The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, D.D. ...: With Notes, Historical and Critical, Volume 4

Front Cover
J. Johnson, 1808

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 467 - ... or encouragement for popular orators ; their giving not only the freedom of the city, but capacity for employments, to several towns in Gaul, Spain, and Germany...
Page 25 - There is one essential point wherein a political liar differs from others of the faculty, that he ought to have but a short memory, which is necessary according to the various occasions he meets with every hour of differing from himself and swearing to both sides of a contradiction, as he finds the persons disposed with whom he has to deal.
Page 95 - Faith to be agreed upon as aforesaid; and such who profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His eternal Son, the true God, and in the Holy Spirit, God co-equal with the Father and the Son, one God blessed for ever, and do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the revealed Will and Word of God...
Page 83 - For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. 19. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners.
Page 469 - From the civil war to this present time, I am apt to doubt, whether the corruptions in our language have not at least equalled the refinements of it ; and these corruptions very few of the best authors in our age have wholly escaped.
Page 470 - ... which used to be the standard of propriety and correctness of speech, was then, and, I think, has ever since continued, the worst school in England for that accomplishment; and .so will remain till better care be taken in the education of our young nobility, that they may set out into the world with some foundation of literature, in order to qualify them for patterns of politeness.
Page 297 - Majesty the several rates and duties hereinafter mentioned; and do most humbly beseech your Majesty that it may be enacted, and be it enacted by the king's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal...
Page 463 - They all agreed, that nothing would be of greater use towards the improvement of knowledge and politeness than some effectual method for correcting, enlarging, and ascertaining our language ; and they think it a work very possible to be compassed under the protection of a prince, the countenance and encouragement of a ministry, and the care of proper persons chosen for such an undertaking.
Page 85 - And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood.
Page 485 - Tongue," in a Letter to the Earl of Oxford ; written without much knowledge of the general nature of language, and without any accurate inquiry into the history of other tongues. The certainty and stability which, contrary to all experience, he thinks attainable, he proposes to secure by instituting an academy ; the decrees of which every man would have been willing, and many would have been proud, to disobey, and which, being renewed by successive elections, would in a short time have differed from...

Bibliographic information