LESSON III.—PARSING.
"The Author of nature has as truly directed that vicious actions, considered as mischievous to society, should be punished, and has as clearly put mankind under a necessity of thus punishing them, as he has directed and necessitated us to preserve our lives by food."—Butler's Analogy, p. 88. "An author may injure his works by altering, and even amending, the successive editions: the first impression sinks the deepest, and with the credulous it can rarely be effaced; nay, he will be vainly employed who endeavours to eradicate it."—Werter, p. 82.
"It is well ordered, that even the most innocent blunder is not committed with impunity; because, were errors licensed where they do no hurt, inattention would grow into habit, and be the occasion of much hurt."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 285.
"The force of language consists in raising complete images; which have the effect to transport the reader, as by magic, into the very place of the important action, and to convert him as it were into a spectator, beholding every thing that passes."—Id., ib., ii, 241.
"An orator should not put forth all his strength at the beginning, but should rise and grow upon us, as his discourse advances."—Blair's Rhet., p. 309.
"When a talent is given to any one, an account is open with the giver of it, who appoints a day in which he will arrive and 'redemand his own with usury.'"—West's Letters to a Young Lady, p. 74.
"Go, and reclaim the sinner, instruct the ignorant, soften the obdurate, and (as occasion shall demand) cheer, depress, repel, allure, disturb, assuage, console, or terrify."—Jerningham's Essay on Eloquence, p. 97.
"If all the year were playing holydays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work:
But when they seldom come, they wish'd-for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents."
—Shak., Hen. V.
"The man that once did sell the lion's skin
While the beast liv'd, was kill'd with hunting him."
—Id., Joh. Dict., w. Beast.