Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Honourable Henry Home of Kames: One of the Senators of the College of Justice, and One of the Lords Commissioners of Justiciary in Scotland : Containing Sketches of the Progress of Literature and General Improvement in Scotland During the Greater Part of the Eighteenth Century

Front Cover
T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1814 - Lawyers

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 141 - Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of back-gammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends ; and when after three or four hours...
Page 420 - But I will punish home: No, I will weep no more. In such a night To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure. In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril! Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all, — O! that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that.
Page 421 - Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm ! How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness defend you From seasons such as these...
Page 140 - Where am I, or what ? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return ? Whose favour shall I court, and whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me, and on whom have I any influence, or who have any influence on me ? I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.
Page 88 - Pure as the expanse of heaven I thither went With unexperienced thought and laid me down On the green bank to look into the clear Smooth lake that to me seemed another sky. As I bent down to look just opposite A shape within the watery gleam appeared Bending to look on me. I started back It started back but pleased I soon returned Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks Of sympathy and love.
Page 366 - I have long been of opinion that the foundations of the future grandeur and stability of the British Empire lie in America; and though, like other foundations, they are low and little now, they are nevertheless broad and strong enough to support the greatest political structure that human wisdom ever yet erected.
Page 138 - When I look abroad, I foresee on every side dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny, and detraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance.
Page 126 - ... absolute and formal obligation, in point of prudence and of interest, to act upon that presumption or low probability, though it be so low as to leave the mind in very great doubt which is the truth. For surely a man is as really bound in prudence to do what upon the whole appears, according to the best of his judgment, to be for his happiness, as what he certainly knows to be so.
Page 425 - The letter, as I live, with all the business I writ to his holiness. Nay then, farewell ! I have touch'd the highest point of all my greatness : And, from that full meridian of my glory, I haste now to my setting. I shall fall Like a bright exhalation in the evening, And no man see me more.
Page 349 - Whereas the system of our courts of equity is a laboured connected system, governed by established rules, and bound down by precedents, from which they do not depart, although the reason of some of them may perhaps be liable to objection.

Bibliographic information