"Biographer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very quaint carved demon. It is just off the High Street and near St. Michael's Church. Lewes cannot claim the honour of seeing the birth of The Rights of Man (a rather dubious honour in those days); the book was written while Paine stayed with his biographer, Thomas ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... club met at the Turk's Head from 1763 to 1783. Among the most notable members were Johnson, the arbiter of English prose; Oliver Goldsmith; Boswell, the biographer; Burke, the orator; Garrick, the actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter. Among the later members were Gibbon, the historian; and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... portrait of himself; I can only hope that I shall not do it by accident. There may be a sense in which that portrait can be called inaccurate. It may even be true that "lies—damned lies" {1} helped to make it. But nobody else knows anything like as much about the truth, and a peddling biographer's mouldy fragment of plain fact may be far more dangerous than the manly lying of one who was in possession of all the facts. In most cases the fact—to use an equivocal term—is dead and blown away in dust while Borrow's impression is as green as grass. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... Darius, our distrust is excited of the other virtues of the writer's hero, and, what is still worse, of his own ideas of moral dignity. But even such praise, whatever its amount, is much for one whose memory his biographer has to clear from the suspicion of being privy to the assassination ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... this most remarkable passage, which at once solves many interesting and perplexing problems, was published eighty years ago by Macpherson. But, strange to say, it attracted no notice, and has never, as far as I know, been mentioned by any biographer of Marlborough. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... very few men is found the power of sustained conception necessary to the successful composition of so prolix a tale; and certainly I have never betrayed the ownership of such a qualification. The tale, nevertheless, is an irrevocable fact; and my present business it is to be its biographer. ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... nothing. He never acquired a taste for books, although vanity prompted him to treasure throughout his public career all correspondence and other documentary materials that might be of use to future biographers. Indeed, he picked as a biographer first his military aide, John Reid, and later his close friend, John H. Eaton, whom he had the satisfaction in 1829 ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... to have highly important and intimate relations with Lincoln during the Civil War, records his first impressions of him in a few vivid sentences. "Beyond the experiences of the journey from Boston to Chicago," says Andrew's biographer, "beyond even the strain and excitement of those hours in caucus and convention, was the impression made on him by Lincoln as he saw him for the first time." Andrew was one of the committee of delegates who went to Springfield ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... cotton factory near his home, as a "piecer." Out of his first week's wages he saved enough to purchase a Latin grammar, and set himself resolutely to the task of thoroughly mastering its contents, studying for the most part alone after leaving his work at eight o'clock in the evening. His biographer tells us that he often continued his studies until after midnight, returning to work in the factory at six in the morning. Livingstone was not brighter than other boys, nor precocious in anything ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... earnings of several years, "Take these, General," said she, "you need them and I can do without them." This offering of a benevolent heart, accompanied with words of kindness and encouragement, General Greene accepted with thankfulness. "Never," says his biographer, "did relief come at a more propitious moment; nor would it be straining conjecture to suppose that he resumed his journey with his spirits cheered and lightened by this touching proof of woman's devotion to the cause of ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... of a romance united to the integrity of history. The work is written by a lady of considerable learning, indefatigable industry, and careful judgment. All these qualifications for a biographer and an historian she has brought to bear upon the subject of her volumes, and from them has resulted a narrative interesting to all, and more particularly interesting to that portion of the community ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... them above a hundred years ago." After stating what he believes to be the causes of this state of things, he propounds his plan of training young natives, as missionaries to their countrymen, and educating "the youth of our English plantations," to fill the pulpits of the colonial churches. His biographer is doubtless correct in the opinion, that "it was on the savages, evidently, that ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... Racket's designates Milton as the author of a profane and lascivious poem entitled Paradise Lost. The biographer of our divine bard ought to have made a collection of all such passages. A German writer of a Life of Salmasius acknowledges that Milton had the better in the conflict in these words: 'Hans (Jack) von Milton—not ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... poetry, or grandeur, or beauty in the Indian character, at least till such traits were pointed out by others. I do abhor an Indian story. Yet no writer can be more secure of a permanent place in our literature than the biographer of the Indian chiefs. His subject, as referring to tribes which have mostly vanished from the earth, gives him a right to be placed on a classic shelf, apart from the merits which will sustain ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... him still—only the more that lapse of time has deepened by experience, inner and outer, the sense of truth and of purity he ever communicated to me in life, and courage and fidelity to conscience. I feel it to be honor enough and joy enough for a life-time that I am his first biographer, though but a late born child and of merit entirely insignificant. The literary work is, indeed, but of home-made quality, yet it serves to hold together what is the heaven-made wisdom of a great teacher of men. It will be found ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... the Plots of the novels are arranged in the order in which the books should be read, as indicated by their Author in Le Docteur Pascal, and confirmed by his biographer, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... you mention that we have not a particular account of St. Paul's conversion written by his own hand? Do you think that what a man writes of himself is more to be depended on, than what his biographer writes of him? Your suggestions on this subject seem to indicate, at least, some scruples respecting this conversion, but not in a way to show where the ground of scruples lies. What is there for me to answer? ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... "There seemed," says this biographer, "to be not much to add to our knowledge of London until his books came upon us, but each in this respect outstripped the other in its marvels. In Nickleby, the old city reappears under every aspect; and whether warmth and light ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... THE elegant Biographer of Collins, in his affecting apology for that unfortunate genius, remarks, "That the gifts of imagination bring the heaviest task on the vigilance of reason; and to bear those faculties with unerring rectitude, or invariable propriety, requires a degree of firmness, and of cool attention, ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... the plot of "Therese Raquin," according to M. Paul Alexis, Zola's biographer, came from a novel called "La Venus de Gordes" contributed to the "Figaro" by Adolphe Belot and Ernest Daudet—the brother of Alphonse Daudet—in collaboration. In this story the authors dealt with the murder of a man by his wife and her paramour, followed ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... Galen, and then extended the work by including a collection of the writings of all preceding medical authors. When this work was finally completed it consisted of seventy books under the title "Collecta Medicinalia." He wrote also for his friend and biographer Eunapius two books on diseases and their treatment, and treatises on anatomy and on the works of Galen. He earned for himself the title of the Ape of Galen. In the "Life of Oribasius," by Eunapius, we find that Julian created Oribasius Quaestor of ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... though, as its adherents maintained, of independent origin. He was a sturdy, energetic man. As a boy he had shown his principles by steadily thrashing the son of a dissenting minister till he became the terror of the young schismatic. He played (his biographer says) in 1747 for Surrey against all England, and at the end of the match gave his bat to the first comer, saying, 'I will never have it said of me, Well struck, Parson!' He was ordained a few days later, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... happy with his own quiet fate, his apparently humdrum existence, which provided no material for any biographer, the fate of the unknown man who does not wish to ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... intellect that Augustin was, for this unique type of the Christian, the most perfect and the most admirable perhaps that has ever been seen—the author can only repeat in all humility what was said fifteen hundred years ago by the Bishop of Guelma, Augustin's first biographer: ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... therefore attempted, not indeed to supply what is missing at the beginning and end, but to restore those leaves which have been torn out of the middle, imitating, as accurately as I was able, the language and manner of the old biographer, in order that the difference between the original narrative, and my own interpolations, might not ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... Wright, the second of four sons, was born May 4, 1872, in Rome, Oneida County, New York. From an earlier biographer ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... Street, must have later conveyed to her some intelligence of the way in which her work had been welcomed by the public. But if he did, it is no longer discoverable. Mr. Austen Leigh, her first and best biographer, could find no account either of the publication or of the author's feelings thereupon. As far as it is possible to judge, the critical verdicts she obtained were mainly derived from her own relatives and intimate friends, and some ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... appears again as on authoress; but it is in the lowly attitude of a biographer commemorating the virtues of a departed sister and predecessor in the same field of Christian devotion—the devoted and sainted woman whose places "Fanny Forester" herself now occupies as a wife and ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... on the premises" was the writer of these notes, who, earlier in the year, had become his biographer, and, in the course of time, his daily companion and friend. The farm mentioned was one which he had bought at Redding, Connecticut, where, later, he built the house ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fact which has procured us such accurate records of their history. All the events in the daily life of the religious establishments were carefully recorded, and the manuscript archives of the convents and brotherhoods of that period are rich in materials for the biographer. ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... find that he had one true defender here," pursued the biographer of Plooie. "Though he could not fight in the ranks there was use for him. There was use for all true sons of Belgium in those black days. He was made driver of a—a charette; I do not know if you have them in your great city?" He paused, and I guessed that the rumble of heavy wheels on the ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of one who had experience in a similar undertaking: "The biographer of our day is too often perplexed in the toil of his researches after adequate information for composing the history of men who were an honor to their age, and of whom posterity is anxious to know whatever may be added to increase the need of that veneration, ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... 7th of June, Richard Henry Lee, in behalf of the Virginia delegates, submitted in Congress resolves on independence, a confederation, and foreign alliances. His biographer says that 'tradition relates that he prefaced his motion with a speech,' portraying the resources of the colonies and their capacity for defence, dwelling especially on the bearing which an independent position might have on foreign Powers, and concluded by urging ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... striking testimony comes from one who never saw him; it was written three years after his death, when his brother's biography appeared. It was Carlyle, the biographer of Cromwell and Frederick the Great, the most famous man of letters of the day, who wrote in 1856: 'The fine and noble qualities of the man are very recognizable to me; his piercing, subtle intellect turned all to the practical, giving him just insight into ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... promise of a new day. The one is the record of a tender farewell, in the other the sense of parting has almost been absorbed in the forward look to the new phase of relationship which is to begin. If Luke had been a secular biographer, the critics would have been full of admiration at the delicacy of his touch, and the fineness of keeping in the two narratives, the picture being the same in both, and the scheme of colouring being different. But as he is only an Evangelist, they fall foul of him for his 'discrepancies.' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... short the arctic-alpine theory (Scharff, "European Animals", page 128). I find no suggestion of his having hit upon it in his correspondence with Darwin or Hooker. Nor am I aware of any reference to his having done so in his later publications. I am indebted to his biographer, Professor Schroter, of Zurich, for an examination of his earlier papers with an equally negative result.) Assuming that local races have derived from a common ancestor, Hooker's great paper placed ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... from the moon, and cast in the form of a dream to overcome the practical difficulties of the hypothesis of visiting the moon. Other writings in large numbers were left unpublished. No attempt at a complete edition of Kepler's works was made for a long time. One was projected in 1714 by his biographer, Hantsch, but all that appeared was one volume of letters. After various learned bodies had declined to move in the matter the manuscripts were purchased for the Imperial Russian library. An edition was at length brought out at Frankfort by C. Frisch, in eight volumes, appearing at intervals ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... England? On this point we have no trustworthy authority. The English writers say nothing about the whole matter; to the Norman writers this point was of no interest. No one mentions this point, except Harold's romantic biographer at the beginning of the thirteenth century. His statements are of no value, except as showing how long Harold's memory was cherished. According to him, Harold formally laid the matter before the Witan, and they ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... of letters he must be judged primarily as a biographer, and, if this be done, it will be found that Borrow has achieved the great object of biography; he has transmitted a great personality. The blemishes in his work are not particularly hard to find. Inadvertently we may have been betrayed into indicating one or two of them. But ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... of this success is to be found in the fact that he had no other object or purpose than to do justice to his subject. He is entirely free from self-reference. There is not in the remotest corner of his mind a wish to magnify his office and draw attention from the theme of the biography to the biographer himself. He permits himself no digressions, he obtrudes no needless reflections, enters into no profitless discussions: he is content to unfold the panorama of Mr. Choate's life, and do little more than point out the scenes and passages as they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Territorial Legislature, the Constitutional Convention, and the State Senate. The younger James Lemen was on terms of intimacy with Abraham Lincoln at Springfield, and {p.09} his cousin, Ward Lamon, was Lincoln's early associate in the law, and also his first biographer. Various representatives of the family in later generations have attained success as farmers, physicians, teachers, ministers, and lawyers throughout southern Illinois and other sections of ...
— The Jefferson-Lemen Compact • Willard C. MacNaul
... I now begin my story of Wordsworth's life, in words which he himself dictated to his intended biographer. "I was born," he said, "at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on April 7th, 1770, the second son of John Wordsworth, attorney-at-law—as lawyers of this class were then called—and law-agent to Sir James Lowther, afterwards Earl of Lonsdale. My mother was Anne, only daughter of William ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... splendid how he refus'd any compromise to the last. He was curiously antique. In that harsh, picturesque, most potent voice and figure, one seems to be carried back from the present of the British islands more than two thousand years, to the range between Jerusalem and Tarsus. His fullest best biographer justly says of him: ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Kathiawar. He himself was brought up for the Bar and, after receiving the usual English education in India, completed his studies in England, first as an undergraduate of the London University and then at the Inner Temple. His friend and biographer, Mr. H.S.L. Polak, tells us that his mother, whose religious example and influence made a lasting impression upon his character, held the most orthodox Hindu views, and only agreed to his crossing "the Black Water" to England after ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... natural, or rather the necessary and inevitable result of the circumstances to which he was exposed, and nothing more than the every-day issues of human infirmity. If in discharging the office of a biographer, and canvassing the character of the dead, we are compelled to utter truths that will be unwelcome to many a heart, and to speak lightly of the bad members of a profession for the good ones of which we have a high respect, let it be remembered that we do it perhaps reluctantly, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... may not be Walt Whitman's "secret," or, at any rate, the spiritual experience of which the poet's latest biographer, Mr. Emory Holloway, writes? His interesting account of Walt Whitman's Manuscript Note-Books is preceded ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... willing younger brother. Tancred's estate, we are told, was not large enough to feed his two batches of children; that was the reason why they went to seek their fortunes so far off. If they had stayed at home, the estate might possibly have grown; for we are told by their own biographer that it was the nature of the sons of Tancred, when they saw that anybody else had anything, to take it to themselves. Perhaps this dangerous tendency extended only to misbelievers, schismatics, or at least men of other tongues. Otherwise such vigorous annexers of ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... that it takes a great man to interpret the life of a great man then Bushrod Washington made no mistake in the selection of a biographer. For Marshall, under the influence of Washington, came to be nearly as great a man as the character whose life and achievements held his deepest thought for nearly a quarter of a century. Certainly his services ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... biographer of Thomas a Becket, in his Description of London, supposed to be written about the middle of the reign of Henry II, says of this city, "ennobled by her men, graced by her arms, and peopled by a multitude of inhabitants," that "in the wars under King Stephen there went out to a muster of armed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... profession of the law; but, like our own inimitable Shakspere, he picked up "small Latin and less Greek." Having shown an early inclination for painting, they placed him under the tuition of Jacob Van Zwaanenburg, a painter unmentioned by any biographer; he afterwards entered the studio of Peter Lastman, and finally received instruction from Jacob Pinas. The two last had visited Rome, but, notwithstanding, could have given little instruction to Rembrandt, as their works show no proof of their having studied the Italian school to much purpose. ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... According to his biographer, Lord Eldon caused a loud laugh while the old Duke of Norfolk was fast asleep in the House of Lords, and amusing their lordships with "that tuneful nightingale, his nose," by announcing from the woolsack, with solemn emphasis, that the Commons had sent up ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... and erudite jurist, the friend and biographer of the celebrated Lord Jeffrey, has ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... sensible, that the most worthy memorial of thy virtues will be found in those pure records of thy public services which thy own hand has given to the world with all the amiable and affecting simplicity that distinguished thy character, and in the more comprehensive composition of some accomplished Biographer, who may have opportunities and ability to do ...
— The Eulogies of Howard • William Hayley
... receive it. Gifted Hopkins was his mother's idol, and no wonder. She had not only the common attachment of a parent for him, as her offspring, but she felt that her race was to be rendered illustrious by his genius, and thought proudly of the time when some future biographer would mention her own humble name, to be held in lasting remembrance as that of the ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... have erred as flagrantly as lius Verus. George IV., we have understood, was generally escorted from Balkeith to Holyrood at a rate of twenty-two miles an hour. And of his father, the truly kind and paternal king, it is recorded by Miss Hawkins, (daughter of Sir J. Hawkins, the biographer of Johnson, &c.) that families who happened to have a son, brother, lover, &c. in the particular regiment of cavalry which furnished the escort for the day, used to suffer as much anxiety for the result as on the eve of a ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... forgotten, when the means of achieving it were recollected; and the Maid of Orleans was deemed the fit subject of a poem, the wittiest and most profligate for which literature has to blush. Our illustrious Don Juan hides his head when contrasted with Voltaire's Pucelle: Juan's biographer, with all his zeal, is but an innocent, and a novice, by ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Wellington and many other prominent Englishmen, and in her own country was equally distinguished. In the course of one of our numerous conversations she told me that after the death of Edward Everett she loaned his biographer the letters she had received from that distinguished orator. During the latter part of her life she gave up her house in Richmond and came to Washington to reside, where she remained until the end of her life. She left ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... 'angular, vivid, discordant, and yet exquisitely fascinating person,' are full of a similar insight. They contain many of those anecdotes which indicate crises, a thing very different from the merely decorative anecdotes of the ordinary biographer. The book, written by one who has been a good friend to many poets, and to none a more valuable friend than to Patmore, gives us a more vivid sense of what Patmore was as a man than anything except Mr. Sargent's two portraits, and ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Colgan, the renowned Irish scholar, to have been his nephew. What connection the saint had with Scotland is not clear. He may have laboured for a time there under St. Columba, but he became Abbot of Drumhome in Donegal. On the night St. Columba went to his reward, as we are told by that saint's biographer, St. Adamnan, Ernan was favoured with a vision in which the saint's death was revealed to him. St. Ernan died in his Irish monastery at an advanced age in the year 640. The church of Killernan, in Ross-shire, is ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... moralist Dr. S. JOHNSON, his biographer Boswell tells us, "was a man of very nice discernment in the science of cookery," and talked of good eating with uncommon satisfaction. "Some people," said he, "have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... OF THE RETREAT.—Precisely when and why Washington came to a determination in his own mind to retreat has been made the subject of a somewhat nice historical inquiry. Gordon gives one story; Mr. William B. Reed, biographer of Colonel Reed, gives another; and Mr. Bancroft, General Carrington, and others indulge in more or less extended criticisms on the point. Gordon's account is the most probable and ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... Dorrit" was written at a time when the author was busying himself not only with other literary work, but also with semi-private theatricals. John Forster, Charles Dickens's biographer and friend, even had some sort of fear at that time that Dickens was in danger of adopting the stage as a profession. Domestic troubles, culminating a year later in the separation from his wife, also explain ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... but in most they are vague and often unsuspected. The psychologists, whose pretensions are so great and whose actual results are still so small, may perhaps lead, an age or two hence, to the desired knowledge. But the biographer of today must beware of adopting the unripe formulas of any immature science. Nevertheless, he must watch, study, and record all the facts pertaining to his subject, although he cannot explain them. Theodore Roosevelt was a wonderful example of the partnership of mind and body, and any one who ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... be written and his biographer will be one whose good fortune it has been to see much of the "Student" in Bermondsey, the place that was the forcing-house of his development. In the following pages it is proposed only to give an outline of his life, and particularly ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... crimes. She was released on the brother's pledging himself to watch over her; and to this sister, from the age of twenty-one, Charles Lamb sacrificed himself, "seeking thenceforth," says his earliest biographer, "no connection which could interfere with her supremacy in his affections, or impair his ability to sustain and comfort her." The "feverish, romantic tie of love" he cast away in exchange for the "charities of home." Only, from time to time, the madness returned, affecting him too, once; and we ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... advantage of those who may wish to institute the comparison, his biographer, in writing the life of Ormond, deems it a point of honour to extenuate nothing; but to trace, with an impartial hand, not only every improvement and advance, but every ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... storm leaves the ruined ship which, in the days of its magnificence, had ridden the waves with the greatest pride. The fortnight in Copse Hill was the first relief from toil that had come to him since death and fire and defeat had done their worst upon him. His biographer says, "He was as eager as ever to pass the night in profitless, though pleasant, discussions when he should have been trying to regain his strength through sleep." To a later visitor Paul Hayne showed a cherished pine log on which were inscribed the names ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... doing so, of the utter illogicality of any argument drawn from their failure to establish the point he is hammering at, he all at once says, with the most astounding assumption, "having shown that much of what his [Thomson's] biographer deemed genuine admiration, must, in fact, have been blind wonderment—how is the rest to be accounted for?" "Having shown"!!! Why, he has shown nothing but his own arrogance in supposing that his mere ipse ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... departed from among us, and the expectation that his active life will soon find a biographer is so general, that it seems unnecessary on the present occasion to speak at any length concerning him. I knew him well some thirty-five years. In religion a Jew, he was tolerant of all creeds, with equal amenity; his natural parts ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... years of a supremely happy marriage, crowning an early manhood in which love of any kind had, for better or worse, played hardly any part at all. Yet almost nothing in these beautiful and often brilliant lyrics is in any strict sense personal. The biographer who searches them for traits quivering with intimate experience searches all but in vain. Browning's own single and supreme passion touched no fountain of song, such as love sets flowing in most poets and in many ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... memorable war, so that it were against the French, a successful commander-in-chief could do no wrong! Yet here, probably, the matter would have rested; but when, nine years afterwards, Stanier Clarke so little appreciated the duty of a biographer as to relate a transaction susceptible of no excuse, in terms unjustified by the facts, and sought to render his hero immaculate at the expense of others, the excellent officer whose feelings and character had been so cruelly sacrificed, felt ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... thus appropriated at his command, Morse now earnestly resumed the experiments, which a few months later resulted so successfully. Referring to the homeward voyage from Europe, in 1832, his biographer says: ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... estates, not in managing the farms, but in wandering about the fields, and beholding the fowls of the air. The boy inherited much from his father; but, unlike Turgenev, he had the best of all private tutors, a good mother, of whom his biographer says, Elle demeure toujours sa plus ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... first published novel,[128] though by no means the one which has received most attention, is certainly illuminating. Or rather, perhaps one should say that it poses the puzzle which Beyle himself put briefly in the words quoted by his editor and biographer: "Qu'ai-j'ete? que suis-je? En verite je serais bien embarrasse de le dire." To tell equal truth, it is but a dull book in itself, surcharged with a vague political spite, containing no personage whom we are permitted to like (it would be quite possible to like Armance de Zohiloff if we ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... had been. Having all the California seaports, Captain Stockton planned an expedition against Los Angeles before the well-armed Mexican soldiers in the province could be brought together. He landed three hundred and fifty sailors and marines and established a camp at San Pedro. Captain Stockton's biographer says: "There were only about ninety muskets in the whole corps. Some of the men were armed with carbines, others had only pistols, swords, or boarding-pikes. They presented a motley and peculiar appearance, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... If he had any virtues, they are not to be found in the Doctor's picture of him, and it is well for Milton that some sourness in his temper is the only vice with which his memory has been charged; it is evident enough that if his biographer could have discovered more, he would not ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... that I spent in the little shop on the quay. There I filled my mind with him, and there too, at no great cost, I could make a big parcel of these cheap reproductions of his work. This work had been shown in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts as it came from his hand; M. Champfleury, his biographer, his cataloguer and devotee, having poured forth the treasures of a precious collection, as I suppose they would be called in the case of an artist of higher flights. It was only as he was seen by the readers of the comic ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... biographer of this eminent statesman, gives a distinct and interesting account of the difficulties with which, as Chief of the Pope's Council of State, he was called ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... clerk; registrar, registrary[obs3], register; prothonotary[Law]; amanuensis, secretary, scribe, babu[obs3], remembrancer[obs3], bookkeeper, custos rotulorum[Lat], Master of the Rolls. annalist; historian, historiographer; chronicler, journalist; biographer &c. (narrator) 594; antiquary &c. (antiquity) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... done so satisfactorily either to you or myself. I knew much by report of the old chief, and something from personal acquaintance; but my knowledge was not so accurate as to be serviceable to a faithful biographer. I have, therefore, taken sometime to make the necessary enquiries, and satisfy myself ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... reader who is anxious to pursue the character still further, will be gratified with "a few particulars with which his biographer appears to be unacquainted,"—by a Correspondent of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... families of words may be many and complicated. Thus there is a family of graph (or write) words: graphic, lithograph, cerograph, cinematograph, stylograph, telegraph, multigraph, seismograph, dictograph, monograph, holograph, logograph, digraph, autograph, paragraph, stenographer, photographer, biographer, lexicographer, bibliography, typography, pyrography, orthography, chirography, calligraphy, cosmography, geography. There is also a family of phone (or sound) words: telephone, dictaphone, megaphone, audiphone, phonology, symphony, antiphony, euphonious, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... books Reid had in view a more all-embracing purpose than in his first work. The achievement of this purpose, however, required a greater spiritual power than was granted to him. Comparing his later with his earlier work, Reid's biographer, A. Campbell ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... influence of Korolenko on the literary development of Gorky can best be seen in one of the latter's letters to his biographer, Mr. Gorodetsky. "Write this," he says to his biographer, "write this without changing a single word: It is Korolenko who taught Gorky to write, and if Gorky has profited but little by the teaching of Korolenko, it is the fault of Gorky alone. Write: Gorky's first teacher was the soldier-cook ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... tried by statute after statute to suppress the tables at Tunbridge and Bath, thereby only driving the sharpers to new subterfuges. That the Beau was in alliance with sharpers, or, at least, that he was a sleeping partner in the firm, his biographer admits; but it is urged on his behalf that he was the most generous of winners, and again and again interfered to prevent the ruin of some gambler by whose folly he would himself have profited. His constant charity was well known; the money so lightly come by was ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... Her biographer speaks of her activity and efficiency in charitable enterprises, her interest in the cause of education, her visits to the primary schools of Madrid, encouraging and rewarding the pupils, and her patronage ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... named Vincent attacked Quakerism. Joseph Besse, Penn's earliest biographer, says that Vincent was "transported with fiery zeal;" which, as he remarks in parenthesis, is "a thing fertile of ill language." Penn challenged him to a public debate; and, this not giving the Quaker ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... musical programme it is stated that, "the oldest and most aristocratic establishment of its kind in Venice, it can count among its clients, since 1720, Byron, Goethe, Rousseau, Canova, Dumas, and Moor," meaning by Moor not Othello but Byron's friend and biographer, the Anacreon of Erin. How Florian's early patrons looked one can see in a brilliant little picture by Guardi in the National Gallery, No. 2099. The cafe boasts that its doors are never shut, day or night; and I have no doubt that this is true, but I have never ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... acceptable to the people of Massachusetts have been the many articles relating to the history and biography of its storied towns and famous men. Material for articles of equal interest and value, and much of it as yet unused by historian or biographer in sketch or story, abounds in every State of the New England group. It is in order to make better use of this material, that a change is made, as will be seen, not in place, but in scope,—whereby the Bay State ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... Brandenburg and he want their reward. Some 20,000 nimble French souls, evidently of the best French quality, found a home there;—made "waste sands about Berlin into potherb gardens;" and in the spiritual Brandenburg, too, did something of horticulture, which is still noticeable. [Erman (weak Biographer of Queen Sophie-Charlotte, already cited), Memoires pour sevir a l'Histoire den Refugies Francais dans les Etats du Roi de Prusse (Berlin, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... attack him in his chosen position. But he had evidently become so disturbed at the results of his operations that he resolved to strike out in an offensive campaign which would restore all that was lost, and if successful accomplish still more. We have the authority of his son and biographer for saying that his plan was to attack the forces at Shiloh and crush them; then to cross the Tennessee and destroy the army of Buell, and push the war across the Ohio River. The design was a bold one; but we have the same authority for saying that ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... of Dryden with the history of his publications. This he accomplished within a twelvemonth. Sir Walter subsequently edited, upon a similar plan, an edition of the Works of Swift.—Neither of these works can be said to entitle Sir Walter to high rank as a biographer. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... part of the following interesting anecdote of Garrick is unaccountably omitted in his life, by his biographer, Arthur Murphy. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... which had terrified him when a child. He started in his sleep, and frightened the family with his cries. He saw evil spirits in monstrous shapes and fiends blowing flames out of their nostrils. 'Once,' says a biographer, who knew him well, and had heard the story of his visions from his own lips, 'he dreamed that he saw the face of heaven as it were on fire, the firmament crackling and shivering with the noise of mighty ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... north side. Among these were Hemlock, Swan, Chair, Crown and Star Courts. The Row and its vicinity had for many years a notoriously bad reputation. One of the courts off Little Shear Alley was Boswell Court, not, as some have imagined, called after Johnson's biographer. This court was at one time a very fashionable place of residence; Lady Raleigh, the widow of Sir Walter, lived here for ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... the true-born poet; he appears always young, whilst he himself, the oldest of all, surpasses all in the productiveness of his mind. He listened with friendly disposition to my first lyrical outpourings; and he acknowledged with earnestness and cordiality the poet who told the fairy-tales. My Biographer in the Danish Pantheon brought me in contact with Oehlenschl ger, when he said, "In our days it is becoming more and more rare for any one, by implicitly following those inborn impulses of his soul, which make themselves irresistibly felt, to step forward as an artist or ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... Court Chaplain who preached against the Beggar's Opera, which probably will do more good than one thousand sermons of so stupid, so injudicious, and so prostitute a divine." Swift would have quarrelled with his biographer, who gives ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... contain much that is not pure narration. A historian may set forth merely the program of events, but most histories contain besides a large amount of description and explanation. Frequently, too, all of this is but the basis of either a direct or an implied argument. Likewise a biographer may be chiefly concerned with the acts of a man, but he usually finds that the introduction of description and explanation aids him in making clear the life purpose of the man about whom he writes. In shorter histories and biographies, the expository ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... did not know a worse man in the whole band than himself; yet he was then in possession of an inheritance of four thousand a year. "It was the constant custom of that queen," pursues the earl's biographer, "to call out of all counties of the kingdom, the gentlemen of the greatest hopes and the best fortunes and families, and with them to fill the more honorable rooms of her household servants, by which she honored them, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... and kindness had not instantly won my liking, I should still have been glad of the glimpse of the older and statelier Boston which my slight acquaintance with George Ticknor gave me. The historian of Spanish literature, the friend and biographer of Prescott, and a leading figure of the intellectual society of an epoch already closed, dwelt in the fine old square brick mansion which yet stands at the corner of Park Street and Beacon, though sunk now to a variety of business uses, and lamentably changed in aspect. The ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his old friends, he himself, here and there in his works, have furnished us in their letters enough valuable revelations and touching remembrances of the years preceding his literary debut. His worthy biographer, H. Edouard Maynial, after collecting intelligently all the writings, condensing and comparing them, has been able to give us some definite ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... than the more obscure beginnings already recorded. If his own life did not supply enough material we could multiply our characters, as did Dickens, or journey sideways, into little essays, as did Thackeray. His life and his biographer's pen might fail to give interest to such devices, but the plea is now for "realism," which most writers take to mean microscopical examination of minutia. If the physical and psychical emotions of a heroine as she drinks a glass of water can properly be elaborated so as to fill ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... to the most trustworthy traditions- for authentic testimonies on the subject are wanting — was born in 1328; and London is generally believed to have been his birth-place. It is true that Leland, the biographer of England's first great poet who lived nearest to his time, not merely speaks of Chaucer as having been born many years later than the date now assigned, but mentions Berkshire or Oxfordshire as the scene of his birth. So great uncertainty have some felt on the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... character to depreciate his work, that an acknowledged critic like Macaulay could waste time in carefully considering whether Boswell was more fool or more knave, and triumphantly announce that he produced a good book by accident. Probably Boswell did not realise how matchless a biographer he was, though he was not disposed to belittle his own performances. But his unbridled interest in the smallest details, his power of hero-worship, his amazing style, his perception, his astonishing memory and the training he gave it, his superb dramatic faculty, ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson |
