It is very visible, as the Audience is not a little abashed, if they find themselves betrayed into a Clap, when their Friend in the upper Gallery does not come into it; so the Actors do not value themselves upon the Clap, but regard it as a meer Brutum fulmen, or empty Noise, when it has not the Sound of the Oaken Plant in it.

Old Comical Ones, The Hogsheads of Neat Port came safe, and have gotten thee good Reputation in these Parts; and I am glad to hear, that a Fellow who has been laying out his Money ever since he was born, for the meer Pleasure of Wine, has bethought himself of joining Profit and Pleasure together.

A meer bubble; for what's grown common, is no more regarded.

This Fellow looked upon me as a meer Child, he might breed up after his own Fancy; if he kissed my Chamber-Maid before my Face, I was supposed so ignorant, how could I think there was any Hurt in it?

What I spake Gentlemen, was meer compulsion,

Me thinks the meer conceipt of it, should make you Go home sick, and distemper'd; if it do's, I'le send you a Doctor of mine own, and after Take order for your Funeral.

How you are, being taken all together, A meer confusion, and so dead a Chaos, That love cannot distinguish.

I smell a plot, meer conspiracy amongst ye all to defeat me of my Daughter; and if she be not suddenly deliver'd, untainted in her reputation too, the best of France shall know how I am jugled with.

Plung'd for his sense, but found no bottom there; Then writ, and flounder'd on, in meer despair.

The king of Sweden, before their departure from Warsaw, told Horatio that all his officers were gallant men, and it was not his custom to displace any one for meer favour to another; he must therefore wait till the fate of war, or some other accident, made a vacancy, before he could give him a commission, in the mean time, said he, with a great deal of sweetness, you must be content to be only my aid-de-camp.

Forsooth, a new Thought or Conceit dressed up in smooth quaint Language, to make you smile and wag your Head, as being what you never imagined before, and yet wonder why you had not; meer frothy Amusements!

Come Widow come, never stand upon a Knight-hood, 'tis a meer paper honour, and not proof enough for a Serjeant.

They're meer Images, no gentle motion or behaviour in 'em; they'll prattle ye of Primum Mobile, and tell a story of the state of Heaven, what Lords and Ladies govern in such Houses, and what wonders they do when they meet together, and how they spit Snow, Fire, and Hail, like a Jugler, and make a noise when they are drunk, which we call Thunder.

I am rapt with The meer imagination.

I must kill him, And I will do't bravely: the meer joy Tells me I merit in it: yet I must not Thus tamely do it as he sleeps: that were To rock him to another world: my vengeance Shall take him waking, and then lay before him The number of his wrongs and punishments.

2. Sorely he saies: Now, had he set down here Upon the meer kick, 't had been Cowardly.

Many of these flowers, both before and after their season of fecundation, erect their heads perpendicular to the horizon, like the Meadia, which cannot be explained from meer mechanism.

Away, I did bely you, when I charg'd you with The power of doing, ye are meer names only, And even your best perfection, accidental; What ever malady thou art, or Spirit, As some hold all diseases that afflict us, As love already makes me sensible Of half her sufferings, ease her of her part, And let me stand the butt of thy fell malice,

There are forty-eight lochs of fresh water; but many of them are very small,meer pools.

These are small Devils, that care not who has mischief, so they make it; they live upon the meer scent of dissention.

In one of the drawers, there were a few old daguerreo-types in velvet cases and a yellowed meer-schaum pipe.

In short, a meer Courtier, a meer Soldier, a meer Scholar, a meer any thing, is an insipid Pedantick Character, and equally ridiculous.

I would not have a light head, nor one laden with too much learning, as, they say, this Charles is, that makes his Book his Mistris; Sure there's something hid in this old man's anger, that declares him not a meer sot. Bri.

to preserve this medium, between mouthing, and meaning too little, to keep the attention more pleasingly awake, by a tempered spirit, than by meer vehemence of voice, is of all the master-strokes of an actor the most difficult to reach.

This produced a paper-war between him and Mr. Tindall, the continuator of Rapin, by which Mr. Budgell's character considerably suffered; and this occasioned his Bee's being turned into a meer vindication of himself.