The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Eleven Volumes, Volume 06: Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent PersonsJohnson, Samuel
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The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Eleven Volumes, Volume 06: Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons
Johnson, Samuel
English essays -- 18th century
His great delight is to show his universal acquaintance with terms of
art, with words that every other polite writer has avoided and despised.
When Pompey conquered the pirates, he destroyed fifteen hundred ships of
the line.--The Xanthian parapets were tore down.--Brutus, suspecting
that his troops were plundering, commanded the trumpets to sound to
their colours.--Most people understood the act of attainder passed by
the senate.--The Numidian troopers were unlikely in their appearance.--
The Numidians beat up one quarter after another.--Salvidienus resolved
to pass his men over, in boats of leather, and he gave orders for
equipping a sufficient number of that sort of small craft.--Pompey had
light, agile frigates, and fought in a strait, where the current and
caverns occasion swirls and a roll.--A sharp out-look was kept by the
admiral.--It is a run of about fifty Roman miles.--Brutus broke Lipella
in the sight of the army.--Mark Antony garbled the senate. He was a
brave man, well qualified for a commodore.
In his choice of phrases he frequently uses words with great solemnity,
which every other mouth and pen has appropriated to jocularity and
levity! The Rhodians gave up the contest, and, in poor plight, fled back
to Rhodes.--Boys and girls were easily kidnapped.--Deiotarus was a
mighty believer of augury.--Deiotarus destroyed his ungracious
progeny.--The regularity of the Romans was their mortal aversion.--They
desired the consuls to curb such heinous doings.--He had such a shrewd
invention, that no side of a question came amiss to him.--Brutus found
his mistress a coquettish creature.
He sometimes, with most unlucky dexterity, mixes the grand and the
burlesque together; _the violation of faith, sir_, says Cassius, _lies
at the door of the Rhodians by reite-rated acts of perfidy_.--The iron
grate fell down, crushed those under it to death, and catched the rest
as in a trap.--When the Xanthians heard the military shout, and saw the
flame mount, they concluded there would be no mercy. It was now about
sunset, and they had been at hot work since noon.
He has, often, words, or phrases, with which our language has hitherto
had no knowledge.--One was a heart-friend to the republic--A deed was
expeded.--The Numidians begun to reel, and were in hazard of falling
into confusion.--The tutor embraced his pupil close in his arms.--Four
hundred women were taxed, who have, no doubt, been the wives of the best
Roman citizens.--Men not born to action are inconsequential in
government.--Collectitious troops.--The foot, by their violent attack,
began the fatal break in the Pharsaliac field.--He and his brother, with
a politic, common to other countries, had taken opposite sides.
His epithets are of the gaudy or hyperbolical kind. The glorious
news--eager hopes and dismal fears--bleeding Rome--divine laws and
hallowed customs--merciless war--intense anxiety.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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