Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 7, 2025
Its shining passages, for there are such, remind one of distress-rockets sent up at intervals from a ship just about to founder, and sadden rather than cheer. The first part of the "Annus Mirabilis" is by no means clear of the false taste of the time, though it has some of Dryden's manliest verses and happiest comparisons, always his two distinguishing merits.
LONDON, June 1, 1767. MY DEAR FRIEND: I received yesterday your letter of the 20th past, from Dresden, where I am glad to find that you are arrived safe and sound. This has been everywhere an 'annus mirabilis' for bad weather, and it continues here still. Everybody has fires, and their winter clothes, as at Christmas. The town is extremely sickly; and sudden deaths have been very frequent.
Mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis. Spiritus Sanctus,
There's another sort of Men, that do not frequent the Exchange, and go out only about their Shop affairs, these we see taking their pleasures for several hours together at Queenhithe and other places, with selling of chatwood; and when they are a weary with walking and talking, away they go to the Plume of Feathers to rest themselves, and call for half a pint, or a pint of Sack, and some to the Strong Water Shop, and drink a quartern of Cinamon water, Clove-water, or Aqua mirabilis.
To say sooth, if Dryden had left nothing behind him but the "Annus Mirabilis," he might have served as a type of the kind of poet America would have produced by the biggest-river-and-tallest-mountain recipe, longitude and latitude in plenty, with marks of culture scattered here and there like the carets on a proof-sheet. It is now time to say something of Dryden as a dramatist.
His "Annus Mirabilis," celebrating with great animation the year 1666, is an effusion of historical panegyric. The "Absalom and Achitophel" is a satire on the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth and his adviser Shaftesbury. "The Hind and Panther," full of poetical and satirical force, was an argument to justify the author's recent change of religion.
In 1667 he became more widely known and popular by his "Annus Mirabilis," a narrative poem describing the terrors of the great fire in London and some events of the disgraceful war with Holland; but with the theaters reopened and nightly filled, the drama offered the most attractive field to one who made his living by literature; so Dryden turned to the stage and agreed to furnish three plays yearly for the actors of the King's Theater.
On the contrary, many garden-flowers that are colored in the species, and besides this have a white or yellow variety, have also striped sorts. The oldest instance is probably the marvel of Peru, Mirabilis Jalappa, which already had more than one striped variety at the time of its introduction from Peru into the European gardens, about the beginning of the seventeenth century.
To give an instance: Mirabilis jalappa can easily be fertilised by the pollen of M. longiflora, and the hybrids thus produced are sufficiently fertile; but Kolreuter tried more than two hundred times, during eight following years, to fertilise reciprocally M. longiflora with the pollen of M. jalappa, and utterly failed. Several other equally striking cases could be given.
He exalts the English drama above the French, the Italian, and the Spanish; and vindicates blank verse against rhymed, making, however, a flattering exception of Orrery's dramas. If Dryden was not pleased, he appears to have had the grace to conceal his displeasure. For he passed the greater part of 1666 at his father-in-law's house, and dedicated to Howard his Annus Mirabilis.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking