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John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.

Page 528

 
 
Henry Peter, Lord Brougham. (1778–1868) (continued)
 
5486
    In my mind, he was guilty of no error, he was chargeable with no exaggeration, he was betrayed by his fancy into no metaphor, who once said that all we see about us, kings, lords, and Commons, the whole machinery of the State, all the apparatus of the system, and its varied workings, end in simply bringing twelve good men into a box.
          Present State of the Law, Feb. 7, 1828.
5487
    Pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. 1
5488
    Death was now armed with a new terror. 2
 
Paul Moon James. (1780–1854)
 
5489
    The scene was more beautiful far to the eye
  Than if day in its pride had arrayed it.
          The Beacon.
5490
    And o’er them the lighthouse looked lovely as hope,—
  That star of life’s tremulous ocean.
          The Beacon.
 
Charles Miner. (1780–1865)
 
5491
    When I see a merchant over-polite to his customers, begging them to taste a little brandy and throwing half his goods on the counter,—thinks I, that man has an axe to grind.
          Who ’ll turn Grindstones. 3
 
Note 1.
The title given by Lord Brougham to a book published in 1830. [back]
Note 2.
Brougham delivered a very warm panegyric upon the ex-Chancellor, and expressed a hope that he would make a good end, although to an expiring Chancellor death was now armed with a new terror.—Thomas Campbell: Lives of the Chancellors, vol. vii. p. 163.

Lord St. Leonards attributes this phrase to Sir Charles Wetherell, who used it on the occasion referred to by Lord Campbell.

From Edmund Curll’s practice of issuing miserable catch-penny lives of every eminent person immediately after his decease, Arbuthnot wittily styled him “one of the new terrors of death.”—Carruthers: Life of Pope (second edition), p. 149. [back]
Note 3.
From “Essays from the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe,” Doylestown, Pa., 1815. It first appeared in the “Wilkesbarre Gleaner,” 1811. [back]