplex the scene; Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, And half the platform just reflects the other. The suffering eye inverted nature sees, Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees; With here a fountain, never to be play'd; And there a summer-house, that knows no shade; Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers; There gladiators fight, or die in flowers; Unwater'd see the drooping...
Page 46 - Elizabeth, by the grace of God Queene of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc.
Page 208 - My qualities were much more oratorical and martial than poetical, and Dr. Drury, my grand patron (our head master), had a great notion that I should turn out an orator, from my fluency, my turbulence, my voice, my copiousness of declamation, and my action.

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