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Declamatory   Listen
Declamatory

adjective
1.
Ostentatiously lofty in style.  Synonyms: bombastic, large, orotund, tumid, turgid.  "Tumid political prose"






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"Declamatory" Quotes from Famous Books



... dispute might have grown warm, had it not been interrupted by the entrance of a rival bard, at whose appearance he always quits the place — They are of different cabals, and have been at open war these twenty years — If the other was dogmatical, this genius was declamatory: he did not discourse, but harangue; and his orations were equally tedious and turgid. He too pronounces ex cathedra upon the characters of his contemporaries; and though he scruples not to deal out praise, even lavishly, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... remember of him, but describes him as a young man possessing an intellect of the highest order, with great simplicity of character and considerable oddity of manner; and he hints that the college authorities had probably resented, in the step they took, certain attacks more declamatory than serious which Hartley had got into the habit of indulging against all established institutions. Mr. Derwent Coleridge touches this part of the subject very daintily. "My brother was, however, I am afraid, more sincere in his invectives against establishments, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... lost the taste for poetry of this class one poem may seem about as good as the other; but Pope's superiority is plain enough to a reader who will condescend to distinguish. His verses are an excellent specimen of his declamatory style—polished, epigrammatic, and well expressed; and, though keeping far below the regions of true poetry, preserving just that level which would commend them to the literary statesmen and the politicians at Will's and Button's. Perhaps some ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... I could judge from this sample; style in woven and somewhat ornate, matter frequently wrought up to a climax, manner rather declamatory, though strictly that of a gentleman and a scholar. One art in his oratory was, no doubt, very effective, before he lost force and distinctness of voice. I allude to his way,—after having reasoned ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... in the neighbourhood of ancient Naples; and these, too, were extemporal Interludes, or, as Livy terms them, Exodia. We find in that historian a little interesting narrative of the theatrical history of the Romans; when the dramatic performances at Rome were becoming too sentimental and declamatory, banishing the playfulness and the mirth of Comedy, the Roman youth left these graver performances to the professed actors, and revived, perhaps in imitation of the licentious Satyra of the Greeks, the ancient ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... the disagreeable weather, a number of persons, glad to escape from the close confinement of the cabins, were pacing the deck of the steamer. Others were leaning over the bulwarks, regarding the aspect of the country they were rapidly passing; while some were talking in small groups, in a loud declamatory tone, evidently more intent on attracting the attention of the bystanders than of edifying their own immediate listeners. Though bright eyes might look heavy, and fair faces languid and sleepy, vanity was wide awake, and never more active than in the midst of a crowd, where all are strangers ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie

... "The Jewess" is pre-eminently spectacular, and its music is dramatic and declamatory rather than melodious. The prominent numbers of the first act are the solemn declaration of the Cardinal ("Wenn ew'ger Hass"), in which he replies to Eleazar's hatred of the Christian; the romance sung by Leopold ("Fern vom Liebchen ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... popular acceptance of Walt Whitman is the formlessness or alleged formlessness of "Leaves of Grass." This is a highly technical question, involving a more accurate notation than has thus far been made of the patterns and tunes of free verse and of emotional prose. Whitman's "new and national declamatory expression," as he termed it, cannot receive a final technical valuation until we have made more scientific progress in the analysis of rhythms. As regards the contents of his verse, it is plain that he included much material unfused and ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry

... no exaggeration to say, marks a new era in the Norwegian lyric. Among Bjoernson's predecessors there are but two lyrists of the first order, viz., Wergeland and Welhaven. The former was magnificently profuse and chaotic, abounding in verve and daring imagery, but withal high-sounding, declamatory, and, at his worst, bombastic. There is a reminiscence in him of Klopstock's inflated rhetoric; and a certain dithyrambic ecstasy—a strained, high-keyed aria-style which sometimes breaks into falsetto. ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... combined with his art, ever realised. The first descent of Freedom to our modern world, the first unfurling of her standard on the rocky pinnacle of Europe, is here celebrated in the style which it deserved. There is no false timsel-decoration about Tell, no sickly refinement, no declamatory sentimentality. All is downright, simple, and agreeable to Nature; yet all is adorned and purified and rendered beautiful, without losing its resemblance. An air of freshness and wholesomeness breathes over it; we are among honest, inoffensive, yet fearless peasants, untainted by the vices, undazzled ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle

... I found the old fellow himself. He was simply white, hot with rage—not at all noisy, or declamatory, or vulgar—but cool, cutting, and altogether terrific. He alluded to my gentlemanly conduct in forcing myself where I had been ordered off; and informed me that if I came again he would be under the unpleasant necessity of using a horsewhip. That, of course, made me savage. I pitched into him ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... much as you affect to despise this 'superstitious race.' This was indeed worship. It was a true communion of the creature with the Creator. Never before had I heard a prayer. How different from the loud and declamatory harangues of our priests! the full and rich tones of the voice of Probus, expressive of deepest reverence of the Being he addressed, and of profoundest humility on the part of the worshipper, seeming too as if uttered in no part by the usual organs of speech, but as if pronounced by the very ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... He painted theatre curtains and mythological scenes, in which he gave free rein to his sensual imagination. In spite of some admirable qualities, it seems as though the artist had strayed from his true path in painting these brilliant, but somewhat declamatory works, and he has since returned to a more modern and more direct painting. In all his changed conditions Anquetin has shown a considerable talent, pleasing in its fine vigour, impetuosity, brilliancy and sincerity. His inequality is perhaps the ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair

... Etna are divided. This lowest one is the Regione Piemontese and Nicolosi is about 2250 feet above the sea—the place from which tourists often start to make the ascent of the volcano. Here we spent a declamatory half-hour discussing where we should eat the provisions we had brought from Catania and drink the wine we had bought at Mascalucia on the way. The discussion ended by our being received in a peasant's hut, where we spread a table for ourselves and the woman stood a low paraffin lamp in the ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... except in the case of Madame Calve. For the development of dramatic ideals we must look to the singers of German affiliations or antecedents, Mesdames Materna, Lehmann, Sucher, and Nordica. As for the men of yesterday and to-day, no lover, I am sure, of the real lyric drama would give the declamatory warmth and gracefulness of pose and action which mark the performances of M. Jean de Reszke for a hundred of the high notes of Mario (for one of which, we are told, he was wont to reserve his powers ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... the alternative for or against is equally a Scotch job. Sheridan takes the lead in it, and comes plumed with his laurels gathered in Westminster Hall. His speech there contained some wonderful stroke in the declamatory style, something fanciful, poetical, and even sublime; sometimes, however, bombast, and the logic not satisfactory, at least to my mind. The performance, however, was a work of great industry, and great genius; and he has ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... Virgil attended the bar, his modest and ingenuous virtue would surely have made but a very indifferent figure: and Tully's declamatory inclination would have been as useless in poetry. Nature, if left to herself, leads us on in the best course, but will do nothing by compulsion and constraint; and if we are not satisfied to go her way, we are always the ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... intimately, I used sometimes to go there with Mueller, after our cheap dinner in the Quartier and our evening stroll along the Boulevards or the Champs Elysees; and I am bound to admit that I never, before or since, heard quite so much nonsense of the declamatory sort as on those memorable occasions. I did not think it nonsense then, however. I admired it with all my heart; applauded the nursery eloquence of these sucking Mirabeaus and Camille Desmoulins ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... A.D. 1453, No. 15) in his own letters, lest he should lose the merit and reward of suffering for Christ. * Note: He was sold as a slave in Galata, according to Von Hammer, p. 175. See the somewhat vague and declamatory letter of Cardinal Isidore, in the appendix to Clarke's Travels, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... efforts, and author of a most masterly defence of Mr. Hastings, went that day to the House of Commons, prepossessed for the accused and against his accuser. At the expiration of the first hour he said to a friend, 'All this is declamatory assertion without proof:'—when the second was finished, 'This is a most wonderful oration:'—at the close of the third, 'Mr. Hastings has acted very unjustifiably:'—the fourth, 'Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious criminal;'—and, at ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... the great Anabaptist fanaticism, the millennarian fever has raged less and less extensively. But if the literature it has produced, in ignorant and declamatory books, sermons, and tracts, were heaped together, they would make a pile as big as one of the pyramids. The preaching of Miller, about a quarter of a century ago, with his definite assignment of the time for the appointed consummation, caused quite a violent panic in the United States. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... persons and of property in other States, to disguise their own injustice, pretend or imagine, and constantly aver, that they, whose constitutional rights are thus systematically assailed, are themselves the aggressors. At the present time this imputed aggression, resting, as it does, only in the vague declamatory charges of political agitators, resolves itself into misapprehension, or misinterpretation, of the principles and facts of the political organization of the new Territories ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... distress of losing a comrade to whom he was deeply attached; he perished in the spring of '42 under the hardships of the war. The Eloge in which Vauvenargues commemorates the virtues and the pitiful fate of his friend, is too deeply marked with the florid and declamatory style of youth to be pleasing to a more ripened taste.[5] He complained that nobody who had read it observed that it was touching, not remembering that even the most tender feeling fails to touch us, when it has found stilted and turgid expression. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley

... know it — do you hear me? Do you believe it?" is Wilson Flagg's famous interpretation of the song of this commonest of all the vireos, that you cannot mistake with such a key. He calls the bird the preacher from its declamatory style; an up-and-down warble delivered with a rising inflection at the close and followed by an impressive silence, as if the little green orator were saying, "I pause ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... to spare, explanatory, declamatory and the like, has grown around a movement which ran like an unfed river, until it lost itself in the sand. Three men of genius took up their parable about what one of them called the 'Condition of England Question,' and in the pages of Carlyle's 'Chartism' and ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... of innate characteristics, can surely be done with greater perfection by some of its members under the consciously accepted guidance of the laws of art." Many Jewish race peculiarities—quick perception, vivacity, declamatory pathos, perfervid imagination—are prime qualifications for the actor's career, and such names as Bogumil Davison, Adolf Sonnenthal, Rachel Felix, and Sarah Bernhardt abundantly illustrate the ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... vituperation. It was inherent in Shakespeare's genius that he should import more dramatic intensity than any other poet into sonnets of a vituperative type; but there is also in his vituperative sonnets a declamatory parade of figurative extravagance which suggests that the emotion is feigned and that the poet is striking an attitude. He cannot have been in earnest in seeking to conciliate his disdainful mistress—a ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee

... the wearing of mourning at all Foremost to shake off the fetters of superstition Four weeks' holiday—the first in eleven years French seem madmen, and are wise Friendly advice still more intolerable Full of precedents and declamatory commonplaces Future world as laid down by rival priesthoods German Highland and the German Netherland German-Lutheran sixteenth-century idea of religious freedom Gigantic vices are proudly pointed to as the noblest God of vengeance, of jealousy, and of injustice God alone can protect us against those ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... from his chair as he spoke, and said in a deep and solemn tone, but without any declamatory vehemence,—sir, I believe that we are at this moment in what will be recognized not many centuries hence as one of the late watches in the night of the dark ages. There is a twilight ray, beyond ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Exhilarated by his new freedom, he walked briskly, threading his way among the groups of idle workmen who had gathered in the park. As he skirted a large group, he recognized Dresser, who was shouting a declamatory speech. The men received it apathetically, and Dresser got off the bench on which he had stood and pushed his way through ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... summed up, "a combination of Ibsen and hysterics, and of—er, rather declamatory observations concerning there being one law for the man and another for the woman, and Patricia's realization of the mistake we both made—and all that sort of nonsense, you know, exactly as if, I give you my word, she were one of those women who want to vote." The colonel, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... and uneducated, could during her sleep-walking discourse learnedly in rabbinical Hebrew, would furnish a case in point. The circumstance of her old master having been in the habit of walking about the house at night, reading from rabbinical books aloud and in a declamatory manner; the impression made by the strange sounds upon her youthful imagination; their accurate retention by a memory, which, however, could only reproduce them in an abnormal condition—all teach us many most interesting psychological facts, which, had this ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... painter of tortures and of tombs (the Exhumation of Pope Formosus, The Interdict, Francis Borgia before the Coffin of Isabella of Portugal), but his vigorous and severe genius never suffers him to fall into overstrained action and theatrical artifice. He does not move us by declamatory gestures and forced attitudes. Nothing can be more simple, yet nothing more affecting, than the Execution of the Duc d'Enghien and the Death of Marceau. Many young artists are following this new path, which has opened such success to M. Laurens. MM. Cormon, Dupain ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... and Italian cities, which, without possessing great value, show the change which had begun to take place in this composer's theories of dramatic music. In Paris he had been struck with the operas of Rameau, in which the declamatory form was strongly marked. His early Italian training had fixed in his mind the importance of pure melody. From Germany he obtained his appreciation of harmony, and had made a deep study of the uses of the orchestra. So we see this great reformer struggling on with many faltering steps toward that ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... beauties of the French theatre. Lessing was even more one-sided in his judgment upon it.[59] Goethe, with his usual wisdom, studied it carefully without losing his temper, and tried to profit by its structural merits. Dryden, with his eyes wide open, copied its worst faults, especially its declamatory sentiment. He should have known that certain things can never be transplanted, and that among these is a style of poetry whose great excellence was that it was in perfect sympathy with the genius of the people among whom it came into being. But ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... representative of distinct modes or types of satire. Juvenal illustrates rhetorical or tragic satire, of which he is at once the inventor and the most distinguished master—that form of composition, in other words, which attacks vice, wrongs, or abuses in a high-pitched strain of impassioned, declamatory eloquence. In this type of satire, evil is designedly painted in exaggerated colours, that disgust may more readily be aroused by the loathsomeness of the picture. As a natural consequence, sobriety, moderation, and truth to nature no longer are esteemed so indispensable. In this style Juvenal ...
— English Satires • Various

... given, apparently concerning a picture and poem that have been made, but having a more important reference to a character yet to be unfolded. Along with this there is also expressed, in the person of a professed panegyrist, a certain lofty and free opinion of his own work, in a confident declamatory style ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... four solo voices, chorus, and orchestra. The soprano takes the part of the Woman of Samaria, the other parts being impersonal. The music for the contralto is mainly declamatory. Tha tenor has a single aria, while the bass, with one exception, has the part of Narrator, the words of our Saviour being attributed to him and invariably introduced in the third personal form,—which is a striking proof of the devotional spirit of the composer, as in all other instances, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... was in a declamatory mood and went on, swingingly: "The sky is faintly flushed with pink; Apollo in his chariot draws nigh. The morning-glory closes with the sun, Bergman, and if a fairy princess is late she will be shut out and forced to sleep on the petals of a rose. My dear Nobel, don't spoil ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... stood erect, in a declamatory attitude, with his back to the exiguous fire. In the pauses of his delivery, failing to draw response from Sam, he glanced down at his wife for approval. But she too, seated on a low stool, made pretence to be absorbed in her knitting; and her ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the keys, and with them dropped two tears, forced from her by the keen disappointment that robbed this occasion of all its anticipated pleasure. Singularly free from fashionable elocutionary affectations, and certain declamatory stage tricks, by which the recitation of the Creed and the Lord's Prayer becomes a competitive test of lungs in the race for breath, Leighton Douglass read the morning service, in a well-modulated voice, and with a profound ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... Primate. "That you cannot do; no Bishop's hands would bestow them!" and he drew back his own with a declamatory gesture. "You yourself are not a Churchman, and you do not perhaps know what to us the Church means. We hold in sacred trust the power of the Keys—if we surrender ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... of the history of their love. Perhaps it was that which had made her look paler than usual for some little time. Something was evidently preying on her. Her only delight seemed to be in listening to Gifted as he read, sometimes with fine declamatory emphasis, sometimes in low, tremulous tones, the various poems enshrined in his manuscript. At other times she was sad, and more than once Mrs. Hopkins had seen a tear steal down her innocent cheek, when there seemed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... the Mediaeval Family better, we give up believing the declamatory assumptions of a general mingling together of the people forming so great a crowd. On the contrary, we feel that each small group is so closely joined together, as to be utterly barred to ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet

... rather capriciously in the midst of what he was doing. Thus did he with his music. It is narrated that on a certain occasion while playing by invitation for some friends, he suddenly put aside the instrument, saying in a sort of declamatory manner as was his ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath

... BOANERGES (4 syl.), a declamatory pet parson, who anathematizes all except his own "elect." "He preaches real rousing-up discourses, but sits down pleasantly to his tea, and makes ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... innumerable vessels, the expected one, whose sails were just being reefed, was steered by a skilful hand. Now he interrupted the blond beauty with the exclamation: "It is Archias's Proserpina! I know it well." Then, in a declamatory tone, he continued: "I, too, was permitted on the deck of the glittering vessel, lightly rocked by the crimson waves, to reach my welcome goal; as the guest of peerless Archias, I mean. The most magnificent ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... by the fervor of his declamatory utterance, he passed his hand among his straight locks, whether to cool his forehead, or to show off the numerous jewelled rings on his fingers, it was difficult to ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. What surprised me most, was the sound of my own voice, which I had never before heard at a declamatory pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some other person, who, and not myself, would be responsible for the speech: a prodigious consolation and encouragement under the circumstances! I went on without ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... necessary attention to his toilet would barely have allowed him time to finish his copy of the letter. Certain phrases had bothered him. The thrice recurrence of 'ma patrie' jarred on his ear. 'Sentiments' afflicted his acute sense of the declamatory twice. 'C'est avec les sentiments du plus profond regret': and again, 'Je suis bien scar que vous comprendrez mes sentiments, et m'accorderez l'honneur que je reclame au nom de ma patrie outrage.' The word 'patrie' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... or so averse perhaps to the contemplation of it if it be of tragical aspect, that strong terms accumulated to exhibit even what surpasses in its plain reality all the powers of language, offend them as declamatory exaggeration. Let it then be just observed, without one ambitious epithet, that since that period when ancient history, strictly so named, left off describing the state of mankind, more than a myriad of millions of our race have been on earth, and quitted it without one ray of the ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster

... condescended to the elaborate nothingness, not to say nonsense, of this metaphor (for what is meant by "advancing curtains"?) I cannot conceive. That is to say, if he did condescend: for it looks very like the interpolation of some pompous declamatory player. Pope has put it into his Treatise on ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... uttered the last words in a declamatory tone; you might have thought them a quotation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... to construe the law, wherever possible, in favor of his client. At the same time he did not forget that the House was the jury in this case, and capable of human emotions upon which he might play. At times he became declamatory beyond the point of good taste. In voice and manner he betrayed the school in which he had been trained. "When I hear gentlemen," he cried in strident tones, "attempting to justify this unrighteous fine upon General Jackson upon the ground ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... Most will bear standing to. At the present time we seem to lack the impassiveness and impartiality which was so marked among the writings of our forefathers, we are seldom content with the simple narration of fact, but must rush off into an almost declamatory description of them; my meaning will be plain to all who have studied Thucydides. The dignity of his simplicity is, I think, marred by those who put in the accessories which seem thought necessary in all present histories. How few writers of the ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler

... conduct of France in a manner so true, so masterly, and so alarming, "as to fix the attention of the House and the nation." Pitt spoke in terms still more expressive. "The speech of my noble friend," said he, "has been styled declamatory; on what principle I know not, unless that every effort of eloquence, in which the most forcible reasoning was adorned and supported by all the powers of language, was to be branded with the epithet declamatory." This debate was decisive; two hundred and seventy-seven voted for the vigorous ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various

... dignified declamatory drama, was the greatest of the post-Shakespeare school. We may justly say post-Shakespeare, though Jonson was nearly contemporaneous with the Bard of Avon, because the influence of such a man clearly belongs to an age in which the freedom and romantic magnificence ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... for the sake of declamatory effect, but recovered her breath quickly enough to start afresh on level terms with the young man, who had jumped into the stride of ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki

... comic actors made the attempt of relating my little stories from the stage; it was a complete change from the declamatory poetry which had been heard to satiety. The Constant Tin Soldier, therefore, the Swineherd, and the Top and Ball, were told from the Royal stage, and from those of private theatres, and were well received. In order that the reader ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen

... change which he brought about we must read the sermons of his contemporaries; declamatory, scholastic, subtile, they delighted in the minutiae of exegesis or dogma, serving up refined dissertations on the most obscure texts of the Old Testament, to hearers starving for a simple and ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... which was enjoyed by so many nations, forgetful of their ancient animosities, and delivered from the apprehension of future danger." Thus wrote the Roman historian, and Gibbon states that when we discount as much of this as we please as rhetorical and declamatory, the fact remains that the substance of this description is in accordance with the facts of history. Never until the Christian era was any thought given to the regular care of the helpless and the abject. Slaves were often treated like cattle, and the patricians had no bond of ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... declamatory speeches in praise [3481]of divine music, I will confine myself to my proper subject: besides that excellent power it hath to expel many other diseases, it is a sovereign remedy against [3482] despair and melancholy, and will drive away the devil himself. Canus, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... not remain to be said. The Regicide is such a tragedy as might be expected from a clever youth of eighteen. The language is declamatory, the thoughts inflated, and the limits of nature and verisimilitude transgressed in describing the characters and passions. Yet there are passages not ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... tendency. But, as far as I could judge, the weighty sense of Kemble made up for more personal incapacity than he had to answer for. His harshest tones in this part came steeped and dulcified in good humour. He made his defects a grace. His exact declamatory manner, as he managed it, only served to convey the points of his dialogue with more precision. It seemed to head the shafts to carry them deeper. Not one of his sparkling sentences was lost. I remember minutely how he delivered each in succession, and cannot by any effort imagine how any ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... (the heathen adversaries of Christianity) lament that every sex, age, and condition, and persons of every rank also, are converts to that name." (Tertull. Apol. c. 37.) I do allow that these expressions are loose, and may be called declamatory. But even declamation hath its bounds; this public boasting upon a subject which must be known to every reader was not only useless but unnatural, unless the truth of the case, in a considerable degree, ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... obliging upon their part, for if Valentine Dale were a "slow old gentleman," he was keen, caustic, and rapid, as compared to John Rogers. A formalist and a pedant, a man of red tape and routine, full of precedents and declamatory commonplaces which he mistook for eloquence, honest as daylight and tedious as a king, he was just the time-consumer for Alexander's purpose. The wily Italian listened with profound attention to the wise saws in which the excellent diplomatist revelled, and his fine ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... present day, we can see how the passionate and declamatory rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence has left its stain to this hour on most of the political writing and oratory of America, and may wish that the birth of a nation had not been screamed into the world after this fashion. Nothing ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... in the hearer a high opinion of the speaker; and, though Cicero takes considerable pains to interest the audience in his favour, yet his style is not simple and grave enough, he is too ingenious, too declamatory, discovers too much personal feeling, to elicit that confidence in him, without which argument has little influence. His invectives, again, however grand and imposing, yet, compared with his calmer and more familiar productions, ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... Topicks against the Pride of Man which are laboured by florid and declamatory Writers, are taken from the Baseness of his Original, the Imperfections of his Nature, or the short Duration of those Goods in which he makes his Boast. Though it be true that we can have nothing in us that ought to raise our Vanity, yet a Consciousness of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... high degree in poems like the Highland Lass and Yarrow Revisited, there is a romantic charm and thrilling magic which Pope never could produce. A line or two from one of the poems cited has a far more potent effect over the affections of the heart than the gorgeous declamatory rhetoric of Eloisa and Abelard. But it would be foolish to suppose that because Pope has not the passion for nature nor the glow of self-oblivious benevolence, he has not highly educative and estimable features. He should not be censured for what he never meant to supply: we ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... display. Keiser's music lacks the suavity of the Italian school, but his recitatives are vigorous and powerful, and seem to foreshadow the triumphs which the German school was afterwards to win in declamatory music. The earliest operas of Handel (1685-1759) were written for Hamburg, and in the one of them which Fate has preserved for us, 'Almira' (1704), we see the Hamburg school at its finest. In spite of the ludicrous mixture of German and Italian there is a good deal of dramatic power in ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... myself utterly unable to appreciate that celebrated soliloquy in Hamlet, beginning 'To be or not to be', or to tell whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, it has been so handled and pawed about by declamatory boys and men, and torn so inhumanly from its living place and principle of continuity in the play, till it is become to me ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... face,"[103] the poets on their part were assiduously practicing all the rhetorical devices of style. Thus the literature of the silver-age is rhetorical. The custom of public readings by the author encouraged clever writing and a declamatory manner,[104] even had the poets not received their education in the only popular institutions of higher instruction—the declamation schools. The fustian which passed for poetry and equally well for history is well illustrated by the contempt ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... is pleased to indulge in one of his most declamatory rhapsodies upon the life, "so dear to the gods," of this "pious and holy poet." But Sophocles, in private life, was a profligate, and in public life a shuffler and a trimmer, if not absolutely a renegade. It was, perhaps, the very ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... eccentricities which years of stalwart independence had developed, but these were lovable peculiarities and only severed from remarkable actions by the compelling power of time and his increasing infirmities. The loud, though pleasant, voice, and strong, often fiery, declamatory manner, were remnants of the days when his fellow-citizens were wholly swayed by the magnificence of his orations. Charmingly simple in manner, he still represented with it that old courtesy which made every stranger ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... and a richness foreign to the literature of the age; and, subsequently, Goldsmith, in the affecting yet somewhat enervate simplicity of his verse, had obtained for Poetry a brief respite from a school at once declamatory and powerless, and led her forth for a "Sunshine Holiday" into the village green and under the hawthorn shade. But, though the softer and meeker feelings had struggled into a partial and occasional vent, those which partook more of ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... dead. Quintus of Smyrna, who was of the fourth century, perhaps later, wrote a Sequel to Homer, without much imagination, but with skill and dexterity; Nonnus wrote the Dionysiaca, a poetic history of the expedition of Bacchus to India, declamatory, copious, and powerful, full alike of faults and talent; Musaeus (date absolutely unknown) has remained justly celebrated for his delicious little poem Hero and Leander, countless times translated both in ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet

... illustrates how deeply the conception of Nationalism has affected the imagination of our countrymen. The literary record of the American conception of liberty runs further back. Some historians have allowed themselves to think that the American notion of liberty is essentially declamatory, a sort of futile echo of Patrick Henry's "Give me Liberty or give me Death"; and not only declamatory, but hopelessly theoretical and abstract. They grant that it was a trumpet-note, no doubt, for agitators against the Stamp Act, and for pamphleteers like Thomas Paine; ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... sell their intellectual birthright for a mess of pottage, making a brazen compromise with what they hold despicable, lest they should have to win their bread honourably. Men need to expend no declamatory indignation upon them. They have a hell of their own; words can add no bitterness to it. It is no light thing to have secured a livelihood on condition of going through life masked and gagged. To be compelled, week after week, and year after year, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley

... greatly facilitates the task, because the harmonic design furnishes in many cases the only unmistakable clue to the extremities of the melodic members. The difficulty finally vanishes only when the student has learned to appreciate the declamatory quality of all good melody, and can detect its inflections, its pauses; can feel which (and how many) of its tones are coherent and inseparable, and where the points of repose interrupt the current, and thus divulge the sense ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius

... and Rome and in the Parliament of Great Britain, so in the conventions and congresses of Revolutionary America it sprang up and flourished naturally. The age, moreover, was an eloquent, not to say a rhetorical, age; and the influence of Johnson's orotund prose, of the declamatory Letters of Junius, and of the speeches of Burke, Fox, Sheridan, and the elder Pitt is perceptible in the debates of our early Congresses. The fame of a great orator, like that of a great actor, is largely traditionary. The spoken word transferred ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... that the Notes, where-ever they would admit of it, might be abridg'd: for which Reason I have curtail'd a great Quantity of Such, in which Explanations were too prolix, or Authorities in Support of an Emendation too numerous: and Many I have entirely expung'd, which were judg'd rather Verbose and Declamatory (and, so, Notes merely of ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... O'Connell was absolutely consistent. He was in favor of liberty for Ireland, but he was in favor of liberty for every other country. His definition of liberty was practical and not merely declamatory. He was in favor of equal rights for all men before the law; he was in favor of a free press, a free vote, and as nearly as possible a manhood suffrage. He was in many ways far in advance of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... flamboyant and declamatory, but tense, staccato, pointed. Mrs. Cresswell found herself taking part. Someone mentioned her name, and one or two glances of interest and even curiosity were thrown her way. Congressmen's wives were rare ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... Beaumarchais also undertook the immense task of publishing a complete edition of Voltaire. He also prepared a sequel to the 'Barber,' in which Figaro should be even more important, and should serve as a mouthpiece for declamatory criticism of the social order. But his 'Marriage of Figaro' was so full of the revolutionary ferment that its performance was forbidden. Following the example of Moliere under the similar interdiction ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... and Peel successively spoke, and none of them well; the latter was unusually heavy. The best speeches on the other side were Charles Buller's and Roebuck's (Radicals), and Howick's. Sheil made a grand declamatory tirade, chiefly remarkable for the scene it produced, which was unexampled in the House, and for its credit may be hoped such as never will occur again. There was a blackguard ferocity in it which would have disgraced the National Convention or the Jacobin Club. Lyndhurst was ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... resolute voice that you are a criminal, in a very short time you will be taken at your word and clapped into gaol— there or in a madhouse. Either will be uncomfortable—but in neither will you meet your lady. Of that I am positive." He grew warm, he grew declamatory. "Why, this is extraordinary!" he cried. "Why, sir, how will you get out of this State and into another without a passport? How will you live when you have spent your money? How can you approach ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... devout person praise God, for long-bearded democrats have the monopoly of patriotism just as the men in cassocks have the monopoly of religion. He spoke, in his turn, with a dogmatic tone, with the declamatory emphasis learned from proclamations daily posted on the walls, and he winded up with a piece of eloquence in which he condemned masterfully that "scoundrel ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant

... 1908, an English Epic. It is not really an epic—it is a historical romance in verse, as Aurora Leigh is a novel. It is interesting from beginning to end, more interesting as narrative than as poetry. It is big rather than great, rhetorical rather than literary, declamatory rather than passionate. And while many descriptive passages are fine, the pictures of the terrible storm near Cape Horn are surely less vivid than those in Dauber. Had Mr. Noyes written Drake without the songs, and written nothing ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... really is, and takes delight in shocking not only the conventions but the ideals of English society. His poetry of this first period is generally, though not always, shallow and insincere in thought, and declamatory or bombastic in expression. After his exile, and his meeting with Shelley in Italy, we note a gradual improvement, due partly to Shelley's influence and partly to his own mature thought and experience. We have the impression ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... sundry literary gatherings and debating societies. Such of his work as has been preserved does not transcend the ordinary productions of a young man trying his wings in clumsy flights of oratory; but he had the excuse that the thunderous declamatory style was then regarded in the West as the only true eloquence. He learned better, in course of time, and so did the West; and it was really good fortune that he passed through the hobbledehoy period in the presence of audiences whose taste was ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... a method of entry into the material world, and a method of departure from it, wholly and strikingly dissimilar to the established order—in common parlance, miraculous. Answers conceived in these two senses—some rough and popular and declamatory, some learned and argumentative and scientific—appeared in great numbers. "Grave objections are alleged against the book.... Its conclusions about the meaning of the term God, and about man's knowledge of God, are severely condemned; strong objections are taken ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... wrote, reflected long; he calculated the chances, and he decided on a plan which might be subsequently modified by his inspirations as to detail, but hindered him from ever losing his way. Hence his power of emphasis, his declamatory style thrilling with life and truth. I quite agree with you that Meyerbeer's learning is transcendent; but science is a defect when it evicts inspiration, and it seems to me that we have in this opera the painful toil of ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac

... this is reviving the old cruel war against Rome, and rekindling a fierce style of polemics which is now out of date? And how is Dr. Pusey to state these objections if, when he goes into them, not in a vague declamatory way, but showing his respect and seriousness by his guarded and full and definite manner of proof, he is to be met by the charge that he does not show sufficient consideration? All this may be a reason for thinking it vain to write an ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... were assembled all over the country to make formal protests against the treaty. They were called ostensibly to "deliberate upon it," but they were frequently tumultuous, and always declamatory. A large meeting was held in Boston on the tenth of July. The chief actors there denounced the treaty as not containing one single article honorable or beneficial to the United States. It was disapproved of by unanimous vote, and a committee of fifteen, appointed to state objections, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... of size. He was one of the world's big little men—the type of Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Harrison and John D. Long. In the House of Commons he lost no time in making his presence felt. He was assertive, theatrical, declamatory—still, he usually knew what he was talking about. His criticisms of the Government so exasperated Sir Robert Walpole that Walpole used to refer to him as "that terrible cornet of horse." Finally, Walpole had him dismissed from the Army. This, instead ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... ceased to quote texts, abandoned theological exposition, refrained from the exhortatory method, and addressed men and women in literary language about the actual interests of daily life. Their preaching was not metaphysical, and it was not declamatory. The illustrations used were human rather than Biblical, a preference was given to what was intellectual rather than to what was emotional, and the effect was instruction rather than conversion. It resulted in faithful ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke

... living volume of old lore, or to question the oracle. Well, it can't be helped now, and the papers I've got are silent upon the point. But there were jollifications to no end both in Palmerstown and Chapelizod that night, and declamatory conversations rising up in the street at very late hours, and singing, and 'hurooing' along the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... took—the whole was a sight to look around upon again and again. And there sweetly rose those voices up to the high, whitewash'd wooden roof, and pleasantly the roof sent it all back again. They sang very well, mostly quaint old songs and declamatory hymns, to fitting tunes. Here, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... strength of the ministry was largely derived from the conduct of their opponents. The violence of the extreme section of the popular party led to a revulsion of feeling in the country. In parliament Chatham was not effective, for his declamatory speeches and dictatorial manner were out of place in the lords; and in the commons Burke was apt to weary the house, and lost ground through constant breaches of good taste. Above all, the two parties in the opposition, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... highest respect for him. Their correspondence (1770-1778) is perhaps as interesting as any letters of that period that we possess: Voltaire is always bright, playful, and affectionate; Condorcet more declamatory and less graceful, but full of reverence and loyalty for his 'dear and illustrious' master, and of his own peculiar eagerness for good causes and animosity against the defenders of evil ones. Condorcet was younger than the patriarch of Ferney ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley

... in the Edinburgh Review for November 1814, and certainly had never used more declamatory language ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... the evils which Garrick had the glory of eradicating. Just before him, actors spoke in the ti-tum-ti monotonous sing-song way of the new school. Old Macklin some years ago, assured the writer of this, that except in some few declamatory speeches, or in the ghost of Hamlet, QUIN would not be endured at that time in tragedy: and what said this Quin himself when he was prevailed upon to go to Goodman's Fields to see Garrick for the first ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various

... duty to your Majesty. The House sate until half-past eleven last night. Lord Stanhope[6] made a long declamatory speech, very violent, but having in it nothing defined or specific, and was answered by Lord Brougham in a most able and triumphant defence and maintenance of the late Act for Amending the Laws for the Relief ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... slavery. But it was also an effective attack on the Church and the sacerdotal system. The author's method was the same which his greater contemporary Gibbon employed on a larger scale. A history of facts was a more formidable indictment than any declamatory attack. ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... the truth by false doctrine, the abuses of the Church, the Reformation, the martyrdom of the Huguenots for the return to the early principles of Christianity, the "search for the old paths," he set forth in a tone generous but not fiery, presently powerful and searching, yet not declamatory. At the last he raised the sword that hung by his side, and the Book that lay before him, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... reformer,—and of the right type, too; not destructive, declamatory, vituperative; not a monomaniac, snarly, and ill-natured,—as if zeal in riding a favorite hobby excused exclusiveness of soul and any amount of bad temper. He would not demolish the social system and build on its ruins ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... as a flash the Kaiser turned to Count Eulenburg. 'I shall repay the debt Prussia owes to Menzel,' he spoke, not without declamatory effect. 'We will have the representation of the Sans Souci flute concert three days hence. Your programme is to be ready tomorrow morning at ten. Menzel, mind you, must know nothing of this: merely command him ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... bring to an undistinguished scale the means of the one, as connected with power, wealth, or grandeur, and of the other with their contraries. Philosophers and poets have often protested against this decision; but their arguments have been despised as declamatory, or ridiculed as romantic. ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... portion of the energy and declamatory spirit which characterises the Roman poet, whom, as he translated, he insensibly made his model. His battle pieces," our critic continues, "highly merit being brought forward to notice; they possess the requisites, in a remarkable degree, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various

... assimilating materials of nourishment out of its new circumstances, and work for itself new organs of power appropriate to the new sphere of its motion and activity."[45] This rare grasp of general principles was combined in Coleridge with poetic vision and a declamatory eloquence which enabled him to seize on the more ardent and open-minded men of letters and to determine their ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... that Jones wrote verses for the ladies extempore, and gives a sample, the sentiments of which are as characteristic of the declamatory century as of ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood

... some imperfect sentences and a multitude of hums and has abandoned the cause to his client; and I commenced an harangue of half an hour to Phileleutheros, the tallow- chandler, varying my notes, through the whole gamut of eloquence, from the ratiocinative to the declamatory, and in the latter from the pathetic to the indignant. I argued, I described, I promised, I prophesied; and beginning with the captivity of nations I ended with the near approach of the millennium, finishing the whole with some ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... romantic and pastoral histories, classical tales, and sometimes mere Fabliaux, down to his own time. The chief of the episodes, the story of Argentile and Curan, has often, and not undeservedly, met with high praise, and sometimes in his declamatory parts Warner achieves a really great success. Probably, however, what commended his poem most to the taste of the day was its promiscuous admixture of things grave and gay—a mixture which was always much ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... it 'an epitome of Christianity, a learned and mysterious abridgement of all doctrines of the gospel, all the institutions of the holy fathers, and all the counsels of perfection.' Montalembert speaks in a similar strain of French declamatory eloquence. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... that 'he had brought away with him from Oxford, a great stock of Greek and Latin, and had made himself master of all the modern languages. He was one of the best speakers in the House of Lords, both in the declamatory ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... understand that I will do it. And now you may kiss me, and then we will talk business.' Paul availed himself of the permission with alacrity until Claudia slid gently away. 'That is enough, and more than enough. I won't have you making any more declamatory love-scenes, you dreadful boy! No, not another. No; not the least little one in the world. You will keep to that side of the table and I shall sit on this. Now, reach me my writing-desk. I am going to give you a letter of introduction to Walton, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... between the gloomy Roman palaces, saddened by the grey walls and muddy pavements. Comparisons, involuntary and continual, between Carthage and Rome, made him unjust to Rome. In his eyes it had a hard, self-conscious, declamatory look, and gazing at the barren Roman campagna, he remembered the laughing Carthage suburbs, with gardens, villas, vineyards, olivets, circled everywhere by the brilliance of the sea and ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... aspire for guests of a higher degree. Then, one fine day, a young lady, with a long French name and aristocratic antecedents, fell in love with Arne, not coolly and prudently, as northern damsels do, but with wildly tragic gesticulations and a declamatory ardor that were superb to behold. To the Norseman, however, a passion of this degree of intensity was too novel to be altogether pleasing; he felt awed and bewildered,—standing, as he did, for the first time in his life in the presence of a veritable mystery. ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... the plot of the patriots, at Paris, in 1816, came, one upon the other, to put the moderation of the Cabinet to the proof. The details forwarded by the magistrates of the department of the Isere were full of exaggeration and declamatory excitement. The mode of repression ordered by the Government was precipitately rigorous. Grenoble had been the cradle of the Hundred Days. It was thought expedient to strike Bonapartism heavily, in the very place where it had first exploded. A natural opportunity presented itself here of ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... fight this country for the possession of what is now British Columbia. His short figure gave an impression of abounding strength and energy which obtained him the nickname of "the little Giant." With no assignable higher quality, and with the blustering, declamatory, shamelessly fallacious and evasive oratory of a common demagogue, he was nevertheless an accomplished Parliamentarian, and imposed himself as effectively upon the Senate as he did upon the people of Illinois and the North ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... remarkable alike for its penetrating quality and for its charm so fine and delicate that it seemed almost intellectual. But she was not a remarkably dramatic singer, even in light comedy parts, which best suited her; and her style was not at all declamatory. She sang; and in her vocalization she showed the results of intelligent study in the old Italian school. Her phrasing was incomparably fine, and the delicacy of her articulation has been surpassed by no modern prima donna, not even by Alboni. Thus much of her as a vocal artist; but her charm ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... admirers; but, with the exception of a few pages of sublime beauty, I have never altogether liked the love scenes at the end of Siegfried and at the beginning of Goetterdaemmerung. I find their style rather pompous and declamatory; and their almost excessive refinement makes them border upon dulness. The form of the duet, too, seems cut and dried, and there are signs of weariness in it. The heaviness of the last pages of Siegfried recalls Die Meistersinger, which ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... certain; but the substance of the book will, I believe, be found fully true. I am encouraged in this belief by the fact that, of the three bitter attacks which this work in its earlier form has already encountered, one was purely declamatory, objurgatory, and hortatory, and the others based upon ignorance of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... anything, it was said, and they got the name of Jacques Bonhomme (Jack Goodfellow); but this taunt they belied in a terrible manner. We will quote from the last continuer of William of Nangis, the least declamatory and the least confused of all the chroniclers of that period: "In this same year 1358," says he, "in the summer [the first rising took place on the 28th of May], the peasants in the neighborhood of St. Loup de Cerent and Clermont, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... singers, endowed with equal executive powers, and able to produce with the utmost perfection whatever their director could require. I never saw the Prague public so enchanted as they were on this occasion by Dussek's splendid playing. His fine declamatory style, especially in cantabile phrases, stands as the ideal for every artistic performance—something which no other ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock

... are apt to break the continuity of the poem and to injure the harmony of its versification. The theme of Life, Death, and Immortality is not a narrow one, and affords ample space for imaginative treatment. Young's treatment of it is too often declamatory; he drops the poet in the rhetorician and the wit. There is much of the false sublime in the poem, and much that reveals the hollow character of the writer. The first book is the finest, sparkling with felicitous expressions and rising frequently to true ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... present recall what my recitation was, but it was probably Catiline's Defense or some other of the turgid declamatory pieces of classic literature with which all our readers were filled. It was bombastic stuff, but my blind, boyish belief in it gave it dignity. As I went on my voice cleared. The window sashes regained their outlines. I saw every form before me, and the look of ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... did not touch upon the subject again, Clarence forbore to ask any further questions, though he was considerably surprised by this sudden discovery. When he went into the drawing-room to tea, he found his friend, the stern old lady, speaking in a high declamatory tone. The words which he heard as he ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth

... Productions have fail'd of their expected Applause; of which, very many Instances might be produc'd; wherein that has been the Chief, if not the only Defect. The French, indeed, tho' a Nation of great Levity, can attentively listen to long declamatory Speeches, when an English Audience wou'd fall asleep; who love Action and Bus'ness, love Plot and Design; Variety of Incidents is their Delight, but yet that Plot must be founded on Reason and Probability, and conduce to the Main Action of the Drama. It ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison

... shout, and cried out in a declamatory tone, "O Platonic love! O illustrious scullery-maid! O thrice-blessed age of ours, wherein we see love renewing the marvels of the age of gold! O my poor tunnies, you must pass this year without ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... it his interest to avoid as much as may be, long declamatory speeches, till his organs are enlarged and confirmed. But in those parts in which Douglas discloses his lofty spirit, and no less in all the pathetic parts, he far exceeded expectation, and deserved all the applause ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... chair and Norine rested herself upon its arm. He lay back with eyes closed. From the regions at the rear came the voice of Jacket. The boy was in a declamatory mood. He had gathered an audience, as was his daily custom, and was addressing ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach

... were written by Seneca in mature life, in deference to his imperial pupil's craze for the stage. All the rhetorical vices of his prose are here exaggerated. The tragedies are totally without dramatic life, consisting merely of a series of declamatory speeches, in correct but monotonous versification, interspersed with choruses, which only differ from the speeches by being written in lyric metres instead of the iambic. To say that the tragedies are without merit would be an overstatement, ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... doubt an apology for a play destitute of dramatic art. The declamatory speeches may be an intentional imitation of the harangues of the Revolutionaries, but they are more likely to be the product of the inflation of youth. The redeeming feature of the play is the beautiful little lyric, ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... more, however, and the door burst open, and in they came, half a dozen glowing, breezy, vigorous young cavalrymen, ruddy with health, elastic with open-air life and exercise, brimful of good spirits and cordiality, and headed by the declamatory Blake, who made a ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King

... Probable. Nor is every thing that favours of the Marvellous, esteem'd more among Men of Taste than pure Nonsense. Both generally go together, and the Authors who fall into gigantic or unnatural Ideas, have commonly a declamatory Stile, bordering upon a pompous ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various



Words linked to "Declamatory" :   rhetorical, orotund



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