"Commentator" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... late Sir James Allan Park have been published, and are well worth reading; but this Stevens was not George Steevens, the Shakespearian commentator, but William, Treasurer of Queen Anne's Bounty, one of the most meek ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... the slightest, still it is a denial. For we must not, even in a trivial matter, turn aside from the path of truth. No one of the ancients ever maintained it—prophet, or apostle, or evangelist, or commentator—down to these our times, when this so perplexing doctrine proceeded from that most learned man aforesaid. His was a mind of no common cultivation; first in the preliminaries of literature in Greek education, then as a master of dialectics and argumentation. Moreover, he was most grave ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Canal balconies, the most beautiful of which is, I think, that which belongs to this little palace, no one has written more prettily than that early commentator, Coryat. "Again," he says, "I noted another thing in these Venetian Palaces that I have very seldome seen in England, and it is very little used in any other country that I could perceive in my travels, saving only in Venice and other Italian ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... fitting in this place to say a few words on the subject of George's pretension to be the originator of two of Ainsworth's stories, because the truth of his assertion has been questioned by a late commentator.[94] George's statements simply amount to this: that so far as the illustrations to the "Miser's Daughter" and "The Tower of London" are concerned, the author wrote up to his designs. We have considered Ainsworth's answers to this statement, and find that although ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... one imagines, even if punctuated. In the course of a few centuries, I am convinced, every line of Mallarme will have become perfectly clear, as a corrupt Greek text becomes clear in time. Even now a learned commentator could probably do much to explain them, at the cost of a life-long labour; but scholars only give up their lives to the difficult authors of a remote past. Mallarme can afford to wait; he will not be forgotten; ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of an old commentator: 'This will enlighten those who doubt if the Vestals wore their hair.' 'I infer,' said the doctor, 'that I have doubted in good company; but it is clear that the Vestals did wear their ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... only fragmentary echoes in our concert-rooms. Then came "Feuersnot," which reached us in the same way, but between which and the subject which is to occupy me in this chapter there is a kinship through a single instrumental number, the meaning of which no commentator has dared more than hint at. It is the music which accompanies the episode, politely termed a "love scene," which occurs at the climax of the earlier opera, but is supposed to take place before the opening of the curtain in the later. Perhaps I shall recur ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... sealed up to his son, with strict orders not to read or publish it till after his death; but from this time he never saw his son, and it is probable that he left the work unfinished. Afterwards, however, some copies of it were circulated; from which his commentator, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... commentator, if I rightly recollect, Who, discussing the Equator, treated it with disrespect; But his temperate impeachment, though it showed a mental twist, Pales before the drastic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... canst not fling what thou wouldst, play thy cast as well as thou canst. Everything, saith [3830]Epictetus, hath two handles, the one to be held by, the other not: 'tis in our choice to take and leave whether we will (all which Simplicius's Commentator hath illustrated by many examples), and 'tis in our power, as they say, to make or mar ourselves. Conform thyself then to thy present fortune, and cut thy coat according to thy cloth, [3831]Ut quimus ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... of Proclus, Marinus, Asclepiodotus, Ammonius, Zenodotus, Isidorus, Hegias, Damascius, are not regarded as prominent. Damascius was the last head of the school at Athens. He, Simplicius, the masterly commentator on Aristotle, and five other Neoplatonists, migrated to Persia after Justinian had issued the edict closing the school. They lived in the illusion that Persia, the land of the East, was the seat of wisdom, righteousness ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... contemporaries have yet recognised; because I regard him as the first social regenerator of the day—as the very master of that working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of things; because I think no commentator on his writings has yet found the comparison that suits him, the terms which rightly characterise his talent. They say he is like Fielding: they talk of his wit, humour, comic powers. He resembles Fielding as an eagle does a vulture: Fielding could stoop ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... As a commentator he was capital, could he but have suppressed his rancour against those who had preceded him in the task, but a misconstruction or misinterpretation, nay, the misplacing of a comma, was in Gifford's eyes a crime worthy of the most severe ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... of the great Haroun Alraschid among the true believers. The two parties being confronted before him, each produced a book of accounts, written in a language and character that would have puzzled any but a High Dutch commentator, or a learned decipherer of Egyptian obelisks. The sage Wouter took them one after the other, and having poised them in his hands, and attentively counted over the number of leaves, fell straightway into a very great doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a word; at length, laying his ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... men not what might not be in the Bible, but what was certainly therein; which dealt with the Bible after the only fair and trustful method; that is, to consider it at first according to the theory which it sets forth concerning itself, before trying quite another theory of the commentator's own invention; and which combined with a courageous determination to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that Christian spirit of trust, reverence and piety, without which all intellectual acuteness is but blindness ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... 'Leaves' are delightful reading; the English is remarkably pure and graceful; page after page reads as if it were original. No commentator, Catholic or Protestant, has ever surpassed St. John Chrysostom in the knowledge of Holy Scripture, and his learning was of a kind which is of service now as it was at the time when the inhabitants of a great city hung ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... of Florence.] Landino's note exhibits a curious instance of the changeableness of his countrywomen. He even goes beyond the acrimony of the original. "In those days," says the commentator, "no less than in ours, the Florentine ladies exposed the neck and bosom, a dress, no doubt, more suitable to a harlot than a matron. But, as they changed soon after, insomuch that they wore collars up to the chin, covering the whole of the neck and throat, so have I hopes ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Sefton yesterday, who gave me an account of a dinner at Fowell Buxton's on Saturday to see the brewery, at which Brougham was the 'magnus Apollo.' Sefton is excellent as a commentator on Brougham; he says that he watches him incessantly, never listens to anybody else when he is there, and rows him unmercifully afterwards for all the humbug, nonsense, and palaver he hears him talk to people. They were twenty-seven at dinner. Talleyrand ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... precisely the same, letter for letter, and point for point, [Hebrew: shahah], but the Septuagint in each case employs the same, [Greek: prosekunaesen]; and the Vulgate in each case renders it by the same word, "adoravit." The Roman Catholic commentator De Sacy renders it in each case, "se prosternavit," which corresponds exactly with our English version. The Douay Bible in each case renders ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... might have been but partial, not universal, was held, let me here remark, by distinguished theologians in our own country, at least as early as the seventeenth century. It was held, for instance, by the learned biblical commentator, old Matthew Poole, whom we find saying, in his Synopsis on Genesis, that "it is not to be supposed that the entire globe of the earth was covered with water;" for "where," he adds, "was the need of overwhelming those regions ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... as Rand approached and was introduced by Gladys, who handed both men their cocktails. Then the news commentator greeted them out of the radio, and everybody absorbed the day's news along with their Manhattans. After the broadcast, they all crossed the hall to the dining-room, where hostilities began almost before the soup ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... authorship at the end. This method presents definite advantages when the matter in hand is a complete collection of the works of the epigrammatists. With these smaller, as with the more important works of literature, it is still true that a poet is his own best commentator, and that by a complete single view of all his pieces we are able to understand each one of them better. A counter-argument is the large mass of {adespota} thus left in a heap at the end. In Jacobs there are upwards of 750 of these, most of them not assignable ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... that the Devil has not lost his natural Powers by his Fall; and our learned Commentator Mr. Pool is of the same Opinion; tho' he grants that the Devil has lost his moral Power, or his Power of doing Good, which he can never recover. Vide Mr. Pool upon Acts xix. 17. where we may ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... or immediately impending scenes. This way of considering the Apocalypse likewise enables one who is acquainted with the early Jewish Christian doctrines, legends, and hopes, to explain clearly a large number of passages in it whose obscurity has puzzled many a commentator. We should be glad to give various illustrations of this, if our limits did not confine us strictly to the one class of texts belonging to the doctrine of a future life. Furthermore, nearly all the most gifted critics, such as Ewald, Bleek, Lucke, De Wette, those ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... to protest against them, inasmuch as I am satisfied that they cannot be accepted without overturning all the legitimate landmarks of historical criticism. I freely acknowledge the eminent services which Dr. Lightfoot has rendered to the Christian Church by his labours as a Commentator on Scripture, and it is therefore all the more important that the serious errors of a writer so distinguished should not be permitted to pass unchallenged. All who love the faith once delivered to the saints, may be expected to ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... about herself, her exploits, her acquirements, her entertainments, her beaux, etc. Especially should she avoid seeking to make an impression by frequent mention of advantageous friends or circumstances. The greatest observer and commentator upon manners that ever wrote was Mr. Emerson. In one of his essays he says: "You shall not enumerate your brilliant acquaintances, nor tell me by their titles what books you have read. I am to infer that ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... characters recite passages from the classic authors; the enchantress Melissa gives a whole speech in Latin hexameters; Orlando bursts into Italian rhymes to utter his rage against Angelica,—"a want of taste," says the commentator, "which brings the already unsuccessful scene, the centre of the whole action, down to the sphere ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... duchess, "though more numerous than those of the Greek commentator, are equally admirable for their ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... circumstantial evidence is rather strong, for we are told by a commentator that Valgius, an early friend of Vergil's, wrote elegies to the memory of a "Codrus," identified by ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... perish. Thus Christ was commissioned to preach to men said to be in prison, because in darkness, error, and condemnation, though they were still living in the flesh. Isa. 61:1. Dr. Adam Clarke, the eminent Methodist commentator (in loco), places the going and preaching of Christ in the days of Noah, and by the ministry of Noah for one hundred and twenty years, and not during the time while he lay in the grave. ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... 13), evidently a critical reader of Pope, and probably rich in the possession of various editions of his works, kindly inform me whether any commentator on the poet has traced the well-known lines that I have quoted to the "Corcillum est, quod homines facit, caetera quisquilia omnia" of Petronius Arbiter, cap. 75.? Pope had certainly both read and admired the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... is the one in which affection combines to bring happiness to both partners in a sane union of sex and soul. As one commentator has rather unhappily expressed it: "When married the battle for one united and harmonious life really begins!" It is, indeed, but too often a battle! Forbearance, consideration and respect must be the foundation on which the ideal married state is built. The husband should realize ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... therefore, we cannot expect to derive much advantage from this reprint of the Roxburghe broadsides. But the antiquary, who has a natural taste for the cast-off raiment of the world, will doubtless fasten upon the volume; and the critical commentator may glean from it some scraps of obsolete information. To them accordingly we leave it, and pass into the glades ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... translated "creeping things," did not invalidate his argument as to the identity of such "creeping things," he had examined the point already, and surprised his interrogator, who appeared to have raised a very pretty dilemma, by promptly referring him to a well-known Hebrew commentator. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... will work out his theory for the enlightenment of the public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr George Bernard Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on Shakespeare in the Saturday Review were surely brilliant. Oddly enough he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the dark lady of the sonnets. The favoured rival ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... of course be referred to the years in which they were given to the world. They belong unquestionably to the order of marginalia, the scattered notes of which De Quincey speaks with not extravagant admiration, and which, under the busy pencil of a commentator always indefatigable in the strenua inertia of reading, had no doubt accumulated in considerable quantities over a long ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... country, about admitting pictures into churches, must acknowledge them as truths, or the Scriptures fabulous. Those are subjects so replete with dignity, character, and expression, as demanded the historian, the commentator, and the accomplished painter, to bring them into view. Your Majesty's gracious complacency and commands for my pencil on that extensive subject stimulated my humble abilities, and I commenced the work with zeal and enthusiasm. Animated ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... divided into two parties, one of which relied on the naturalistic interpretation of the Greek exegete, Alexander of Aphrodisias (about 200 A.D.), the other on the pantheistic interpretation of the Arabian commentator, Averroes (died 1198). The conflict over the question of immortality, carried on especially in Padua, was the culmination of the battle. The Alexandrist asserted that, according to Aristotle, the soul was mortal, the Averroists, that the rational part which is common to all men ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... forbore to lay violent hands upon him, because of the miracles which God wrought by his means. 'So,' said the Admiral, 'did it happen to me on that voyage.' F. Columbus, c. 19.——' And so easily,' says a Commentator, 'are the workings of the Evil one overcome by ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... 'imposing on himself and others.' 9. The orthodox doctrine of China concerning the connexion between intelligence and virtue is most seriously erroneous, but I will not lay to the charge of the author of the Great Learning the wild representations of the commentator of our twelfth century, nor need I make here any remarks on what the doctrine really is. After the exhibition which I have given, my readers will probably conclude that the Work before us is far from developing, as Pauthier asserts, 'a system of social perfectionating ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... to notice, if no commentator has forestalled me, that Shakspeare, among his many accomplishments, was sufficiently beyond his age ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 39. Saturday, July 27, 1850 • Various
... sources of intellectual enjoyment to this generation, that his language had become part of the language of every class and rank of his countrymen, and his characters were a portion of our contemporaries. "It seems scarcely possible," continued this otherwise not too indulgent commentator, "to believe that there never were any such persons as Mr. Pickwick and Mrs. Nickleby and Mrs. Gamp. They are to us not only types of English life, but types actually existing. They at once revealed the existence of such people, and made them thoroughly comprehensible. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... only a political revolt but a social upheaval in the West. Nowhere was the overturn more complete than in Kansas. If the West in general was uneasy, Kansas yeas in the throes of a mighty convulsion; it was swept as by the combination of a tornado and a prairie fire. As a sympathetic commentator of later days puts it, "It was a religious revival, a crusade, a pentecost of politics in which a tongue of flame sat upon every man, and each spake as the spirit gave him utterance."* All over the State, meetings were held ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... who counted on 'the pretended incapacity' of the future emperor for sliding into power themselves. But their hopes were disappointed by the taciturn pretender." One of the latest apologists for the Emperor, M. Thirria, in his Napoleon III avant l'Empire, claims, and no intelligent commentator can disprove the claim: "If he reigned, it was because France was willing, and very willing, and his fatal politics of nationalities, she approved of it, sanctioned it, the republican party first of all." M. Thirria is willing to admit, however, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... in a ceremonial, cannot be necessary vehicles of spiritual grace; this is in accordance with the excessive idealism and intellectualism of his system. Dionysius calls the elements [Greek: symbola, eikones, antitypa, aistheta tina anti noeton metalambanomena]; and Maximus, his commentator, defines a symbol as [Greek: aistheton ti anti ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... in particulars, an individual still remains dependent upon a community, even although, upon the whole, he may have freed himself from such dependence. For it is certainly from this dependence alone that the fact can be accounted for, that this commentator rejected an exposition which must have been to him the most agreeable, which has everything in its favour, and nothing against it,—and chose another instead, the nakedness of which he was obliged to cover as well as he could, while, in so doing, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... [Footnote 305: A commentator notes that the adjunction to the world of the Maremma (cf. Elijer Goff, "The Irish Question has for some centuries been enjoyed by the universe and other parts") produces a risible effect and gives the reader to understand that Scalza broaches the question only by way of a joke. The ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... particularly they were joined to the "Atellane" fables, says Casaubon; which were plays invented by the Osci. Those fables, says Valerius Maximus, out of Livy, were tempered with the Italian severity, and free from any note of infamy or obsceneness; and, as an old commentator on Juvenal affirms, the Exodiarii, which were singers and dancers, entered to entertain the people with light songs and mimical gestures, that they might not go away oppressed with melancholy from those serious pieces of the theatre. So that ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... of knowledge thus patiently and indefatigably garnered through a series of years, travel proved an invaluable polyglot commentator, analyzing, comparing, annotating, and italicizing, and had converted his mind into a vast, systematically arranged pictorial encyclopaedia of miscellaneous lore, embellished with delicate etchings, noble engravings, and gorgeous illuminations,—a thesaurus where savants might seek successfully ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... is a problem of very much more immediate concern. Someone has happily said: "Really to know a boy one must know fully his father and his mother." "Yes," says a commentator, "and he ought to know a deal about the grandfather and grandmother." The significance of parentage is made to stand out with clearness in the following paragraph from Norsworthy and Whitley, The ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... all their glosses, are; So vast, our new divines, we must confess, Are fathers of the Church for writing less. But let them write for you, each rogue impairs The deeds, and dext'rously omits, ses heires: No commentator can more slily pass 100 O'er a learn'd, unintelligible place; Or, in quotation, shrewd divines leave out Those words, that would against ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... of God, XIV:24) cites the instance of a man who could command his rear trumpet to sound at will, which his learned commentator fortifies with the example of one who could do ...
— 1601 - Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors • Mark Twain
... two great panegyrists (who happened to be Mr Arnold's own niece and Mr Arnold's own friend). On subjects like Maya and the "great wheel" it would almost be impossible to conceive, and certainly impossible to find, a happier commentator than Mr Arnold, though perhaps in the regions of theology he had a private Maya, a very Great Wheel, of his own. The firmness with which he rebukes the maunderings of the Genevese hypochondriac—of whom ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... Necessity of extending a Pastoral to the Length of three or four hundred Lines, if we would not deprive our selves of the Opportunities of being as delightful as Poetry will permit. But if any Commentator, who think's himself oblig'd to defend Theocritus and Virgil in every particular, should not only not allow this Length to be preferable, but even condemn it as faulty, it would oblige us to come more ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... unostentatious, and even ascetic life during these years was noted. He was known as a man of extremely refined tastes and sensitive though not querulous nature. A commentator says ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... these interpretations will find, that they are almost all taken from SKINNER'S Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae[5]. In many cases, where the words are really ancient, the interpretations are perfectly right; and so far Chatterton can only be considered in the light of a commentator, who avails himself of the best assistances to explane any genuine author. But in many other instances, where the words are either not ancient or not used in their ancient sense, the interpretations are totally ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... amiable manners, of untarnished public and private character, and of cultivated mind. On this, as on other occasions, Lord Dover performed his part diligently, judiciously, and without the slightest ostentation. He had two merits which are rarely found together in a commentator, he was content to be merely a commentator, to keep in the background, and to leave the foreground to the author whom he had undertaken to illustrate. Yet, though willing to be an attendant, he was by no means a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this popular notion, and with much confidence and plausibility broaches a new theory of his own. His style is always forcible, and so perspicuous that he cannot be misunderstood. In his "Dissertation on the Prophecies," he lays down the following canon or rule for expositors:—"Before a commentator can reasonably expect his own system to be adopted by others, he must show likewise that the expositions of his predecessors are erroneous in those points wherein he differs from them." To enforce this rule he adds,—"It will be found to ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... however, whose mind was not haunted by such associations, and who was always more taken up with the text than the sentiment, objected to the Oxonian's version of the carol; which he affirmed was different from that sung at college. He went on, with the dry perseverance of a commentator, to give the college reading, accompanied by sundry annotations: addressing himself at first to the company at large; but finding their attention gradually diverted to other talk, and other objects, he lowered his tone as his number of auditors ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... multiplied, had I felt less stupid than for the determination of poor Strether's errand and for the apprehension of his issue. These things continued to fall together, as by the neat action of their own weight and form, even while their commentator scratched his head about them; he easily sees now that they were always well in advance of him. As the case completed itself he had in fact, from a good way behind, to catch up with them, breathless and a little ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... him buried in his tomes ten deep and it was with difficulty that Phoebe, kneeling beside him on one side, and Caroline on the other, made him listen to their joint tale of modern romance, to which Mrs. Matilda played the part of a joyous commentator. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... dull boys, in which we are told that "the great philosopher, Newton, was one of the dullest scholars in school when he was twelve years old. Doctor Isaac Barrow was such a dull, pugnacious, stupid fellow, etc., etc. The father of Doctor Adam Clarke, the commentator, called his boy, etc. Cortina," (vernacular for Cortona, probably,) "a renowned painter, was nicknamed, etc., etc. When the mother of Sheridan once, etc., etc. One teacher sent Chatterton home, etc. Napoleon and Wellington, etc., etc. And ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... at Whitburn (son of the commentator, and father of the late Rev. Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh, and grandfather of the present accomplished M.D. of the same name, author of "Rab and his Friends," etc.), in the early part of the century was travelling on a small sheltie[21] to attend the summer sacrament ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... of so great an example, were not I to take occasion to shew that I too am not entirely destitute of abilities of this kind; but that by possessing a decent share of critical discernment, and critical jargon, I am capable of becoming a very tolerable commentator. For the proof of which, I shall rather prefer calling the attention of my readers to an object as yet untreated of by any of my immediate predecessors, than venture to throw in my observations on any work which has before passed the ordeal of frequent examination. ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... be gathered. The rise and progress of a generous culture is the chief characteristic of the House of Chou. Besides encouraging letters Wen-wang contributed much to the new literature. He is known as a commentator in the Yih-King, "Book of Changes," [Page 85] pronounced by Confucius the profoundest of the ancient classics—a book ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... on "Puck the Commentator," in the "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii.; also p. 304 of the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... sleep-talking is very common; anxious pupils, in their sleep, will frequently repeat a lesson they can not remember when awake. The son of the eminent linguist and commentator, Dr. Adam Clarke, tells us that his father overheard him, in his sleep, repeat a Greek verb which he was endeavoring to learn, and which, the following morning, he was unable to remember. This is a curious fact—he knew his lesson in his sleep, but did not do so ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Raimondi, and popularly called, or rather miscalled, the Dream of Raphael, is recognised by Herr Wickhoff as having its root in the art of Giorgione. He identifies the mysterious subject with one cited by Servius, the commentator of Virgil, who relates how, when two maidens were sleeping side by side in the Temple of the Penates at Lavinium (as he puts it), the unchaste one was killed by lightning, while the other remained in ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... editions: the three others are, as it were, "rusticated" from the very severely edited selection of 1881. The variety of forms under which his verses appear at different periods will probably make the poet's works a happy hunting-ground for the future commentator, who will no doubt assign this "lay" (as he will probably call it) to Locker, that to Lampson, that again to the Lockeridae or the Lampsonschule. The method is familiar. No one, probably, ever was so careful of the "limae labor." "He took," ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... Well, it is not Sunday, but I have had a sermon. This is the clergyman, and you are the commentator—he! he! And so now let us go back from divinity to medicine. I repeat" (this was the first time she had said it) "that my other doctors give me real prescriptions, written in hieroglyphics. You can't look at them without feeling there ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... first-rate writer could have afforded to appear in person not only because of damage to his stature lest it be noted he was doing his own spadework; but, more important, first-hand observation might limit his capacity for rationalizing the situation into the mold demanded by the bias of his commentator or columnist. It was always difficult to maintain author integrity when the facts did not support the sensationalism required by the employers, and best not to put oneself in ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... COMMENTATOR.—"Altogether a most powerful and well-written novel; and one likely to maintain a permanently conspicuous ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... publisher, and printer, for the last century and a half; and he who loves the comic side of human nature will find the serious notes of a variorum edition of Shakspeare as funny reading as the funny ones are serious. Scarce a commentator of them all, for more than a hundred years, but thought, as Alphonso of Castile did of Creation, that, if he had only been at Shakspeare's elbow, he could have given valuable advice; scarce one who did not know off-hand that there was never ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... abnet, or linen apron, or girdle, as a part of the investiture of the priesthood. This, with the other garments, was to be worn, as the text expresses it, "for glory and for beauty," or, as it has been explained by a learned commentator, "as emblematical of that holiness and purity which ever characterize the divine nature, and the worship which ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... asks how must we reconcile this doctrine with what we find in the first book of the Odyssey, where the king of the gods says, "Men say that evil comes to them from us, but they bring it on themselves through their own folly." The answer is plain enough even to the Greek commentator. The poets make both Achilles and Zeus speak appropriately to their several characters. Indeed, Zeus says plainly that men do attribute their sufferings to the gods, but they do it falsely, for they are the cause of their ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... true, those words occur in the passage cited by the commentator from the "Faery Queen"; most probably they refer to the person in dispute. But she was no more "a country lass," in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase, than was Spenser himself (Clerk of the Council of Munster) "a shepherd's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... supply, in their solution, as time rolls on, an ever-accumulating mass of proofs of the profundity of the wisdom which has so far anticipated all the wisdom of man; and of the divine origin of both the great books which he is privileged to study as a pupil, and even to illustrate as a commentator,—but the text of which he ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... snake," says an Arabic commentator, "tempted Adam it was a winged animal. To punish its misdeeds the Almighty deprived it of wings, and condemned it thereafter to creep for ever on its belly, adding, as a perpetual reminder to it of its trespass, a command for it to cast its ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... Thomas Scott (not Rev. Thomas Scott the Commentator) was born in Norwich, Eng., in 1705, and died at Hupton, in Norfolk, 1776. He was a Dissenting minister, pastor for twenty-one years—until disabled by feeble health—at Lowestoft in Suffolk. He was ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... intention to refer to its original authour, and it is certain, that what I have not given to another, I believed when I wrote it to be my own. In some perhaps I have been anticipated; but if I am ever found to encroach upon the remarks of any other commentator, I am willing that the honour, be it more or less, should be transferred to the first claimant, for his right, and his alone, stands above dispute; the second can prove his pretensions only to himself, nor can himself always distinguish invention, ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... into which a man-of-war's crew is divided; but the inferior allotments of duties are endless, and would require a German commentator to chronicle. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... means "composing the mind," collecting it together, checking all distractions. Thus by philological, as well as by practical, investigation the two words yoga and samadhi are inseparably linked together. And when Vyasa, the commentator, says: "Yoga is the composed mind," he is conveying a clear and significant idea as to what is implied in Yoga. Although Samadhi has come to mean, by a natural sequence of ideas, the trance-state which results from perfect composure, its original ...
— An Introduction to Yoga • Annie Besant
... later. Here's the forecast: Today and tomorrow, the weather will continue fine; warm in the sun, chilly in the shadows. There won't be anything to keep you from the polls, tomorrow, except bird-hunting, or a last chance at a game of golf. This is the first time within this commentator's memory that the weather has definitely been in favor of the party out ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... extracts from, the standard commentary upon Yajnavalkya, the Mitakshara, necessarily form the staple of our notes. All such extracts are distinguished by the initial (M.), and the author of the commentary we invariably refer to as, the Commentator. ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... The commentator takes a very simple illustration: a cow, where one considers, in the first stage, the name of the cow, the animal itself and the idea of a cow in the mind. In the second stage, one pushes these trappings aside and, entering into the inmost being of the cow, shares its consciousness, as do some of ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... more Septimius Severus. I had rather made up my mind not to talk about it, in case you should think too much of it." He then narrated the Miss Scatcherd incident, checked and corrected by Irene from afar. The narrator minimised the points in favour of his flash of vision, while his commentator's corrections showed ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... exists in English legislation for quarrelsome women. The cucking-stool is suspended over a river or a pond, the woman seated on it. The chair is allowed to drop into the water, and then pulled out. This dipping of the woman is repeated three times, "to cool her anger," says the commentator, Chamberlayne. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... a Tub. At various places in his narrative, but especially at the beginnings of books and chapters, Fielding as it were "calls a halt" and addresses his readers on matters more or less relevant to the story, but rather in the manner of a commentator and scholiast upon it than as actual parts of it. Of this more later: for the immediate purpose is to ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... fertility. In an Egyptian hymn the sky goddess Nut, "the mother" of Osiris, is stated to have "built up life from her own body".[129] Sri or Lakshmi, the Indian goddess, who became the wife of Vishnu, as the mother goddess Saraswati, a tribal deity, became the wife of Brahma, was, according to a Purana commentator, "the mother of the world ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... of which was logic, consisted in the reading and interpreting of such books as were considered authorities. "The method in expounding is always the same. The commentator discusses in a prologue some general questions relating to the work he is about to lecture upon, and he usually treats of its material, formal, final, and efficient causes. He points out the principal divisions, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... any suitable expression. How would it be possible to convey in good English the circumstances here indicated— namely, that Ceres was yet in those days of maiden innocence, when she had borne no daughter to Jove? Second, I will cite a case which, so far as I remember, has been noticed by no commentator; and, probably, because they have failed to understand it. The case occurs in the "Paradise Regained;" but where I do not at this moment remember. "Will they transact with God?" This is the passage; and a most flagrant instance it offers of pure Latinism. Transigere, in the language of ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Melanchthon Development of scholasticism in the Reformed Church Catholic belief in the inspiration of the Vulgate Opposition in Russia to the revision of the Slavonic Scriptures Sir Isaac Newton as a commentator Scriptural interpretation at the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a light comedy, and is called "The Ballet of the Gueegueence or the Macho-Raton." The characters are a wily old rascal, Gueegueence, and his two sons, the one a chip of the old block, the other a bitter commentator on the family failings. They are brought before the Governor for entering his province without a permit; but by bragging and promises the foxy old man succeeds both in escaping punishment and in effecting a marriage between his scapegrace son and the Governor's daughter. ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... to imagine that we understand it and appreciate it fully, even to fancy that it has a special message, a deeper meaning, for us than for almost any one else, and then to come across somebody—some commentator perhaps—who informs us that our uncritical appreciation is quite worthless, mere shallow sentiment, and that until we can accurately analyze and formulate the Idea which the artist endeavoured to incorporate in his work, ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... of ancient history has taken away from the beauty of poetical performances, may be conjectured from the light which a lucky commentator sometimes effuses, by the recovery of an incident that had been long forgotten: thus, in the third book of Horace, Juno's denunciations against those that should presume to raise again the walls of Troy, could for many ages please only by splendid ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... publication that dealt in news of local high life. Its chief item, to-day, was the announcement of a dance she was to give shortly—at the club, as usual—and she had just finished for the second time the commentator's ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... in these last years he was forced, more than was agreeable to him, to play the role of an intelligent commentator, remained a man of action to the end. He sought, this time in vain, to extract from the French government wages still due the crew of the old Bonhomme Richard. His failure brought out an unusually bitter letter, in which he again recounted his ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... hiring a theatrical troupe, with their everlasting tom-toms, to perform on the permanent stage to be found in every one of these establishments. The Anhui men celebrate the birthday of Chu Hsi, the great commentator, whose scholarship has won eternal honours for his native province; Swatow men hold high festival in memory of Han Wen-Kung, whose name is among the brightest on the page of Chinese history. All day long the fun goes on, and as soon as it begins to grow ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... that he who wrote them has entered—where no commentator could conduct him—into the solemn pathos of Virgil's Musaeum ante omnis—; where the singer whose very existence upon earth has become a legend and a mythic name is seen keeping in the underworld his old pre-eminence, and towering ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... judicata [Lat.]. plebiscite, voice, casting vote; vote &c (choice) 609; opinion &c (belief) 484; good judgment &c (wisdom) 498. judge, umpire; arbiter, arbitrator; asessor, referee. censor, reviewer, critic; connoisseur; commentator &c 524; inspector, inspecting officer. twenty-twenty hindsight [judgment after the fact]; armchair general, monday morning quarterback. V. judge, conclude; come to a conclusion, draw a conclusion, arrive at a conclusion; ascertain, determine, make up one's mind. deduce, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... July, 1831, Mr. Adams delivered an oration before the inhabitants of the town of Quincy, in which he controverted the doctrine of Blackstone, the great commentator upon the laws of England, who maintained "that there is, and must be, in all forms of government, however they began, and by what right soever they subsist, a supreme, irresistible, absolute, uncontrolled authority, in which the jura summi imperii, or the rights of sovereignty, ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... that it is almost forbidden to human reason to stray in these regions; and that the part of a prophet is, next to that of a commentator of prophecies, one of the most difficult and thankless that a man can attempt to sustain the ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... seem likely that he had been engaged for a long period on the actual composition. Rather, the style and matter of the book seem to evince traces of hurry in preparation. If this theory be true—and Mr. Brinsley Nicholson, his modern commentator, has adduced excellent reasons for accepting it[2]—there can be but one explanation, the St. Oses affair. That tragedy, occurring within a short distance of his own home, had no doubt so outraged ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... of War and Peace," says a certain Commentator, "during those Five weeks of Pirna, can be made intelligible in small compass. But how the world argued of them then and afterwards, and rang with hot Gazetteer and Diplomatic logic from side to side, no reader will now ever know. A world-tornado extinct, gone:—think of the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... He had but little taste for classical learning, for he quotes the Latin writers curiously, not elegantly; and there is reason to suspect that he had entirely neglected the Greek. Even the erudition of antiquity usually reached him by the ready medium of some German commentator. His multifarious reading was chiefly confined to the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With such deficiencies in his literary character, Bayle could not reasonably expect to obtain pre-eminence in any single pursuit. Hitherto his writings ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... ascribed to Robin by the old ballads, there is one far more improbable than all the rest, and one which an ordinary commentator would set down at once as a pure fiction of the poet, it is certainly that which has just been related. Mr Hunter, however, is not an ordinary commentator. If the story is a strange one, he doubtless reflected, 'truth is stranger than fiction;' and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... Soracte, thou of whom we are the foremost worshippers, thou for whom the burning pile of pinewood is fed, while we, strong in faith, walk through the midst of the fire, and press our footsteps in the glowing mass. . . .' Strabo gives the same facts. Servius, the old commentator on Virgil, confuses the Hirpi, not unnaturally, with the Sabine 'clan,' the Hirpini. He says, {149e} 'Varro, always an enemy of religious belief, writes that the Hirpini, when about to walk the fire, smear the soles ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... his head was somewhat bald, and he bore a striking resemblance to our ex-President, Van Buren. He showed me in his house some choice literary treasures; among them a little Greek Testament, given to his great-grandfather, the famous John Brown, of Haddington, the eminent commentator. Its history was curious: Brown of, Haddington, was a poor shepherd boy, and once he walked twenty miles through the night to St. Andrews to get a copy of the Greek Testament. The book-seller at first laughed at him and said: "Boy, if you can read a verse in this book, you may have it." Forthwith ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... be an habitation of bitterns;... when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream; some Transatlantic commentator will be weighing, in the scales of some new and unimagined system of criticism, the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their historians, I ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... 4. Better than Chrysippus and Crantor. They were both philosophers, Chrysippus a subtle stoic, Crantor the first commentator upon Plato. ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... dulness. This view, then rather unusual, was a very natural one for him to take, Paracelsus being among the many keen interests of the elder Browning.[5] It is a strange mistake to suppose, with a recent very ingenious commentator, that Browning, eager to destroy the fallacy of intellectual pride, singled out Paracelsus as a crucial example of the futilities of intellect. On the contrary, he filled his annotations with documentary evidences which attest not only the commanding ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... may term the dramatic proprieties that give to many of the Psalms, in the language of a recent commentator, "a greater degree of fitness, spirit, and grandeur"; and they impart to the history of David a certain decorousness of illustration and perspicuity of feature which it would not otherwise possess. They would produce upon it the same result as is achieved by the sister arts on this ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... say that Dante meant Theology By Beatrice, and not a mistress—I, Although my opinion may require apology, Deem this a commentator's phantasy, Unless indeed it was from his own knowledge he Decided thus, and showed good reason why; I think that Dante's more abstruse ecstatics ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... without relation to the baptismal name of the person referred to. Sir Philip Sidney was addressed as 'Willy' by some of his elegists. A comic actor, 'dead of late' in a literal sense, was clearly intended by Spenser, and there is no reason to dispute the view of an early seventeenth-century commentator that Spenser was paying a tribute to the loss English comedy had lately sustained by the death of the comedian, Richard Tarleton. {81a} Similarly the 'gentle spirit' who is described by Spenser in a later stanza as sitting ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... school of scandal. Varchi explains it by a circumstance so common in provincial cities. On summer evenings, for fresh air and gossip, the loungers met on the steps and landing-places of the church of St. Ambrose: whoever left the party, "they read in his book," as our commentator expresses it; and not a leaf was passed over! All liked to join a party so well informed of one another's concerns, and every one tried to be the very last to quit it,—not "to leave his character behind!" It became a proverbial phrase with those who left a company, and were too tender of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... expected to console it with one of his inimitable letters of advice and encouragement. If he deigns to make a public appearance there is a throng at the doors which overtaxes the energy and ability of the police. We must be glad that we have a public commentator like Mark Twain always at hand and his wit and wisdom continually on tap. His sound, breezy Mississippi Valley Americanism is a corrective to all sorts of snobbery. He cultivates respect for human rights by always making sure ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... keen critic, he is also a deliberate commentator. The difference is fundamental. The commentator builds upon the foundation the critic has erected; he does not merely state what he thinks about a book or character, rather he explains the criticism ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... translate the difficulty and subside. These are a boon to the scholar. Without them it would be almost impossible to prepare one's work during school, and we should be reduced to the prosaic expedient of working in prep. time. What we want is the commentator who translates mensa as 'a table' without giving a page and a half of notes on the uses of the table in ancient Greece, with an excursus on the habit common in those times of retiring underneath it after dinner, and a ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... eminently qualified for the office of a commentator on Shakespeare, no man can doubt; but it was an office which he never cordially embraced. The public expected more than he had diligence to perform; and yet his edition has been the ground, on which every subsequent commentator has chosen to build. One note, for its singularity, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... One ingenious commentator has suggested that the opera has some basis in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' Sarastro is Prospero, Pamina Miranda, Tamino Ferdinand, and perhaps ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... into weeks of 7 days, prevalent among the ancients, suggests an ancient revelation in commemoration of creation as against evolution, which denies creation. The following statements from Dr. J. R. Dummelow, an eminent commentator, show that the Babylonians both divided time into weeks, and offered sacrifices, pointing to the unity of religions. "The Babylonians observed the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th of each lunar month as days when men were subjected to certain restrictions; the king was not to eat food ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... Castelvetro, the Italian commentator on Aristotle, having heard that his house was on fire, ran through the streets exclaiming to the people, alla Poetica! alla Poetica! To the Poetic! To the Poetic! He was then writing his commentary ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... not fit into the narrow framework that he has made; and because he too often cares for the framework more than for the truth, he manipulates the text until he can make it fit in, in some dislocated fashion; and the ingenuity of the commentator too often appears in the skill with which he can make words appear to mean what they do not mean in their grammatical and obvious sense. Thus, men of every school, under the mighty names of men ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... the principal object of ridicule, which is understood but by few among the laity. To explain this a commentary would be requisite, and humour when explained is no longer humour. Whoever sets up for a commentator of smart sayings and repartees is himself a blockhead. This is the reason why the works of the ingenious Dean Swift, who has been called the English Rabelais, will never be well understood in France. This gentleman has the honour (in common ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... first to systematize the philosophy which contributed so greatly to his intellectual culture, But even he added nothing; he was only a commentator and expositor. Nor did he seek to found a system or a school, but merely to influence and instruct men of his own rank. Those subjects which had the greatest attraction for the Grecian schools Cicero regarded as beyond ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... secession. Perhaps not; but the Constitution is not the place to look for State rights. If that right belongs to independent States, and they did not cede it to the Federal Government, it is reserved to the States, or to the people. Ask your new commentator where he gets the right to judge for us. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... elegantly veils his ignorance, but his commentator in the eighteenth century (Delphic Classics) tells the tale without any doubts as to its truth. "Non nascitur e semine proprio arboris, at neque ex insidentum volucrum fimo, ut putavere veteres, sed ex ipso arborum vitali ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... which this celebrated actor and able commentator on Shakespeare (actors are the best commentators on the poets) did not give with equal truth or force of feeling was the one which Romeo makes at the tomb of Juliet, before he drinks ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... any rate, the charmed commentator may well keep before him, simply did all the usual English things—under the happy provision of course that he found them in his way at their best; and it was exactly most delightful in him that no inordinate expenditure, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... make his memorable sketch of Wilkes. The sketch serves to show us if not what Wilkes exactly was, at least what Wilkes seemed to be to a great many of his countrymen. The caricaturist is a priceless commentator. If Hogarth indeed indirectly shortened his life by his portrait of Wilkes, he gave, as if by transfusion of blood, an increased and abiding vitality to certain of the most interesting ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... ancient funerals (in those of Misenus and Pallas) are no less accurately described by Virgil, than they are illustrated by his commentator Servius. The pile itself was an altar, the flames were fed with the blood of victims, and all the assistants were ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... understand—no drama, but a series of incoherent, unrelated and inconsequent incidents. Finally, we all know that when a man tumbles over a high precipice he is killed. Suppose that in a melodrama the villain tumbled and is killed. Would some wise commentator write, "The master here proves the wickedness of villainy, and shows conclusively how it always meets with its just punishment, for the villain tumbles over a precipice and is, if we mistake not, ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... whereby men might have studied the supreme productions of the past. For why is a young man like Poliziano (who was not yet born when I was already held worthy to maintain a discussion with Thomas of Sarzana) to have a glorious memory as a commentator on the Pandects—why is Ficino, whose Latin is an offence to me, and who wanders purblind among the superstitious fancies that marked the decline at once of art, literature, and philosophy, to descend to posterity as the very high priest of Platonism, while I, who am more than their ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... wander not unseen," he plainly regarded this word in the more poetical sense. The song breathes the shepherd's tale of love (perhaps addressed to "the milkmaid singing blithe") far more than it conveys a dull computation of the number of "his fleecy care." Despite of that excellent commentator, Tom Warton, who adopted Headley's suggestion, it is to be hoped that readers will continue, though it may be in error, to understand the line as your correspondent used to do: an amatory tete-a-tete is surely better ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... list of heads of predicables which we have been discussing is not derived from Aristotle, but from the 'Introduction' of Porphyry, a Greek commentator who lived ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... Can he be said to love the reprobate at all? If, from all eternity, they have been eternally damned for not rendering an impossible obedience, should we call this a lesser degree of love than that which is bestowed upon the elect, or should we call it hate? It seems, that the commentator feels some repugnance at the idea of setting apart the individual, before he has "done either good or evil," as an object of hate; but not at all at the idea of setting him apart as an object of ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... the course, for the most part pursued by Dr. C., of inserting his amplifications in the text of the author, merely distinguished by brackets. Besides the absence of sufficient distinction between the matter of the author and commentator, the text of the former is thus injuriously disjointed, and dependent ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... the play was not presented till over a year subsequent to Balzac's death. The presented version in three acts has generally been regarded as the more acceptable, M. de Lovenjoul, the Balzacian commentator, recognizing its superior claims. It is the form now included in current French editions, and the one followed ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... What a rock of offence even his mere innocent existence, all unknown to himself till afterwards, has been! Swarms, said Christiana. Swarms of hornets armed, said Samson. And many of us understand what that bitter word means better than any commentator on Bunyan or on Milton can tell us. One of the holiest men the Church of England ever produced, and one of her best devotional writers, used to shut his door on the night of every first day of the week, and on his knees spread ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... that it was necessary to make some remark in acknowledgment of this courtesy on his visitor's part, and so, as he continued his work, he condescended to explain its purpose. "I am playing the part of a commentator," he remarked. "I sold seven of my horses a few days ago, and the purchaser, before paying the stipulated price, naturally required an exact and authentic statement of each animal's performances. However, even this does not seem to have satisfied the gentleman, ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... men's wants. 'Valor rerum aestimatur secundum humanam indigentiam.... Dicendum est quod indigentia humana est mensura naturalis commutabilium; quod probatur sic: bonitas sive valor rei attenditur ex fine propter quem exhibetur: unde commentator secundo Metaphysicae nihil est bonum nisi propter causas finales; sed finis naturalis ad quem justitia commutativa ordinet exteriora commutabilia est supplementum indigentiae humanae...; igitur supplementum indigentiae humanae est vera mensura commutabilium. Sed supplementum videtur mensurari ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... shall stand, shapeless and nameless ruins, in the midst of an unpeopled marsh; when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some transatlantic commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism, the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their historians. I remain, dear Tom, ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... crime to be a capitalist,' said one commentator on the late events, and neither is it necessary to attribute to this section of the community motives of patriotism to justify their association with the Reform movement. It is not intended to suggest that the men who did associate themselves eventually with it were ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... Greeks. Will you have Rome? The chief monument of Roman civilization is its law—which underlies our own; and Buckle quotes the great commentator on that law as saying that it was the distinction of the Roman law that it treated women not as persons, but as things. Or go to the most ancient civilization; to China, which was old when Greece and Rome ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the murder of the Countess Franceschini by her husband; and her four days' survival of her wounds, does one half of Rome express itself—"The Other Half" in contrast to the earliest commentator on the crime: "Half-Rome." This Other-Half is wholly sympathetic to the seventeen-yeared child who lies in the hospital-ward at St. Anna's. "Why was she made to learn what Guido Franceschini's heart could hold?" demands ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... as was the seal ring of the great Haroun Alraschid among the true believers. The two parties being confronted before him, each produced a book of accounts written in a language and character that would have puzzled any but a High Dutch commentator or a learned decipherer of Egyptian obelisks. The sage Wouter took them one after the other, and, having poised them in his hands and attentively counted over the number of leaves, fell straightway into a very great doubt, and smoked for half an hour without saying a word; at ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... in the teeth of inevitable changes, of a preponderating proportion of institutions that reach far into the past. "The great difficulty which presses on the student of the English constitution, regarded as a set of legal rules," observes a learned commentator, "is that he can never dissociate himself from history. There is hardly a rule which has not a long past, or which can be understood without some consideration of the circumstances under which it first came into being."[1] It is the purpose of the present volume ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the child of a Brahman by a Sudra woman intermarried with Brahmans and his descendants after him, their progeny in the seventh generation would become full Brahmans; and the same was the case with the child of a Kshatriya or a Vaishya with a Sudra woman. A commentator remarks that the descendants of a Brahman by a Kshatriya woman could attain Brahmanhood in the third generation, and those by a Vaishya woman in the fifth. [40] Such children also could inherit. According to the Mahabharata, if a Brahman had four wives of different castes, the son by a Brahman ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... peculiarity of the army regulations in Russia, it becomes necessary, first of all, to take brief survey of that greatest and most dread factor of all the life in that Empire, neglected though it has been by every commentator and critic of civilized nations: a factor which stands first in the life of every Russian, from the highest official of the cumbrous governmental machine down to the humblest descendant of the serfs; both of whom, with every member of every class between ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the interpretation given by Lord Bacon. To which of the two gigantic intellects, the poet's or philosophic commentator's, the allegory belongs, I shall not presume to decide. Its extraordinary beauty and appropriateness remains ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... diverge far from them. Asconius wrote as early as in the reign of Claudius, and had in his possession the annals of the time which have not come to us. Among other writings he could refer to those books of Livy which have since been lost. He seems to have done his work as commentator with no glow of affection and with no touch of animosity, either on one side or on the other. There can be no reason for doubting the impartiality of Asconius as to Milo's trial, and every reason for trusting his knowledge ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... as a protection against her. Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy tells us: "The Talmudists say that Adam had a wife called Lilis, before he married Eve, and of her he begat nothing but devils." A commentator on Skinner, quoted in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, says that the English word Lullaby is derived from Lilla, abi (begone, Lilith)! In the demonology of the Middle Ages, Lilis was a famous witch, and is introduced as such in the Walpurgis night ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... Proteus from the fury of his children, by making him go through caverns from Pallene to Egypt, he follows the tradition which says that he originally came from that town in Thessaly, and that he retired thence to Egypt. Virgil, and Servius, his Commentator, assert that Proteus returned to Thessaly after the death of his children, who were slain by Hercules; in which assertion, however, they are not supported by Homer ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... midst of all this sunshine, the seeds of discord and dissension were fast flourishing. Mr. Dallas himself was always so absorbed in some freshly-imported German commentator that it was a fixed principle with him never to trouble himself with anything that concerned his pupils "out of school hours." The consequence was, that certain powers were necessarily delegated to a certain set of ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... great eyes on him, and he was dumb. She had risen above the region of his ideas. Having silenced her commentator, she returned to her story, "Well, dear Harrington said 'yes' directly. So then I told Fanny, and she said, 'Oh, do take me with you?' Now, of course I was only too glad to have Fanny; she is ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... a celebrated bird in Chinese tradition, the Fung Hwang, which some sinologues identify with the phoenix of the West.(2) According to a commentator on the 'Rh Ya, this "felicitous and perfect bird has a cock's head, a snake's neck, a swallow's beak, a tortoise's back, is of five different colours and ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... standing resource in all exegetical difficulties was Dr. Scott's Family Bible. Therefore he now got up, and putting on his spectacles, walked to the glass bookcase, and took down a volume of that worthy commentator, and opening it, read aloud the whole exposition of the passage, together with the practical reflections upon it; and by the time he had done, he found his young auditor ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... lay claim to infallibility. There are verses in the Mahabharata that are exceedingly difficult to construe. I have derived much aid from the great commentator Nilakantha. I know that Nilakantha's authority is not incapable of being challenged. But when it is remembered that the interpretations given by Nilakantha came down to him from preceptors of olden days, one should think twice before ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... A shrew can do it, but not a man. Yet the meaning of the saying needs no interpretation. Akin to it is the classical phrase, adunco suspendere naso. What Horace means scarcely requires explanation, but no commentator has successfully explained it. These expressions well illustrate the mystery that enshrouds our most salient feature. They show that, while everybody can see that disdain is expressed through the nose, nobody can define how it is done. Then there is that curious expression "put his nose out of joint," ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... work that we are now called upon particularly to speak. As a new edition of the book was demanded, it was of the greatest importance that it should be placed in the hands of an editor competent to discuss, in a manner worthy of the distinguished commentator, those numerous and perplexing questions which have arisen since his death. The representatives of Mr. Wheaton were singularly fortunate in obtaining the aid of so prominent and so busy a man as Mr. Dana,—one ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... yet been attempted, or attempted only in the most perfunctory way. For generation after generation readers have gone on accepting received interpretations which only tell them what their own wits could divine without any other assistance than the text itself gives. No commentator seems yet to have realised that, in order to understand Dante thoroughly, he must put himself on Dante's level so far as regards a knowledge of all the available literature. The more obvious quarries from which Dante obtained ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... Napoleon's extreme delight, ordered to retreat, he treated the order with contempt and instantly advanced.—Rauschnick's Life of Bluecher. "This second disjunction on Bluecher's part," observes Clausewitz, the Prussian general, the best commentator on this war, "was of infinite consequence, for it checked and gave a fresh turn to the whole course of ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... therefore appeared, and the other said: "It is true that I hold this opinion with regard to this man's soul, for he is an animal. Nay, does it not seem to you that he is the heretic, since without a scrap of learning, and scarcely knowing how to read, he plays the commentator to Dante and takes his name ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... unprincipled ambition of a Catilinarian temper," does seem to call for a few words before we proceed with the narrative. It is difficult to say whether the confused views of the manuscript, or of its modern commentator, be the greater. The (p. 287) manuscript, (to mention here only one specimen of its confusion,) in the very page which contains the accusing passage, represents the expedition to France in the summer of 1411; the battle of St. Cloud, ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler |
