"DAVENPORT is good but heavy, BARRETT rants like a raving French radical.

" <Speak, discourse, expatiate, descant, comment, argue, persuade, plead, lecture, preach, harangue, rant, roar, spout, thunder, declaim, harp>.

The author's determination to avoid rant did not hinder his frequently adopting an inflated style; while professing to follow the ancient rules, he forgets the warning of Horace so far as to permit the groans of the tortured Foscari to be heard on the stage.

How hartsome is't to see the rising plants, To hear the birds chirm o'er their pleasing rants! How halesom 'tis to snuff the cauler air, And all the sweets it bears, when void of care!

but there is some truth in that rant of a mad poet, that there is a pleasure in being mad, which none but madmen know.

Noble rant, they say, it

Long has a race of heroes fill'd the stage, That rant by note, and through the gamut rage; In songs and airs express their martial fire, Combat in trills, and in a fugue expire: While, lull'd by sound, and undisturb'd by wit, Calm and serene you indolently sit,

The miser, trembling, locked his chest; The vision frowned, and thus address'd: 30 'Whence is this vile ungrateful rant? Each sordid rascal's daily cant.

[Footnote 15: Speech that is little but rant, and scarce related to the sense, is hardly better than a noise; it might, for the purposes of art, as well be a sound inarticulate.

Nay, and thoul't mouth, Ile rant as well as thou.

[Footnote 9: The moment it is uttered, he recognizes and confesses to the rant, ashamed of it even under the cover of his madness.

Into such a consciousness comes the rant of Laertes.

LIFE.[205] Burns's life is "a life of fragments," as Carlyle called it; and the different fragments are as unlike as the noble "Cotter's Saturday Night" and the rant and riot of "The Jolly Beggars."

Among others "A cast-off Dame, who of Intrigues can judge, Writes Scandal in RomanceA Printer's Drudge! Flush'd with Success, for Stage-Renown she pants, And melts, and swells, and pens luxurious Rants.

" Now, it can scarcely be denied, that the good Doctor was guilty of a certain amount of weakness in listening patiently to all this rant.

Not that the rant was very blamable in a lad of eighteen; for have we not all, while we are going through our course of Shelley, talked very much the same abominable stuff, and thought ourselves the grandest fellows upon earth on account of that very length of ear which was patent to all the world save our precious selves; blinded by our self-conceit, and wondering in wrath why everybody was laughing at us?

In this the genius of Hood seemed to hold a very festival of antics, oddity, and mirth; all his faculties seemed to rant and riot in the Saturnalia of comic incongruity.

Mere drunken rant!

We players shall scarce plead guilty to that charge, Who think a house can never be too large: Griev'd when a rant, that's worth a nation's ear, Shakes some prescrib'd Lyceum's petty sphere; And pleased to mark the grin from space to space Spread epidemic o'er a town's broad face.

"What kind of love is this that slinks in hiding, preaches of friendship for its own ends and rants of philosophy?

19.An is sometimes a conjunction, signifying if; as, "Nay, an thou'lt mouthe, I'll rant as well as thou.

The poet there says, "His hero, whom you wits his bully call, Bates of his mettle, and scarce rants at all; He's somewhat lewd, but a well-meaning mind, Weeps much, fights little, but is wondrous kind.

He is listened to by thousands when he rants in the garden of the Palais Royal; he is hand in glove with Danton; he divides attention with Robespierre; he is a power in himself.

There is also another Particular, which may be reckoned among the Blemishes, or rather the false Beauties, of our English Tragedy: I mean those particular Speeches, which are commonly known by the Name of Rants.

The high-priest rants and roars.