"Scribbler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... incessant call, They mount, they shine, evaporate, and fall. On ev'ry stage the foes of peace attend, Hate dogs their flight, and insult mocks their end. Love ends with hope, the sinking statesman's door Pours in the morning worshipper no more; For growing names the weekly scribbler lies, To growing wealth the dedicator flies; From ev'ry room descends the painted face, That hung the bright palladium of the place; And, smok'd in kitchens, or in auctions sold, To better features ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... unearthly—majestic!" she said half to herself. "And once I almost felt inclined to sympathize with a Transatlantic scribbler, who compared the Revelation to what he termed a wholesale jewelry show. He was a townsman who had never crossed the Rockies—and if there are glories like this on earth, what must the ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... discusses the learning of Shakespeare, and easily shows that he was full of mythological lore. So was all Elizabethan literature. Every English scribbler then knew what most men have forgotten now. Nobody was forced to go to the original authorities- -say, Plato, Herodotus, and Plutarch—for what was accessible in translations, or had long before been copiously decanted ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... woman who ever wrote was more criticized, more spied upon, more lied about, than Charlotte. It was as if the singular purity and poverty of her legend offered irresistible provocation. The blank page called for the scribbler. The silence that hung about her was dark with challenge; it was felt to be ambiguous, enigmatic. Reserve suggests a reservation, something hidden and kept back from the insatiable public with its "right to ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... if it be here worth while to mention a pretty warfare between Dryden and Edward Ravenscroft,[25] an unworthy scribbler, who wrote plays, or rather altered those of Shakespeare, and imitated those of Moliere. This person, whether from a feud which naturally subsisted between the two rival theatres, or from envy and ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... folly, because I reserved that charge for Weber, I unhappily in the present case ascribed it to madness, for which I pray God to forgive me, since the blow has fallen heavily when I really thought it would not be felt. I considered Lamb as a thoughtless scribbler, who, in circumstances of ease, amused himself by writing on any subject. Why I thought so, I cannot tell, but it was the opinion I formed to myself, for I now regret to say I never made any inquiry upon the subject; ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... these notices, which appeared, by the way, in a very filthy little newspaper, a certain scamp, guided by wretched gossip and baseless rumours about my chats in our prison, called me a "zealot and liar." Enraged by the insolence of the miserable scribbler, my friends wanted to prosecute him, but I persuaded them not to do it. Vice is ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... took it with her to her cottage in Grass Valley. There she soon found a use for it. A journalist, in a column account of her career, was ungallant enough to finish by enquiring "if she were the devil incarnate?" As the simplest method of settling the problem, "Lola summoned the impertinent scribbler and gave him such a hiding that he had no ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... says our critic, ''tis more accurately and perfectly drawn up than the Bodleian Library at Oxford is by Dr. Hyde, for the Quaker does not confound one man with another as the scholar does.' Francis Bugg, he adds, 'the scribbler against them,' had a better collection of their writings than any of the brethren; 'but I think I have read in some of his rhapsodies that he either gave or sold it to ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... thoughts,—here also are the innocent quills of the white heron, as yet unstained by colored writing-fluid whether black, red, gold, silver, or purple! Mark you, most illustrious bard, the touching helplessness and purity of these meek servants of a scribbler's fancy! ... Blank papyrus and empty quills! Bethink you seriously whether it were not better to leave them thus unblemished, the simple products of unfaulty Nature, than use them to indite the wondrous things of my lord's imagination, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... gifts, the famous doctrine of supply and demand is so thoroughly carried out. We raise, however, no hue and cry after 'poor trash.' Neither have we the blood-thirsty wish to run to ground the panting scribbler, or to adorn ourselves with the glories of his 'brush.' Let those who countenance him by reading his works, and who can reconcile the purchase thereof with their consciences, answer to their fellow men for the inevitable consequences. But ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... such exquisite authors as Moore that are doomed to consume the oil of future antiquaries. Many a poor scribbler, who is now, apparently, sent to oblivion by pastrycooks and cheese-mongers, will then rise again in fragments, ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... a counter invective of unusual ferocity from some unknown scribbler, is the expression of a sentiment which, sound enough within limits, Byron pushed to an extreme. He had a rooted dislike, of professional litterateurs, and was always haunted by a dread that they would claim equality with him on the common ground of authorship. He aspired ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... on the Day of the Ten Martyrs of Crete, when the storm lasted for a whole day and night—do you remember?—the marshal's clerk was lost, and turned up here, the hound.... Tfoo! To be tempted by the clerk! It was worth upsetting God's weather for him! A drivelling scribbler, not a foot from the ground, pimples all over his mug and his neck awry! If he were good-looking, anyway—but he, tfoo! he is as ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... books] library, bibliotheca^. press &c (publication) 531. [complete description] definitive work, treatise, comprehensive treatise (dissertation) 595. [person who writes a book] writer, author, litterateur [Fr.], essayist, journalism; pen, scribbler, the scribbling race; literary hack, Grub-street writer; writer for the press, gentleman of the press, representative of the press; adjective jerker^, diaskeaust^, ghost, hack writer, ink slinger; publicist; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Every scribbler of the day who has a Perryian pen in hand, is pleased to exercise it on the decline of the drama; one of the legitimate targets of penny-a-liners. But how inadequately are the goose quills, and ostrich quills, phoenix quills, and roc quills, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... the page of his scribbler began to spread out a widening tail, eyed and starred like a peacock's; and, when the eyes and stars of its indices had been eliminated, began slowly to fold itself together again. The indices appearing and disappearing were ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... satirist, a hired buffoon, A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon. Condemned to drudge, the meanest of the mean, And furbish falsehoods for a magazine. English Bards ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... your whole faith upon them, Jonathan. If some fine day a Republican spellbinder, or a Democratic scribbler, tries to upset you and prove that Socialists are all liars and false prophets, just tell him the figures are quite unimportant to you, that you don't care to know just exactly how much of the wealth the richest one per cent. gets and how little of it the poorest fifty ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... Areopagite and Saint Maddalena dei Pazzi; Saint Denys in matter, Saint Maddalena in manner. As a writer, no doubt she is not supreme, and the poverty of her borrowed style is sometimes painful; still, considering that she lived in the seventeenth century, she was at any rate not a mere scribbler of vapid aspirations, like most of the prosy pietists ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... we can hope to pass muster as Christians and gentlemen beyond our own borders? O free Demus! O wise Demus! O virtuous Demus! Will you betake yourself to cleanly, and well-ordered ways at the bidding of this scribbler?" Thus "they eat, and eke they swear;" vowing all the time that they "will horribly revenge." No doubt, however, the bitter pill of foreign animadversion, though distasteful to the palate, relieves ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... from again reminding the reader how far inferior is the pleasure of perusing the descriptions of new lands, especially when attempted by an unskilled pen, to that which the explorer himself experiences. All are here on an equal footing; the most finished writer and the most imperfect scribbler are on the same level; they are equally capable of the exquisite enjoyment of discovery, they are equally susceptible of the feelings of delight that gush upon the heart as every forward step discloses fresh prospects, and brings a still more new horizon, if I may so speak, to view. ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... duped into sending Custance a love-letter, telling her that he seeks only her fortune, and that he will annoy her in every way after marriage. On discovering the deception, he determines to take vengeance on the scribbler who wrote ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... herself that even in stories no author would dare—not even the veriest amateur scribbler—would presume to affront intelligent readers by introducing such a coincidence as this ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... course, in consequence of the publication of articles disparaging a club of his originating, known as the "British and Foreign Institute." A Jew clothes-man, named Hart, obtained a small sum as damages from "Punch." But Alfred Bunn, lessee of Drury Lane Theater, libretto-scribbler, and author of certain trashy theatrical books, though most vehemently "pitched into," resorted to other modes than legal redress. He produced a pamphlet of a shape and appearance closely resembling his tormentor, filled not only with quizzical, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Mr Goldy! you are wondering what we are now doing, and speculating upon the scribbler with arch eyes and elevated crest, as if you would know the subject of his lucubrations. What the wiser or better wouldst thou be of human knowledge? Sometimes that little heart of thine goes pit-a-pat, when a great, ugly, staring contributor thrusts his ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... others. Of his exact observations on human life he has left a proof, which would do honour to the greatest names, in a small pamphlet, called "The Author to be Let," where he introduces Iscariot Hackney, a prostitute scribbler, giving an account of his birth, his education, his disposition and morals, habits of life, and maxims of conduct. In the introduction are related many secret histories of the petty writers of that time, but sometimes mixed with ungenerous reflections ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... his work has about it a softness bordering on effeminacy, which leads us to believe that his conception of the poet's art is rather imperfect. It is only in caricature that we discover the poet as a sighing, long-haired scribbler of gushing flights of infantile awe or immature adoration. Earnestness, dignity, and at times, sonorous stateliness, become a good poet; and such thoughts as are generally suggested by the confirmed use of "Oh", "Ah", "dear", "little", ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... wrath of womankind by inserting the following advertisement in his paper: "Just published and Sold by the Printer hereof, HOOP PETTICOATS, Arraigned and condemned by the Light of Nature and Law of God."[138] Many a scribbler hiding behind some Latin pen name, such as Publicus, poured forth in those early papers his spleen concerning woman's costume. Thus in 1726 the New England Weekly Journal published a series of essays on the ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... Aha!—and they think to put me to use, puppets and lay figures! it is I who put them to use! Hark ye, Lionel, you are nearer akin to these fine folks than I knew of. Promise me one thing: you may become of their set, by right of your famous Mr. Darrell; if ever you hear an artist, musician, scribbler, no matter what, ridiculed as a tuft-hunter,—seeking the great, and so forth,—before you join in the laugh, ask some great man's son, with a pedigree that dates from the Ark, 'Are you not a toad-eater too? Do you want political influence; do you stand contested elections; do ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... character that had it. As to Settle, whom you mention, he belonged to my lord mayor, not to the King. Eusden was a person of great hopes in his youth, though at last he turned out a drunken person. Dryden was as disgraceful to the office from his character, as the poorest scribbler could have been from his verses. The office itself has always humbled the professor hitherto (even in an age when kings were somebody), if he were a poor writer by making him more conspicuous, and ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... while knights and squires rode out to war, and fought and conquered or fought and fell over the possession of a nook in a forest, or a title, or a smaller matter still, with what scorn and contempt did they not look down upon the wretched little scribbler, the man of mere letters and jargon, half-clothed in untanned hides, his only weapon an inkhorn at his belt, his pennon the feather of a goosequill! How they laughed at him, calling him an atom or a flea, good for nothing! 'He does nothing, he cannot even collect ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... to his beautiful home in the country to pass a Sunday. It was an odd thing for Mr. Stokes to do, for I could little interest a brilliant and educated man like him. The reason for my receiving such an honor was a communication I had written for the "Pittsburgh Journal." Even in my teens I was a scribbler for the press. To be an editor was one of my ambitions. Horace Greeley and the "Tribune" was my ideal of human triumph. Strange that there should have come a day when I could have bought the "Tribune"; but by that time the pearl had lost its luster. Our air castles are ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... of an amateur or of an artist inferior to himself, to whose work he has frequently imparted a vitality of which it would have been destitute but for the interposition of his hand. He was ready, moreover, to execute woodcuts for a song-book or the political skits of any scribbler of his time, whether on the ministerial or the popular side mattered little to him. It was therefore not unnatural that doing "just what was suggested or thrown in his way," Lockhart should come to the erroneous conclusion that the artist had "no plan," "no ambition," and "not much industry." ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... not mount to Borgia heights without making enemies. The evil tale was taken up in all its foul trappings, and, upon no better authority than the public voice, it was enshrined in chronicles by every scribbler of the day. And for four hundred years that lie has held its place in history, the very cornerstone of all the execration that has been heaped upon the name of Borgia. Never was vengeance more terrible, far-reaching, and abiding. It is only in this twentieth century ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... believe. Well, then—no, don't draw your hands away—about this money, for I'm perfectly sober and desirous of telling you the truth. You have the right to know. One thing led to another, but the first of it was like this. I've always been a scribbler in my lazy moments, as you know, but perhaps you can't be expected to know that I have put care and strong thought, art and heart both, into some verse that I occasionally would take out and look over, and then lock away again. How could I, forlorn and degraded, an outcast from ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... if hostile criticism pains or enrages you as it seems to do such other authors as I have known. M. Savarin, for instance, sets down in his tablets as an enemy to whom vengeance is due the smallest scribbler who wounds his self-love, and says frankly, "To me praise is food, dispraise is poison. Him who feeds me I pay; him who poisons me I break on the wheel." M. Savarin is, indeed, a skilful and energetic administrator to his own reputation. ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sweet in this world is balanced by its bitter, I wonder that these worthy characters were not lampooned by some sharp-set scribbler—whose only chance of getting perusers for his work, and thereby bread for his larder, was by the novelty and impudence of his attacks. Any thing new and preposterous is sure of drawing attention. Affirm that you see a man standing upon one leg, on the pinnacle of Saint Paul's[336]—or ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... A contemptible scribbler, of whom I have learned no more than that, after having disgraced and deserted the clerical character, he picks up in London a scanty livelihood by scurrilous lampoons under a feigned name, has ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... that not all are ignorant) are, indeed, well practised in abuse, and have long learned to call mathematicians and astronomers cheats and charlatans. They freely used their vocabulary for the benefit of De Morgan, whom they denounced as a scurrilous scribbler, a defamatory, dishonest, abusive, ungentlemanly, ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... The book has been read as a collection of essays and stories and dialogues only pulled together by the binder's tapes; as otherwise disjointed, fragmentary, decousue, a "piebald monstrous book," a sort of kous-kous, made out of the odds and ends of a scribbler's note-book. Some have liked some morsels, others other morsels: it has been a matter of the luck of the fork. Very few, one only to my knowledge, can have seen the thing as it presented itself to my flattering eye—not as a pudding, not as a case of confectionery even, but as a little ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... in it beyond what might germinate in the brain of a washerwoman.' He then proceeds to call the author by such elegant names as 'lickspittle,' 'beggarly skittler,' jackass, ninny, haberdasher, 'fifty-fifth rate scribbler of gripe-visited sonnets,' and 'namby-pamby writer in twaddling albums kept by the mustachioed widows or bony ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... be pleased to hear first," said Wildrake, "how this honest gentleman saw the devil to-night look through a pane of yonder window, and how he thinks he had a mighty strong resemblance to your worship's humble slave and varlet scribbler? Would you but hear this, sir, and just sip a glass of this very recommendable ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... two companions, the one had voted for the cow-buyer, but the other for the scribbler upon parchment, and they discussed their action without heat, gently and ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... reason,' said he, eagerly. 'I shall only be too glad to explain to you all that may seem anomalous or mysterious to a stranger; especially at a time like this, when our doings are sure to be canvassed by every scribbler who ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... for one word in your majesty's hand-writing—" "A most impertinent woman!" cried the king, walking with rapid strides up and down my room.— "She has dared not to believe me on my word! Writing!—signature! She mistrusts me as she would the lowest scribbler of France. A writing! My signature! My grandfather, Louis XIV, repented having given his to Charost. I will not commit a similar error." "But, sire, when a prince has a real desire to keep his word, it is of little import whether he gives it in writing." ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... apart from this consideration, a very fine tune had been put to it by a doctor of music;[9] a romance had been founded upon it by a man of eminence; it was made the subject of a play, of an opera, and of a pantomime; it had been claimed by others; a sequel had been written to it by some scribbler, who professed to have composed the whole ballad; it had been assigned an antiquity far beyond the author's time; the Society of Antiquaries had made it the subject of investigation; and the author had been advertised for in the public prints, a reward being offered for the discovery. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... cultivate her pupil's talent for poetry. Excellence in the poetic art cannot be obtained without a degree of application for which a girl in her situation could not have leisure. To encourage her to become a mere rhyming scribbler, without any chance of obtaining celebrity or securing subsistence, would be folly and cruelty. Early prodigies, in the lower ranks of life, are seldom permanently successful; they are cried up one day, and cried ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... character having been lampooned by some obscure scribbler, who could not be discovered, the ministry, in consequence of her complaint, ordered no fewer than five-and-twenty abbes to be apprehended and sent to the Bastille, on the maxim of Herod, when he commanded the innocents ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... you I can afford the luxury of a quiet unobtrusive life of self-indulgence," said he laughing, "and I mean to have it. You know I like writing," he added after a pause of some minutes, "I have been a scribbler for years. If I am to come to the fore at all ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... obtain it by this conformity of their invention with real history! It is only a barbarous taste that requires this stimulant of a national interest to be captivated by beautiful things; and it is only a scribbler who borrows from matter a force to which he despairs of giving ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... are even more numerous in the metropolis than lawyers or doctors. They are of all classes, from the great author of world-wide fame to the veriest scribbler. The supply is very largely in advance of the demand, and as a consequence, all have to exert themselves to get along. A writer in the World estimates the annual receipts of New York authors at about one million of dollars, and the number of writers at 2000, which ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... most egregious scribbler; and so tormented with violent fits of printing, that he even printed lists and catalogues of his friends. I have even seen at the end of one of his works a list of names of those persons who had given him books. He printed his works at his own expense, as the booksellers ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... What! the heiress of so many millions, brought up doubtless in the expectation of the most brilliant worldly alliance, the heiress with the world presently at her feet, would she look at a lawyer's clerk and an unsuccessful scribbler? Oh, the vanity of youth and the conceit ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... no right to expect anything more polite from him. He snubs even his popular contributors, and of course he would not be particularly courteous to an unknown scribbler. Perhaps some day I may make him regret that letter; and such a triumph will more than compensate for this mortification. One might think that all literary people, editors, authors, reviewers, would ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... what can Traulus[2] mean By bellowing thus against the Dean? Why does he call him paltry scribbler, Papist, and Jacobite, and libeller, Yet cannot ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... concords and inconsequential criticisms, because the writer of them has the character of the first or second Greek or Latin scholar in the kingdom. If you do not swear to the truth of these spurious credentials, you are ignorant and malicious, a quack and a scribbler—flagranti delicto! Thus the man who can merely read and construe some old author is of a class superior to any living one, and, by parity of reasoning, to those old authors themselves: the poet or prose-writer of true and original genius, by the courtesy of custom, 'ducks ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... phantom minister of a phantom monarchy. But his long and troubled life was drawing to a close. To the last, however, his intellect retained all its keenness and vigour. He learned, in the ninth year of his banishment, that he had been accused by Oldmixon, as dishonest and malignant a scribbler as any that has been saved from oblivion by the Dunciad, of having, in concert with other Christchurchmen, garbled Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. The charge, as respected Atterbury, had not the slightest foundation: for he was not one ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... issued this morning, and I am empowered to arrest you. You can look at it for yourselves; you've both seen them before." He opened the paper and spread it out for them to read. "Walter Pennold, alias William Perry, alias Wally the Scribbler, number 09203 in the Rogues' Gallery. First term at Joliet, for forgery; second at Sing Sing for shoving the queer. This warrant only holds you as a suspicious character, Pennold, but we can dig up plenty ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... little spot that, black and round, Lies near the crimsoned fire-orb's rim. O blessed, beauteous evening star, Well named for her whom earth adores,— The Lady of the dove-drawn car,— I know thee in thy white simar; But veiled in black, a rayless spot, Blank as a careless scribbler's blot, Stripped of thy robe of silvery flame,— The stolen robe that Night restores When Day has shut his golden doors,— I see thee, yet I know thee not; And canst thou call thyself ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... rests mainly on his achievements as a precursor of the Revolution, to the eighteenth century he was as much a poet as a reformer. The whole of Europe beheld at Ferney the oracle, not only of philosophy, but of good taste; for thirty years every scribbler, every rising genius, and every crowned head, submitted his verses to the censure of Voltaire; Voltaire's plays were performed before crowded houses; his epic was pronounced superior to Homer's, Virgil's, and Milton's; his epigrams were transcribed by every letter-writer, and got by ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Mr. Scribbler," said the constable (whose son, as everyone knows, had treacherously deserted Mademoiselle de Piennes, to whom he was betrothed, to espouse Diana of France, daughter of the mistress of certain high personages and of the king), "who made thee so bold as to ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... that Cockaigne dictates to its servitors, and the vulgar indecorums which that Grub Street Empire rejoiceth to applaud, told the truth of the volume, and recommended a change of manners[14] and of masters to the scribbler. Keats wrote on; but he wrote indecently, probably in the indulgence ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... in spite of its faults, nay, perhaps, partly in consequence of them, was received with loud applause; and the author—only twenty-three years of age—"awoke one morning, and found himself famous;" for although his name was not attached to the poem, it soon transpired. One Rolt, an obscure scribbler, then in Ireland, claimed the authorship, transcribed the poem with his own hand; nay, according to Dr. Johnson, published an edition with his own name, and was invited to the best tables as the ingenious Mr. Rolt. His conversation ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... mention the name of that odious man!" almost shrieked Madame Carolina, forgetting the dignity of her semi-regal character in the jealous feelings of the author. "How can you mention him! A scribbler without a spark, not only of genius, but even of common invention. A miserable fellow, who seems to do nothing but clothe and amplify, in his own fantastic style, the details of ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... actions. I am careless of personal fame. Look at me, boy! As I stand before you I am Homer, I am Shakespeare ... I am every cosmic manifestation in art. Men have doubted in each incarnation my individual existence. Historians have more to tell of the meanest Athenian scribbler or Elizabethan poetaster than of me. The radiance of my work obscured my very self. I care not. I have a mission. I am a servant of the Lord. I am the ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... those times, was rife. Mylne was a friend of Paterson, the City solicitor, an apt scribbler and a friend of Lord Bute, who no doubt favoured his young countryman. For, being a Scotchman, Johnson no doubt took pleasure in opposing him, and for the same reason Churchill, in his bitter poem on the Cock Lane ghost, after ridiculing Johnson's credulity, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... or as he is commonly called. "Beau" Lovelace, a brilliant novelist, critic, and pitiless satirist. For him society is a game,—a gay humming-top which he spins on the palm of his hand for his own private amusement. Once a scribbler in an attic, subsisting bravely on bread and cheese and hope, he now lords it more than half the year in a palace of fairy-like beauty on the Lago di Como,—and he is precisely the same person who was formerly disdained and flouted by fair ladies because his clothes were ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... and sciences may sooner be perfected and better learned; and public historiographers, as amongst those ancient [611]Persians, qui in commentarios referebant quae memoratu digna gerebantur, informed and appointed by the state to register all famous acts, and not by each insufficient scribbler, partial or parasitical pedant, as in our times. I will provide public schools of all kinds, singing, dancing, fencing, &c. especially of grammar and languages, not to be taught by those tedious precepts ordinarily used, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... know there is no mistake," roared a voice which was accustomed to command. "He's been trying to hoodwink you. Watch the surprise in his face when he sees me, the cursed meddler and scribbler. It would be a pleasure to witness his hanging. Come, show him ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... folly we yearly practise, of flying into passion with some inferior English writer, who caricatures our faults, and tells dull jokes about his tour through the land, has only the effect to exalt an insignificant scribbler into notoriety, and give a nominal value to his recorded impertinence. If the mind and heart of the country had its due expression, if its life had taken form in a literature worthy of itself, we should pay little regard to the childish tattling ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... displacing his captain, the captain of becoming general, the clerk of supplanting the chief of his department, the new-fledged attorney of being admitted to the high court, the cure of being ordained a bishop, the shallow scribbler of seating himself on the legislative bench. Offices and professions vacated by the appointment of so many upstarts afford in their turn a vast field for the ambition of the lower classes."—Thus, step by step, owing to ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of "special" writing was his own character, as it was revealed to me from day to day in intimate working contact with him under these conditions. Here, as I soon learned, and was glad to learn, was no namby-pamby scribbler of the old happy-ending, pretty-nothing school of literary composition. On the contrary he sounded, for the first time in my dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane, penetrating, non-sentimental note so common to the best writers ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... in hand a book lately published, by some scoundrel lawyer, on the prerogative; in which is scraped together all the flattery and blasphemy of our old law-books in honour of kings. I presume it is understood, that the court will support the cause of this impudent scribbler." ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... eyes on glory look, When they have got their picture tow'rds a book; Or pompous title, like a gaudy sign, Meant to betray dull sots to wretched wine. If at his title T—— had dropt his quill, T—— might have pass'd for a great genius still. But T——, alas! (excuse him, if you can) Is now a scribbler, who was once a man. Imperious some a classic fame demand, For heaping up, with a laborious hand, A waggon-load of meanings for one word, While A's deposed, and B with pomp restor'd. Some, for renown, on scraps of learning dote, And think ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... and carped at Southey as a "scribbler of all works." He was himself a reader of all works, and without some measure of book-learning and not a little research the force and significance of his various numbers are weakened ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the hinges,' 'a bat,' 'an angel of darkness.' Such epithets sound strangely in our more refined age; but they were then considered essential to faithful dealing. The Bishop in his reply, called 'Dirt wiped off,' beat the tinker in abusive language; he calls Bunyan 'A wretched scribbler,' 'grossly ignorant,' 'most unchristian and wicked,' 'a piece of proud folly,' 'so very dirty a creature that he disdains to dirt his fingers with him,' 'Bunyan can no more disgrace him than a rude creature ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... set Edbury on to face him with the Dauphin. You don't fancy it came of the young dog "all of himself," do you? Why, it was clever! He trots about a briefless little barrister, a scribbler, devilish clever and impudent, who does his farces for him. Tenby 's the fellow's name, and it's the only thing I haven't heard him pun on. Puns are the smallpox of the language;—we're cursed with an epidemic. By gad, the next time I meet ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to the Turks for their fetters, and to the Franks for their broken promises and lying counsels. They are to be grateful to the artist who engraves their ruins, and to the antiquary who carries them away; to the traveller whose janissary flogs them, and to the scribbler whose journal abuses them. This is the amount of their obligations ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... "Look here, Scribbler, what do you mean by this, 'Among the most beautiful girls was Alderman Horatio Dingley'? Old Dingley ain't a girl, you idiot! He's one of our ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... forgot a kindness, as more than one entry in his will abundantly testifies. He was absolutely without malice, and there are several instances of his repaying a slight with a generous deed or a thoughtful action. His practical tribute to the memory of Werner, who called him a fop and a "scribbler of songs," has been cited. His forbearance with Pleyel, who had allowed himself to be pitted against him by the London faction, should also be recalled; and it is perhaps worth mentioning further that he put himself to some trouble to get a passport for Pleyel during the long wars of ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... consider those moral principles—those rules of conduct which the race has built up, guided by an unerring instinct of self-preservation. Humanity defends herself against those who attempt to subvert her; and none, neither Napoleon nor the wretched scribbler such as you ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... hand Rip scooped up the scribbler while the Com-tech half turned to make adjustments to the controls, picking up a speaker to call the ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... become as arrant a scribbler as somebody else. I begin to like writing. A great compliment to you, I assure you. I see one may bring one's mind to any thing.—I thought I must have had recourse, when you and my brother left us, and when I was married, to the public amusements, to fill up my leisure: and as ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... majority of man kind fancied that a statement made in print was far more likely to be true than one made orally. Then he who stood up in his proper person and uttered his facts on the responsibility of his personal character, was far less likely to gain credit than the anonymous scribbler, who recorded his lie on paper, though he made his record behind a screen, and half the time as much without personal identity as he would be found to be without personal character, were he actually seen and recognised. In our time, ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... no doubt such faithful freedom that made that defamatory scribbler say, in his Presbyterian Eloquence, that he said in a sermon at Galashields, that cess paying to Charles II. was as bad as sacrificing to devils, see ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... afterwards, Boyse had spent the money and was found in bed, covered only with a blanket, through two holes in which he passed his arms to write. Boyse, it appears, when still in this position would lay out his last half-guinea to buy truffles and mushrooms for his last scrap of beef. Of another scribbler Johnson said, "I honour Derrick for his strength of mind. One night when Floyd (another poor author) was wandering about the streets at night, he found Derrick fast asleep upon a bulk. Upon being suddenly awaked, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production. How many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the materials ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... in erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it has been laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly every newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world. Every scribbler, almost, has had his little fling at it, at one time or another; I had mine fifteen years ago. The book gets out of print, every now and then, and one ceases to hear of it for a season; but presently ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... partially superseded alike the frivolous taste of the monarchy, and the rabid ferocities of revolutionary authorship. The Bulletins of the "Grande Armee" told a daily tale of romance, to which the brains of a Parisian scribbler could find no rival, and men with the sound of falling thrones echoing in their ears, forgot the whispers of low ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... course, obvious enough. He cares nothing, for example, for what we call the beauties of nature. There is scarcely throughout his books one description showing the power of appealing to emotions through scenery claimed by every modern scribbler. In passing the Alps, the only remark which one of his characters has to make, beyond describing the horrible dangers of the Mont Cenis, is that 'every object which here presents itself is excessively miserable.' His ideal scenery is a 'large and convenient country-house, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... protested in dismay. "I should perish with shame if His Excellency were to be so beset by every sorry scribbler." ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... had gone out. No matter; he would write in the cold. It was mere amanuensis work, penning at the dictation of his sarcastic demon. Was he a sybarite? Many a poor scribbler has earned bed and breakfast with numb fingers. The fire in his body would serve him ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... football player of the past or his colleagues and successors, I will introduce them to you, and in figurative language allow them to tell their own unvarnished tale. My last advice, however, to you, my old friends, before leaving you to the tender mercies of a scribbler, is not to answer all the questions he thinks proper to put. Please don't tell him what you heard or saw after leaving the football field clinging to my sole and instep, of my love intrigues, my stolen interviews with blue-eyed Annie, and when she jilted ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... "dressed-stone mansion," etc. But I found out then, and never have forgotten since, that we never read the dull explanatory surroundings of marvelously exciting things when we have no occasion to suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; we skip all that, and hasten to revel in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... only as a friend, a lively companion who kept him amused. No doubt, too, he knew her record and secretly despised her. Even if he did not care for her and told her so—even if he were willing to marry her, what then? She would be a fool to listen to him. What kind of a life could he, a penniless scribbler, give her compared with the comforts and gifts which Willard Brockton was able ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... for me, my present occupation. Still my honest fame is my dearest concern; and a thousand times have I trembled at the idea of those degrading epithets that malice or misrepresentation may affix to my name. I have often, in blasting anticipation, listened to some future hackney scribbler, with the heavy malice of savage stupidity, exulting in his hireling paragraphs—"Burns, notwithstanding the fanfaronade of independence to be found in his works, and after having been held forth to public view and to public estimation as a man of some genius, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... I see, in my Greek and Latin studies. I continue to pursue them steadily and actively. I am now reading Demosthenes with interest and admiration indescribable. I am slowly, at odd minutes, getting through the stupid trash of Diodorus. I have read through Seneca, and an affected empty scribbler he is. I have read Tacitus again, and, by the bye, I will tell you a curious circumstance relating to that matter. In my younger days I always thought the Annals a prodigiously superior work to the History. I was surprised to find that the ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... altogether without pretensions to that high office—and really see no great charms either in the salary or the connexion—and, for the glory of writing such verses as we have now been reviewing, we do not believe that there is a scribbler in the kingdom so vile as to think it a thing to ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... not know," said I, blushing as became a young scribbler, "how you should be so well ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... essay, every entrefilet, is destined to pass, however swiftly, through the minds of some portion of the public, and to colour, however transiently, their thoughts. When any subject falls to be discussed, some scribbler on a paper has the invaluable opportunity of beginning its discussion in a dignified and human spirit; and if there were enough who did so in our public press neither the public nor the parliament would find ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... containing Irving's books suggests but little of that personal quality to which he owes his significance as an interpreter of America to the Old World. This son of a narrow, hard, Scotch dealer in cutlery, this drifter about town when New York was only a big slovenly village, this light-hearted scribbler of satire and sentiment, was a gentleman born. His boyhood and youth were passed in that period of Post-Revolutionary reaction which exhibits the United States in some of its most unlovely aspects. Historians like Henry Adams and McMaster ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... run higher, or assumed an aspect more startling to a European, than during my residence in the States; and though it is not my intention to deal largely with a subject which every brother scribbler, who spends his six months here, arranges to his great ease and perfect satisfaction, yet, whenever I think my object of making the people known may be advanced by giving a smack of their politics, I shall do so with perfect ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... before he died he addressed the following letter to the Earl of Oxford, which I transcribe from the original. It is curious to observe how the veteran and unhappy scribbler, after his vows of retirement from the world of letters, thoroughly disgusted with "all human learning," gently hints to his patron, that he has ready for the press, a singular variety of contrasted ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... You think this cruel? take it for a rule, No creature smarts so little as a fool. Let peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break, Thou unconcerned canst hear the mighty crack: Pit, box, and gallery in convulsions hurled, Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world. Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through, He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew: Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain, The creature's at his dirty work again, Throned in the centre of his thin designs, Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines! Whom have ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... a finger in the pie, as sure as there must be meal for bread to be made. But it is a new thing to me that on this occasion he should be Euergetes' tool. Old Philammon told me all about it. Just now the messenger came back from Memphis, and brought a paltry scrap of papyrus on which some wretched scribbler had written in the name of Philometer, that nothing was known of Irene at court, and complaining deeply that Asclepiodorus had not hesitated to play an underhand game with the king. So they have no idea whatever of voluntarily releasing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Progress of the Herrnhuters"; and Whitefield himself had read the book and had allowed it to poison his mind {1753.}. The author was Henry Rimius.130 He had been Aulic Councillor to the King of Prussia, had met Moravians in Germany, and now lived in Oxenden Street, London. For two years this scribbler devoted his energies to an attempt to paint the Brethren in such revolting colours that the Government would expel them from the country. His method was unscrupulous and immoral. He admitted, as he had to admit, that such English Brethren as he knew were ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... when I am at the mercy of every scribbler in the Palais Royal who covers waste paper with nonsense, or of every ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... possessed by poets in respect of reputation; because their work is accessible to almost everyone. If it had been possible for Sir Walter Scott to be read and criticised by only some hundred persons, perhaps in his life-time any common scribbler would have been preferred to him; and afterwards, when he had taken his proper place, it would also have been said in his honor that he was in advance of his age. But if envy, dishonesty and the pursuit of personal aims are added to the incapacity of those hundred persons who, in the name ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... feels himself to be inspired; Victor Hugo is a god; Madame Sand is a god; that tawdry man of genius, Jules Janin, who writes theatrical reviews for the Debats, has divine intimations; and there is scarce a beggarly, beardless scribbler of poems and prose, but tells you, in his preface, of the saintete of the sacerdoce litteraire; or a dirty student, sucking tobacco and beer, and reeling home with a grisette from the chaumiere, who is not convinced of the necessity of a new "Messianism," and will hiccup, to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Richard Johnson, the author of the well-known romance of the Seven Champions, and Delony, the writer of Jack of Newbury's Life, and the "Gentle Craft," who lived in the time of James and Charles.[61] One Martin Parker was a most notorious ballad scribbler in the reign of Charles ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the great is too often repeated to be real: no man thinks {35} much of that which he despises." And so once more to Pope's victims. If they would have kept quiet, he says, the Dunciad would have been little read: "For whom did it concern to know that one or another scribbler was a dunce?" But this is what the dunces are the last people to realize: indeed, "every man is of importance to himself, and therefore, in his own opinion, to others"; so the victim is the first to "publish injuries or misfortunes which had never been known unless related by himself, and ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... line, Nejdanov flung down the pen. "Well, now you must try and sleep and forget all this nonsense, scribbler!" he exclaimed, and lay down on the bed. But it was long ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... of kangaroos! In Central Park you see giraffes—and tortoises too. Central Park has more talent than this scribbler of yours.' ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... country; since otherwise they break the very covenant by which we hold our power there. Even if these Institutes had been arbitrary, which they are not, they might have been excused as the acts of conquerors. But, my Lords, he is no conqueror, nor anything but what you see him,—a bad scribbler of absurd papers, in which he can put no two sentences together without contradiction. We know him in no other character than that of having been a bullock-contractor for some years, of having acted fraudulently in that capacity, and afterwards ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... In my 'Old Benchers of the Inner Temple,' I have delivered myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems that in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scribbler who had called my good identity in question, (see P.S. to my 'Chapter on Ears,') I profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who does not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... themselves that there was a fiery quality in what they wrote. But how many poets have fed themselves in vain on the same hopes, have thought themselves unduly contemned and slighted! There is hardly a scribbler of verse who has not the same delusion, and who has not in chilly and comfortless moments to face the fact that he does not probably count for very much, after all, in the scheme of things. How hard it is in the case of Keats and Shelley to feel that they had not some inkling of all the desirous ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... love. Indeed, many are the young men who, on turning from Blackstone and Kent in a comfortable law office to Scott and Byron, have lost a lawyer's living, only to grasp the empty air of failure in the fascinating garret of the scribbler. But "nothing succeeds like success," and genius has a way of changing rules and forcing the gates of fortune. And when we see the proof that a fresh genius has once more wrought the miracle of reversing all the fine logic of facts, so as to bring success and fame out of ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... be skeptical as to the value of any criticism by a man who pours contempt over the pictures of Puvis de Chavannes, stigmatizes one of Beethoven's purest creations as "corrupting," and calls Shakspere a "scribbler"! ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... fat-nose! To take an icicle, a rag for a personage of rank! Now his coach bells are jingling all along the road. He is publishing the story to the whole world. Not only will you be made a laughing-stock of, but some scribbler, some ink-splasher will put you into a comedy. There's the horrid sting. He won't spare either rank or station. And everybody will grin and clap his hands. What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself, oh you! [Stamps his feet.] I would give it to ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... and the condition in which he found her, tells how he impressed upon the keeper and Mrs. Dean the dire results to themselves of allowing her to escape, and mentions the annoyance of Parson Swinton, "a great favourite of Miss Blandy's," at the "freedom" taken with his name by some anonymous scribbler. This was not the first time that reverend gentleman had to complain of the "liberty" of the Press, as we learn from certain curious pamphlets of 1739, from which it would seem that his reputation had no very sweet savour in contemporary nostrils. Mr. Sharpe, writing to Mr. Wise on 6th December, ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... vehicles for music, and vehicles withal of such a clumsy fabric, that poor Euterpe, when she took her nightly airings, reminded the spectator of Punch's wife in a wheelbarrow; every expense was incurred, and every scribbler taken into pay, except poor ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... closely resembled the cauchoises still worn by those of Normandy; and which excited the displeasure of Dan John in so great a degree as to have induced him to invoke the aid of his Muse in effecting their abolition. It seems no subject escaped that eternal scribbler's attention; and if his abilities had equalled his disposition, he would probably have become the Juvenal of his age. Upon this occasion, however, he appears to have soared on rather a higher wing than usual; and the moral of his lay is the truism which has since ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... accused of giving license to what a palled public and dyspeptical reviewers will call for the thousandth time a cacoethes; word of cabalistic look, unknown to Dr. Dilworth. Truly, my masters, though disciple I be of venerable Martinus the Scribbler; though, for aught I know, himself in progress of transmigration; still, I submit, my cornucopia is not crammed with leaves and chopped straw; and if, in utter carelessness, the fruit is poured out pell-mell after this desultory fashion, yet, I wot, it is fruit, though whether ripe or crude, or ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... ingratitude like that, I wash my hands of him—I say deliberately—I wash my 'ands. Why, he might have worked on at his law, and I'd a' set him up and put him in the way of making his living in a few years; made him a credit to all connected with him, I would! But he's chosen to turn a low scribbler, and starve in a garret, which he'll come to soon enough, and that's what I get for trying to help a nephew. Well, it will be a lesson to me, I know that. Young men have gone off since my young days; a lazy, selfish, conceited lot they ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... newspaper is the very voice of all that is worst in our civilisation. If ever there is in one column a pretence of higher teaching, it is made laughable by the base tendency of all the rest. The newspaper has supplanted the book; every gross-minded scribbler who gets a square inch of space in the morning journal has a more respectful hearing than Shakespeare. These writers are tradesmen, and with all their power they cry up the spirit of trade. Till the influence of the newspaper declines—the newspaper ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... other hemisphere of the terrestrial globe." Alas! poor Sir Thomas, who must needs babble the foolish hopes which wiser men reticently keep cloistered in their own bosoms! who confessed what every scribbler thinks, and so gets laughed at,—as wantons are carried to the round-house for airing their incontinent phraseology in the street, while Blowsalinda reads romances in her chamber without blushing. Modesty is very well; but, after all, do not the least self-sufficient of us hope for something more ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... born, not made, some scribbler said, And every rhymester thinks the saying true: Better unborn than wanting labor's aid: Aye, all great poets—all great men—are made Between the hammer and the anvil. Few Have the true metal, many have the fire. No slave or savage ever proved a bard; Men have their bent, but labor its reward, ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... him. She hunted up somewhere a middle-aged man with dark complexion, spots all over his face, and a dark-blue surtout patched on the elbows, a regular official scribbler. He blacked his boots with tar, wore three pens behind his ear, and a glass vial tied to his buttonhole with a string instead of an ink-bottle: ate as many as nine pies at once, and put the tenth in his pocket, and wrote so many slanders of all sorts on a single sheet of ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... eye of the pardonable Master he read—having the sort of divination that belonged to his talent—that this personage had ever a store of friendly patience, which was part of his rich outfit, but was versed in no printed page of a rising scribbler. There was even a relief, a simplification, in that: liking him so much already for what he had done, how could one have liked him any more for a perception which must at the best have been vague? Paul Overt got up, trying to show his compassion, but at the same instant he found ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... can be to any thing,) but because he is, perhaps, the only man who, under the relations in which he and I stand, or stood, with regard to each other, would have had the liberality to act thus; none but a great soul dared hazard it. The height on which he stands has not made him giddy:—a little scribbler would have gone on cavilling to the end of the chapter. As to the justice of his panegyric, that is matter of taste. There are plenty to question it, and glad, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... consecrates his ashes, till it illumines his tomb." After this the reader, who may never have heard of the name of Percival Stockdale, must be told that there exist his own "Memoirs of his Life and Writings."[A] The memoirs of a scribbler who saw the prospects of life close on him while he imagined that his contemporaries were unjust, are instructive to literary men. To correct, and to be corrected, should be their daily practice, that they may ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the expression in a young girl's face. You forget what a miserable surface-matter this language is in which we try to reproduce our interior state of being. Articulation is a shallow trick. From the light Poh! which we toss off from our lips as we fling a nameless scribbler's impertinences into our waste-baskets, to the gravest utterance which comes from our throats in our moments of deepest need, is only a space of some three or four inches. Words, which are a set of clickings, hissings, lispings, and so on, mean very little, compared to tones and expression of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... one's political opponent a 'Whirling Coxcomb,' or a 'pensioned scribbler,' was a very mild amenity in eighteenth century party warfare; and the abuse of such small fry as these anonymous pamphleteers might be wholly disregarded did it not show Fielding's prominence, during these anxious times, as a strenuous Hanoverian, and ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... can no more be called the imitator of Shakespeare than Shakespeare the imitator of Ford. There were perhaps few other points of resemblance between these two men than that which the universal and inevitable influence of their age produced. And this is an influence which neither the meanest scribbler nor the sublimest genius of any era can escape; and which I have ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of my stories to Miss Sylvia. In my own excuse I must allege that she tempted me to do it. I did not go around with manuscripts under my arm, inflicting them on defenceless females. But Miss Sylvia had discovered that I was a magazine scribbler, and moreover, that I had shut myself up in my room that very morning and perpetrated a short story. Nothing would do but that I read it ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... foremost, the famous club whose meeting place, with all its art treasures, is now a heap of ashes, but which was formerly 'Frisco's head-centre of mirth. Founded by Henry George, the world-famous single tax advocate, when he was an impecunious scribbler on the San Francisco Post, it grew to be the choicest place of resort in ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... Eglantine, since you are he! Peg for clothes, scribbler of epigrams, now to end and for ever your ...
— The Harlequinade - An Excursion • Dion Clayton Calthrop and Granville Barker
... name is grown To every lewd pretender of the town. Troth, I could pity you; but this is it, You find, to be the fashionable wit; These are the slaves whom reputation chains, Whose maintenance requires no help from brains. For, should the vilest scribbler to the pit, Whom sin and want e'er furnish'd out a wit; Whose name must not within my lines be shown, Lest here it live, when perish'd with his own;[4] Should such a wretch usurp my Congreve's place, And choose out wits who ne'er ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the feelings and sensations connected with the writing of my first book and with my first contact with the sea," Mr. Conrad set down what is really nothing less than a Testament of all that is most precious in human life. And the sentiment with which one lays it by is that the scribbler would gladly burn every shred of foolscap he had blackened and start all over again with truer ideals for his craft, could he by so doing have chance to meet the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... de-lic-ious," and they had teased their mother ever since to make one for their new friend. But they stopped short at sight of the light and dark head so close together over something they did not know about, and when Martha drew nearer and informed the dark-haired scribbler that she had "brought it," Kate merely nodded her head and ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... their points of view. To his son Henry, the quality that distinguished his father from all the other figures in the family group, was that, in his opinion, Charles Francis Adams possessed the only perfectly balanced mind that ever existed in the name. For a hundred years, every newspaper scribbler had, with more or less obvious excuse, derided or abused the older Adamses for want of judgment. They abused Charles Francis for his judgment. Naturally they never attempted to assign values to either; that was the children's affair; but the traits were ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... most fiercely resented any attempt to improve their deportment. If Cooper had possessed an acute sense of humor he would never have written Home as Found, nor would he have dignified with a reply the attack of every scribbler who assailed him. But he took all criticisms seriously, and felt it a solemn duty, in justice to himself and to the principles for which he stood, to defend himself against all and sundry. There ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... thought to have injured him in a tender point. He had already conceived an affection for the Countess-Dowager of Warwick, who had been disposed to encourage the addresses of the Secretary, but looked coldly on those of the mere man and scribbler Joseph Addison, who, to crown his misfortunes at this time, had resigned his Fellowship, suffered some severe pecuniary losses of a kind, and from a quarter which are both obscure, and was trembling lest he should be deprived of his small Irish office too. Yet, although reduced ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... differed. In "Not Really a Coward," Vincent Devereux had rescued the earl's daughter from a fire, whereas in "Hilda's Hero" it was the peppery old father whom Tom Slingsby saved. Singularly enough, from drowning. In other words, I, a very mediocre scribbler, had effected seven times in a single month what the powers of the universe could not manage once, even ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... have met or seen or corresponded with about five hundred of the three thousand set down in "Men of the Time," and been kindly classed among them, it was worth while to mention my meetings with many of them. Had the humblest scribbler of the age of Elizabeth so much as mentioned that he had ever exchanged a word with, or even looked at, any of the great writers of his time, his record would now be read with avidity. I have really never in my life run after such men, or sought to make ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Whim and Madness of the Town, A Farce without Contrivance, without Sense Should run to the Astonishment of Mankind; Think how you will be read in After-times, When Friends are not, and the impartial Judge Shall with the meanest Scribbler rank your Name; Who would not rather wish a Butler's fame, Distress'd, and poor in every thing but Merit, Than be the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... this encouragement the author of it sent an occasional contribution direct to that paper over the pen-name "Josh." He did not care to sign his own name. He was a miner who was soon to be a magnate; he had no desire to be known as a camp scribbler. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... had not been sealed I should not have had the face to deliver it. He asked me for the next day to a supper composed of men only, and for the day after that, to a supper at which women as well as men would be present. I went with him to the library where we saw M. Felix, an unfrocked monk, more of a scribbler than a scholar, and a young man named Schmidt, who gave good promise, and was already known to advantage in the literary world. I also had the misfortune of meeting here a very learned man of a very wearisome kind; he knew the names of ten thousand shells by heart, and I was obliged ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt |
