"Epistolary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will begin to think my epistolary offerings (to whatever altar you please to devote them) rather prodigal. But until you answer, I shall not abate, because you deserve no better. I know you are well, because I hear of your voyaging to London and the environs, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... searching the mighty question of origins, he was now grappling with the last and darkest problem of the hereafter. (Darwin died at Down, in Kent, on the 19th of April 1882.—Translator's Note.) I therefore abandon the epistolary form, which would be unwarranted in view of that grave at Westminster. A free and impersonal statement shall set forth what I intended to relate in a ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... Though these epistolary visits in the love of God were very comfortable and confirming to me, and my heart was thankful to the Lord for them, yet I longed after personal conversation with Friends, and it was hard, I thought, that there should be ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... the two great passions of asking and answering that epistolary correspondence was first invented. Letters (for by this usurped title epistles are now commonly known) are of several kinds. First, there are those which are not letters at all—as letters-patent, letters dismissory, letters enclosing ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... she set out upon a visit to the country, where she spent nearly the whole of the month of March. It was, I believe, while she was upon this visit, that some epistolary communication with Mr. Imlay, induced her resolutely to expel from her mind, all remaining doubt as to the ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... believe in his first paper, that we can never read an author with much zest unless we are acquainted with his situation. I feel the same in my epistolary correspondence; and, supposing that in this respect we may be alike, I will just tell you my condition. Imagine a house in the middle of pretty large grounds, surrounded by palings. These I never pass. You may therefore suppose that I ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... epistolary accounts with you at present is extraordinary. The balance, as to number, is on your side. I am indebted to you for two letters; one dated the 16th of November, upon which very day I wrote to you, so that our letters were exactly exchanged, and one dated ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... the delicate tenderness of feminine friendship, sprung up in the Princess's bosom. Such was the strength of the attachment that it was the desire of the Princess that all distinction prescribed by etiquette should be waived. She required that in their epistolary correspondence they should treat each other as equals, under the assumed names of Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman. Lady Churchill chose the latter, which would be, she said, the emblem of her "frank, open temper." Under these assumed names they wrote frequently ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... once accepted, as Richard knew it would be. It was far from the first time that the thing had been discussed, epistolary fashion, between them; for letters were exchanged as often as opportunity permitted,—sometimes twice or ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... helplessly in love with Miss Langley, whom he sees in one of her walks accompanied by her maid, Susan. Through a misapprehension of personalities his lordship addresses a love missive to the maid. Susan accepts in perfect good faith, and an epistolary love-making goes on till they are disillusioned. It naturally makes a droll and delightful little comedy; and is a story that is particularly clever in ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... pride, the letter he received in reply, which was written in the Duke's most characteristic manner. The original, I believe, still hangs, framed, in the Secretary's room at the hospital; and as I think it likely to be interesting, as a specimen of the Duke's epistolary powers and peculiarities, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... gathered that his mother and sisters were not ignorant of her whereabouts—he never mentioned her name to them—but as to this he was not sure if the source of their information had been the Morning Post or a casual letter received by the inscrutable Biddy. He knew Biddy had some epistolary commerce with Julia; he had an impression Grace occasionally exchanged letters with Mrs. Gresham. Biddy, however, who, as he was also well aware, was always studying what he would like, forbore to talk to him about the absent mistress of Harsh beyond once dropping ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... on the note and opened it, thinking it might be from Mrs. Olney. But the opening lines smacked of other modes of speech than hers; and though Julia had no experience of Mr. Thomasson's epistolary style, she felt no surprise when she found the initials F.T. appended ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... in life. Illegible handwriting, for instance, may go far to retard or arrest a youth's success. It sometimes interferes with friendly intercourse. I once had a friend whose writing was so illegible, and the cause of so much worry in mere decipherment, that I was constrained to give up epistolary correspondence with him altogether. There can be little doubt that many a would-be author fails of success because of the illegibility of his penmanship, for it is impossible that an editor or publisher can form a fair estimate of the character or value of a manuscript ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... too, to write to her, but not much to receive her letters, for Daisy did not excel in epistolary composition, and after a few weeks her letters were short and far apart, and, as Guy thought, constrained and studied in their tone, and when, after she had been absent from him for three months or more his longing to ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... anxious, fortune disclosed the means of securing themselves against the patriarch's malevolence. The republic everywhere exercised the very closest espionage over epistolary communication, in order to discover if any persons were plotting against the state. It happened that letters were intercepted at Monte Pulciano, which had been written by the patriarch to Niccolo without the pope's knowledge; and although they were written in an unusual character, ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... he is irresistible. The Memoires is one of the two or three essays in artistic biography which may claim equal honours with Benvenuto's story of himself and his own doings; the two volumes of correspondence rank with the most interesting epistolary matter of these times; in the Grotesques, the A Travers Chants, the Soirees de l'Orchestre there is enough of fun and earnest, of fine criticism and diabolical humour, of wit and fancy and invention, to furnish forth a dozen ordinary critics, and leave a rich remainder when all's done. ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... mood, he wrote the annals of his time, and turned, not for the better, from the epistolary style to the historical, he thus described the impression made on the English public by the touching and inspiring story of Wolfe's heroism and death: "The incidents of dramatic fiction could not be conducted with more address to lead ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... profound, a gentleman so accomplished, and a man so widely admired and beloved. SANDERSON was a delightful companion; and as we record this hasty tribute to his memory, we cannot help recalling the many pleasant passages, personal and epistolary, that we have had together. A correspondent of the Philadelphia Gazette, who knew him well, furnishes the following notice of the deceased, in the justice of which all who ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... known to Ethel than to Tom—and a series of their father's letters, from their first separation till the traveller's own silence had caused their correspondence to drop. Charming letters they were, such as people wrote before the penny-post had spoilt the epistolary art—long, minute, and overflowing with brilliant happiness. Several of them were urgent invitations to Stoneborough, and one of these was finished in that other hand—the delicate, well-rounded writing ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... through the post, Jerrold sarcastically dedicated to the heckled baronet. He did this on the ground that Sir James, having the whole run of the Post Office and the fingering of all the letters, must therefore possess "a most refined, most exquisite taste for the graces of epistolary composition," and could thoroughly appreciate them. This was another version of ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... was in my hands. I have devoted the best part of to-day to the contents of this packet. They consist of letters written by Matthew Haygarth, and distinguished by a most abominable orthography; but I remember my own father's epistolary composition to have been somewhat deficient in this respect; nor is it singular that the humble citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would provoke the laughter ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... pours her troubles and difficulties, and that Madame de la Fayette communicates her little alarms, lest young Count de St. Paul should have detected her intimacy with La Rochefoucauld. {53} The few of Madame de Sable's letters which survive show that she excelled in that epistolary style which was the specialty of the Hotel de Rambouillet: one to Madame de Montausier, in favor of M. Perier, the brother-in-law of Pascal, is a happy mixture of good taste and good sense; but among them all we prefer quoting ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... letter seems to have been written under the spur of imminent necessity. Perhaps there was no time to enter fully upon the subject; perhaps also it was one that could not be discussed through an epistolary correspondence." ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... University, who arranged all the British bards in a tripos and brought out the Cambridge men at the top. This was a very characteristic performance: but Mr. Birrell's is hardly less so in these days when (to quote the epistolary parent) so much prominence is given to athleticism in our seats of learning. For he picks out a team of lightblue singers as though he meant to play an inter-University match, and challenges Oxford to "come on." He gives Milton a "blue," and says we oughtn't to play Shelley ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... easy, familiar, talkative style. The letters of Cicero and Pliny, of ancient, and Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, Madame de Svign, and Lady Mary Wortley Montague, of modern times, are generally received as some of the best specimens extant of epistolary composition. The letters of Charles Lamb are a series of brilliances, though of kaleidoscope variety; they have wit without buffoonery, and seriousness without melancholy. He closes one of them by subscribing himself his friend's "afflicted, headachey, sorethroaty, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... 'ud scorn to deteriorate upon the superiminence of my own execution at inditin' wid a pen in my hand; but would you feel a delectability in my supersoriptionizin' the epistolary correspondency, ma'am, that ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... and was receiving much attention from gentlemen), so that she had never heard of his visit until the spring had come again. Parted friends did not keep up with one another's affairs by means of epistolary communication, in those days, in Edgewood; it was not the custom. Spoken words were difficult enough to Justin Peabody, and written words were quite impossible, especially if they were to be used to define his half-conscious desires and his fluctuations of will, or to recount ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Accompanying this epistolary masterpiece was a brief note from the writer's mother, explaining that the "picture" of Captain Hamilton, of whose possession her infant boasted, had been cut from an illustrated newspaper and pasted on stiff card-board in gratification ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... epistolary habits, Winifred exclaimed at the first glance, 'What can you mean? There is not one word of the little one! It ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sorry indeed were these days for Billy; and, as if to make her cup of woe full to overflowing, there were Sister Kate's epistolary "I told you so," and Aunt Hannah's ever recurring lament: "If only, Billy, you were a practical housekeeper yourself, they wouldn't impose ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... becomes still more striking. And though Burnet more covertly, and Ludlow more openly, insinuate that his fondness for his sister was of a criminal nature, I never could find that there was any ground whatever for such a suspicion; nor does the little that remains of their epistolary correspondence give it the smallest countenance. Upon the whole, Charles II. was a bad man and a bad king; let us not palliate his crimes, but neither let us adopt false or doubtful imputations for the purpose ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... truly characteristic of the man, that I cannot refrain from giving the whole of it. Having heard it reported that the duke answered with his own hand every letter that he received, I, who generally prefer judging in all things for myself, determined to put his grace's epistolary punctuality to the test of experience. With this view I took up my pen, and dashed off a few lines, in which I made no allusion, either to my first interview, or the affair of the dinner; but simply ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... study, and in her closet duties: and were occasionally augmented by those she saved from rest: and in these passed her epistolary amusements. ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... was "Gertrude;" there were but few of these, and, had Gifford looked, he would have seen that the last one, blistered with tears, said that her father had forbidden further correspondence, and bade him, with the old epistolary formality from which not even love could escape, "an eternal farewell." But the tear-stains told more than the words, at least of Mr. Denner's heart, if not of pretty sixteen-year-old Gertrude's. These were among the first to be burned; yet how Mr. Denner had loved them, even though Gertrude, ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... valuable time taken up, without a penny of remuneration. Now, Sir, if you think fit to transmit to the address of 'M. R.,' through the post-office, a hundred dollars ($100), I will overlook what is past, and resign solely to yourself what interest I possess in your epistolary intercourse through the pages of that infamous ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... on paper. Love plumb locoes Johnnie. His spellin' don't suit him, his handwritin' don't suit him, his natchral letters don't suit him. So off he sends to Denver for all the letter-writin' books he can buy—Handbook of Correspondence, The Epistolary Guide, The Ready Letter-Writer, and a stack more. There's no denyin' it, Johnnie certainly did sweat hisself ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... universal wonderment. It was a great oblong missive, with the words 'On His Majesty's Service' printed at the top. It had an enormous seal, and was directed to 'Mr Thomas Larkin.' A crowd of idlers followed the postman with this epistolary phenomenon, in the hope of getting some knowledge of its contents. Tom, however, when he read it, coolly put it into his pocket, and walked to the cottage without saying a ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various
... prefers to dip at random, looking for old friends or new faces, and has his reward. But if he is resolute to read letters in chronological order, he will also, we hope, find in our selection some trace of the development of the Epistolary art, as, rising through earlier naiveties and formalities to the grace and bel air of the great Augustans, it slides into the freer, if less dignified, utterance of an age which, startled by cries of 'Equality' at its birth, has concerned itself less ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... of Cicero may be classed as (1) rhetorical; (2) oratorical; (3) philosophical and political; (4) epistolary. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Paul—Epistolary Writings. Some Reasons for Paul's Writings. Qualifications of Paul. How the Epistles are Best Understood. Titles and ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell
... Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics; news, sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include all non-serious subjects; or subjects serious in themselves, but treated after my fashion, non-seriously.—And first, for news. In them the most desirable circumstance, I suppose, is that they shall ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... its popularity. Johnson considered Miss Burney equal to Fielding. But although she possessed qualities similar to his—constructive power and picturesqueness—she possessed them in a lesser degree. In the management of the difficulties of the epistolary form of novel-writing, she surpassed Richardson ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... with the epistolary products of my pen, these letters would have undoubtedly suggested the workings of a crazed and feverish brain, but they were not calculated to arouse any particular alarm in the minds of my friends ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... position to propose any suitable terms. Now as, on the occasion of the performance of the "Messiah," you have already been only too kind to us, it really would not do for me to return to the charge, unless you were to authorize me to do so quite directly and positively, by writing me an epistolary masterpiece somewhat ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... in abstractions, but each seems inspired by a thorough egotism. Descartes, their philosopher, drew all his inferences from consciousness; Madame de Svign, the epistolary queen, had for her central motive of all speculation and gossip the love of her daughter; Madame Guyon eliminated her tenets from the ecstasy of self-love; Rochefoucauld derived a set of philosophical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the life of Gerbert reveal practically nothing to show that he came within the Moorish sphere of influence during his sojourn in Spain. These sources {115} are his letters and the history written by Richer. Gerbert was a master of the epistolary art, and his exalted position led to the preservation of his letters to a degree that would not have been vouchsafed even by their classic excellence.[453] Richer was a monk at St. Remi de Rheims, and was ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... "Epistles" his editors have agreed to entitle them; but not all of them are genuine Letters. Some are rather dedicated than written to the persons whose names they bear; some are thrown for literary purposes into epistolary form; some again are definitely and personally addressed to friends. "Sermons" he calls them himself as he called the Satires, and their motive is mostly the same; like those, they are Conversations, only with absent correspondents instead of with present interlocutors, real ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... capacity of godfather by suggesting the actual titles by which some of his books are known to the world. I mention the circumstance only as a precedent for my present temerity. To compensate those who disapprove of my choice, I have included two unpublished letters. The examples of Wilde's epistolary style, published since his death, have been generally associated with disagreeable subjects. Those included here will, I ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... of the sale would bring him face to face with ruin. Reluctantly, feeling that he was being imposed upon, he reduced the price by two hundred thousand livres, and even consented to write the Queen the following letter, whose epistolary grace suggests ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... and tonight I shall sleep in my clothes, with my blankets and poncho made up into a sleeping bag. It is wonderful what the Y. M. C. A. does for us, giving to all who come every kind of information, cashing our checks, supplying pen and ink and paper to the epistolary, and giving minor helps constantly. It is to them a very burdensome expense, which they have no fund to meet. I shall leave something ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... closing. Irenaeus is the first extant writer in whom, from the nature of his work, we have a right to expect explicit information on the subject of the Canon. Earlier writings, which have been preserved entire, are either epistolary, like the letters of the Apostolic Fathers, where any references to the Canonical books must necessarily be precarious and incidental (to say nothing of the continuance of the oral tradition at this early date as a disturbing element); or devotional, like the Shepherd ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... most rigorous necessity); so if I am to write, I ought to have more time, and when I rest, I wish to lay down and not take up my pen again. Really, my poor dear mother, this ought to be understood between us once for all; otherwise, I shall have to renounce all epistolary intercourse. . . . And this morning I was about to make the first dash at my work, when your letter came and completely upset me. Do you think it possible to have artistic inspirations after being brought suddenly face to face with such a picture of my miseries as you have traced? Do ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... Goethe had left Friederike had precluded subsequent communications with her and her family; in the case of the Wetzlar circle there was no such impediment to future epistolary intercourse. He had left Lotte Buff, as he tells us, with a clearer conscience than he had left Friederike, and on the part of Lotte and Kestner there was apparently no feeling that prompted a breach of their relations with him. For more than a ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... pouring forth his tribulations with much frankness and simplicity. Mr. Griffith Donne's principal trial was the existence of an elderly maiden aunt, who did not approve of him, and was in the habit of expressing her disapproval in lengthy epistolary correspondence, invariably tending to severe denunciation of his mode of life, and also invariably terminating with the announcement that unless he "desisted" (from what, or in what manner, not specified) she should consider it her bounden duty to disinherit ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... reason was that the regent made it a principle of action never to allow women to meddle with state affairs. It may be also, that Philippe the Second, regent of France, was more reserved toward his mother than toward his mistresses, for he knew her epistolary inclinations, and he had no fancy for seeing his projects made the subjects of the daily correspondence which she kept up with the Princess Wilhelmina Charlotte, and the Duke Anthony Ulric of Brunswick. ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... supposed correspondence may be fixt between every two of them, and write to one another under the inspection of the teacher who may correct and shew their faults when he sees occasion; by such a method he will soon find them improve in epistolary writing. The same may be observed with regard to young ladies, who are very often deficient, not only in orthography, but every other ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... and Akenside; in his didactic poems, he reminds us of the essays of Pope; in his hymns he catered successfully to the returning piety of the age; in his translations of Homer and of Ovid, he presented the ancients to moderns in a new and acceptable dress; and in his Letters he sets up an epistolary model, which may be profitably studied by all who desire to express themselves with energy, simplicity, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... political and intellectual liberty enjoyed by Englishmen with the bondage of his own countrymen. The "Philosophic Letters" purported to be addressed to the author's friend Theriot; but they would seem to be essays in an epistolary form rather than actual correspondence. Of England and its people, Voltaire was both an observant and an appreciative critic; hosts and guest alike had reason to be pleased with his long and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... me his travelling carriage, which obliged me to use six horses on my journey to St. Petersburg. I was sorry to leave Betty, and I kept up an epistolary correspondence with her mother throughout the whole of my ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and his medical attendant says that he must have died long since but for the very great strength of his natural constitution. As to his literary remains, they must be very considerable, but, except his epistolary correspondence, more or less unfinished. His letters cannot but be very numerous, and, if carefully collected and judiciously selected, will, I doubt not, add greatly to his reputation. He had a fine talent for that species of composition, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... About the cheque: well now, I am going to keep it; but I assure you Mrs. - has never asked me for money, and I would not dare to offer any till she did. For all that I shall stick to the cheque now, and act to that amount as your almoner. In this way I reward myself for the ambiguity of my epistolary style. ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were truly gratified with this intelligence, and should be very happy to be present on that occasion; but as that is among the impossibilities, we deem it a great privilege to represent the Richwood Ladies' Union League through epistolary correspondence. The cause is glorious, and is calculated to elevate woman to a higher sphere. Louder voices and holier motives urge us to duty as never before. At the time our Ladies' Union League was ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the three hours of his daily classes, yet ever restlessly stroking his leg, and assuring himself "he should retire from the University and read the authors." In Goethe's Romance, Makaria, the central figure for wisdom and influence, pleases herself with withdrawing into solitude to astronomy and epistolary correspondence. Goethe himself carried this completion of studies to the highest point. Many of his works hung on the easel from youth to age, and received a stroke in every month or year of his life. A literary ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... seventh heaven of delight. Marjorie, of course, was present, and shared the command of the schooner with her father. She also attached herself a good deal to Jim, and, although resenting the attentions he bestowed upon the big girl, carefully abstained from porcine epithets, a result of Eugene's epistolary instructions. The great Mr. Tylor came up to Bridesdale in person to see his junior, and was duly informed of the engagement between him and the heiress, Miss Carmichael, "Ah, Coristine, my dear fellow, we shall be losing you for the law, now, and, the first ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Though thus doomed to perpetual exile in a strange and barbarous land, Covilham was well used. He married, and obtained ample possessions, enjoying the favour of several successive kings of Abyssinia, and was preferred to some considerable offices in the government. Frequent epistolary intercourse took place between him and the king of Portugal, who spared no expence to keep open the interesting correspondence. In his dispatches, Covilham described the several ports which he had visited in India; explained the policy and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... prose fiction the possibilities of the epistolary form were first developed by the Athenian teacher of rhetoric, Alciphron, of whose life and personality nothing is known except that he lived in the second century A.D.,—a contemporary of the great satirical genius Lucian. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... revealed in a brilliant searchlight. With very few exceptions, one of which will be given in our selections, a dramatic monologue is not a meditation nor a soliloquy; it is a series of remarks, usually confessional, addressed either orally or in an epistolary form to another person or to a group of listeners. These other figures, though they do not speak, are necessary to the understanding of the monologue; we often see them plainly, and see their faces change in expression as the monologue advances. At the dinner table of Bishop ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... egregious, eleemosynary, elicit, elite, elucidate, embellish, embryonic, emendation, emissary, emission, emollient, empiric, empyreal, emulous, encomium, endue, enervate, enfilade, enigmatic, ennui, enunciate, environ, epicure, epigram, episode, epistolary, epitome, equestrian, equilibrium, equinoctial, equity, equivocate, eradicate, erosion, erotic, erudition, eruptive, eschew, esoteric, espousal, estrange, ethereal, eulogistic, euphonious, evanescent, evangelical, evict, exacerbate, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... writings of its master critic, Boileau, we must glance at certain writers who belonged rather to the world of public life and of society than to the world of art, but who became each a master in literary craft, as it were, by an irresistible instinct. Memoirs, maxims, epistolary correspondence, the novel, in their hands took a distinguished place in ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... addressed to different correspondents is considerable, but those to Atticus alone, his confidential friend, amount to upwards of four hundred; among which are many of great length. They are all written in the genuine spirit of the most approved epistolary composition; uniting familiarity with elevation, and ease with elegance. They display in a beautiful light the author's character in the social relations of life; as a warm friend, a zealous patron, a tender husband, an affectionate ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the softer passages, it has certainly more vehemence and force of colouring in the loftier and busier representations of action and emotion. The place of the prologuizing minstrel is but ill supplied, indeed, by the epistolary dissertations which are prefixed to each book of the present poem; and the ballad pieces and mere episodes which it contains, have less finish and poetical beauty; but there is more airiness and spirit in the lighter delineations; and the story, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... of ye [Footnote: This form of the article, though in general disuse at the time, was still frequently employed in epistolary writing, in that part of Pennsylvania. [ed note: The r in Yr and e in ye, etc. are superscripted.]] 11th came duly to hand, and ye proposition wh it contains has been submitted to Mr. Jones, ye present houlder of ye mortgage. He wishes me to inform you that he did not anticipate ye ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... mean that all his fastidiousness of composition was wasted. He acquired in the workshop of verse the style that stood him in such good stead in the field of familiar prose. It is because of this hard-won ease of style that readers of English will never grow weary of that epistolary autobiography in which he recounts his maniacal fear that his food has been poisoned; his open-eyed wonder at balloons; the story of his mouse; the cure of the distention of his stomach by Lady Hesketh's gingerbread; the pulling out of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... morning, we are still here. I will endeavour to give you the usual veracious account of our doings. I say "veracious" advisedly, as oftentimes, after having seen something extra strong in the Ananias-Sapphira-Munchausen-Gulliver-de-Rougemont epistolary line from some gentleman in khaki to the old folks at home, in a London or provincial paper, I feel that I must give up letter writing altogether, as by now those at home must have discovered that such effusions are ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... any gladness—yet it would be hard not to let a little of his vast relief peep out. Always hitherto, except for one or two such passionate lapses as that which had precipitated the situation at Santa Margherita, his epistolary manner had been formal, his matter intellectual and philanthropic, for he had always known that no letter was absolutely safe from Sir Isaac's insatiable research. Should he still be formal, still write to "Dear Lady ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... 62. SCRIBEBAM] The epistolary imperfect, representing the time of the action when the words would be read by the recipient ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... esteem, which they set down to hero-worship, and a fervent study of Mr. CARLYLE'S works. Only one of the persons addressed, unluckily, could be elected; but SAUNDERS added their responses to his pile of testimonials, and frequently gave them good epistolary reason to remember his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... an extended notice of them in a book which has nothing whatever to do with the achievements of its heroines in art and letters in that vast almost-forgotten period, Before the War. Suffice it to say that they are among the most delightful epistolary contributions to modern literature, the more so perhaps as they were written without a thought of future publication. But being a born woman of letters, every line she writes has the elusive qualities ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... incorrect notes, which, however, repeated—for those who knew how to interpret her language—the characteristics of her talk. She took no pains with her letters, and was under no illusion about their epistolary value. In fact, she was far too conscious of their lack of form, and would sign them, "Your incompetent old friend"; there was generally some apology for "this ill-written nonsense," or "what stuff this is, not worth your reading!" She once ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... I, my dear, should love to write, is no wonder. We have always, from the time each could hold a pen, delighted in epistolary correspondencies. Our employments are domestic and sedentary; and we can scribble upon twenty innocent subjects, and take delight in them because they are innocent; though were they to be seen, they might not much profit or please others. ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... so that the more such misty clouds offuscate the clear light of my truth, the more my tried thoughts should glister to the dimming of their hidden malice." &c. It must be confessed that this erudite princess had not perfectly succeeded in transplanting into her own language the epistolary graces of her favorite Cicero;—but to how many much superior classical scholars might a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... been strange if, after this epistolary exchange, the two men should not have been rather curious about each other's personalities. Roosevelt, descending from the train at a way-station in the mountains, found a huge, broad-shouldered man his own age, waiting for him, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... mind, enlivens the imagination, and is continually starting fresh game that is immediately pursued and taken, and which would never have occurred in the duller intercourse of epistolary correspondence.—Franklin. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... suddenly striking a dazzle of blue and green from the diamond rings on her small, withered hands. Then she read it aloud to her companion in an even and chilly voice. She had read it before, in the same way, at the same hour, several times. The letter, couched in an epistolary style largely dependent upon underlining, appeared to contain, nevertheless, some matter of moment. It was dated from Eaton Square, in London, some weeks before, and signed Maria Spalding. ("Her mother was a Gallup," Mrs. de Tracy would say, if any one asked ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... again, "the doubt has prevailed. On a mind so hardened the cane would leave no lasting impression. I cannot allow your innocent companions to run the risk of contamination from your society. I must not permit this serpent to glide uncrushed, this cockatrice to practise his epistolary wiles, within my peaceful fold. My mind is made up—at whatever cost to myself—however it may distress and grieve your good father, who is so pathetically anxious for you to do him credit, sir. I must do my duty to the parents of the boys entrusted ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... destroyed, and he driven from the land. In the firm belief of this, he wrote to Mr. Williamson, adverting in the strongest terms to the injury he conceived himself to have sustained at his hands, couching his epistolary invective in no very polite or considerate language, and enclosing the young man's letter to his ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... received from Mr. James, which he had been fingering, to show that his informal, epistolary style was identical with that of his recent autobiographical writings, which we had been discussing. "Bennett, of course you should see Arnold Bennett." Great friend of Walpole's. "And Mrs. Belloc Lowndes," said ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... without a dash of playfulness or humour somewhere; a thing always fresh and spontaneous, unlike the calculated or laboured playfulness sometimes to be observed in the epistolary touch of literary folk. A capital example is a note to Matthew Arnold, at whose house he had left his umbrella. Arnold, it may be added, had recently been critically engaged upon the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... Apostle speaks of this or that "hope" or "trust" as being formed "in the Lord." He does so with no conscious dogmatic purpose, surely; it is because it comes as naturally to him to do it as for an ordinary correspondent to say that he hopes to do this or that "if all goes well." But in the epistolary Scripture these brief phrases have another side; they are authority and oracle; they convey the mind of Christ about our right relations with Him; they tell us, from Him, that it is His will that we too, as His, should form ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... eloquent in abstractions, but each seems inspired by a thorough egotism. Descartes, their philosopher, drew all his inferences from consciousness; Madame de Sevigne, the epistolary queen, had for her central motive of all speculation and gossip the love of her daughter; Madame Guyon eliminated her tenets from the ecstasy of self-love; Rochefoucauld derived a set of philosophical maxims from the lessons of mere worldly disappointment; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the letters, were it not that such affectation is the most genuine nature in a clever boy. Unluckily it became so ingrained in Pope as to survive his youthful follies. Pope complacently indulges in elaborate paradoxes and epigrams of the conventional epistolary style; he is painfully anxious to be alternately sparkling and playful; his head must be full of literature; he indulges in an elaborate criticism of Statius, and points out what a sudden fall that author ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... ever in His holy care and keeping." The receipt of this letter afforded me the liveliest pleasure, and I wrote to the king regularly every night and morning. I might here introduce a specimen of my own epistolary style, but I will not; for altho' the whimsical and extravagant things my pen gave utterance to were exactly to the king's taste, they might surprise you; but my royal correspondent loved the wild and bizarre turn of my expressions, and I fulfilled his wishes; perhaps ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... reader should wish there were a third. To create this desire is, after all, the very perfection of the art of novel-writing. The novelist who does not make the reader "wish as there was more on it," according to the philosophic dictum of Sam Weller on the art of epistolary correspondence, has failed. Henceforth this novel of Mr. CRAWFORD's goes forth to the world with the Baron's best imprimatur. This poor little cigarette-maker requires no puffing of her wares. Enough that the Baron should say to his readers, "Tolle lege!" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... each other, to paper—whether composed of the interior bark of trees, or of the Egyptian papyrus, or other flexible substance—and making it into a roll or volume, to be sent by some carrier, that Persian queen may be accredited as the inventress of epistolary composition. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... do not write to me as often as you ought. In your next you must assign some reason for this neglect. Possibly I have not received all of your letters. Nothing will improve you in epistolary writing as practice. Take great pains with your letters. Avoid vulgar phrases. Study to have your ideas pertinent and correct, and clothe them in easy and grammatical dress. Pay attention to your spelling, pointing, ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... to mail a letter, and none of them for receiving one. Unpractised in writing, his epistolary compositions were crude in the extreme, being wholly confined to bald statements of fact. Had he been as tender on paper as he was in his words and accents when he kissed away her tears at parting, her regard for him would have had fuel to feed on and might have kindled into genuine love. ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... more desirous of collecting, as all the letters of that great man, which he has yet seen, are written with peculiar precision and elegance; and he is confident that the publication of the whole of Dr. Johnson's epistolary correspondence will do ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... Denis Duval; and in the missive in barbarous French of the Dowager Viscountess Castlewood[70]—a letter which only requires the sprawling, childish script to make it an exact facsimile of one of the epistolary efforts of that "baby-faced" Caroline beauty who was accustomed to sign herself "L duchesse de Portsmout." It is better still in the letter from Walpole to General Conway in chap. xl. of The Virginians, which is perfect, even to the indifferent pun of sleepy (and overrated) ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... and especially at first, with playful reminder of Yorick's use of the term.[81] Yorick's mock-scientific division of travelers seems to have met with especial approval, and evidently became a part of conversational, and epistolary commonplace allusion. Goethe in a letter to Marianne Willemer, November 9, 1830,[82] with direct reference to Sterne proposes for his son, then traveling in Italy, the additional designation of the "bold" or "complete" traveler. Carl ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... lakes on his way home, especially] "so much to be seen, and so little time to see it; so much to be heard, and only two ears to listen to twenty voices, that upon the whole I grew desperate, and gave up all thoughts of doing what was right and proper on post-days, and so all my epistolary good intentions are gone to Macadamise, I suppose, 'the burning marle' of the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... and feeling upon books, men, and public affairs, less valuable in a literary view than the legerdemain of throwing up bubbles into the air for the sake of watching their prismatic hues, like an Indian juggler with his cups and balls. We of this age, who have formed our notions of epistolary excellence from the chastity of Gray's, the brilliancy of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's during her later life, and the mingled good sense and fine feeling of Cowper's, value only those letters of Pope which he himself thought of inferior value. And ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... light-hearted child would, but knitted his brow with a perplexed air as he said, "Why don't the British government send a woman to find the source of the Nile? I must thank your unsophisticated brother's pride in his sister's epistolary accomplishments for my privilege of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... chitty[obs3], letter card, picture post card; postal [U.S.], card; despatch; dispatch; bulletin, these presents; rescript, rescription[obs3]; post &c. (messenger) 534. V. correspond with; write to, send a letter to; keep up a correspondence. Adj. epistolary. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... as fertile of thought and brain and stratagem as ever, and will probably keep on writing till the last fire burns up his pen and cracks to pieces his ink bottle. Anonymous letters sometimes have a mission of kindness and gratitude and good cheer. Genuine modesty may sometimes hide the name of an epistolary author or authoress. It may be a "God bless you" from some one who thinks herself hardly in a position to address you. It may be the discovery of a plot for your damage, in which the revelator does not care to take the responsibility of a witness. It may be any one of a thousand things that ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... retired, wondering what epistolary surprise the morning would bring forth. It brought ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... of Falloden's sudden departure from Oxford, after his own proposal of two more rides. His note, "crying off" till after the schools, had seemed to her not quite as regretful as it might have been; his epistolary style lacked charm. And it was impertinent of him to suggest Lord Meyrick as a substitute. She had given the Lathom Woods a wide berth ever since her first adventure there; and she hoped that Lord Meyrick had spent some disappointed hours in those ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Az-Hamadani was famous for his epistolary style. Here is a passage which, though written in Persia in the tenth century, might have aptness in English country houses at this moment: When water has long remained at rest, its noxious qualities appear; and when its surface has continued tranquil, ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... in our limits to convey an adequate impression of the beauty, value, or interest of the present volumes. They are full of matter. The letters are admirable specimens of epistolary composition, considered as the spontaneous expression of a grave, high and warm nature, to the friends of his heart and mind. They are exceedingly original of their kind, and while they bear no resemblance to those of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... I neglected to give you a letter which arrived yesterday, and of course I need expect no pardon when you ascertain that it is from 'India's coral strand.' If 'Brother Douglass' is as indefatigable in the discharge of his missionary as his epistolary labours, he deserves a crown of numerous converts. This letter was enclosed in one addressed to me, and I prefer that you should postpone your reply until my return. I intended to mention the matter this morning, but was absorbed in court ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... two Southern companies that issued insulting defiances, but, after a little expenditure of epistolary valor, prudently, though ingloriously, stayed afar,—as is usual in New Gascony. With these exceptions, the heart of the nation went warmly out to these young men. Their endurance, their discipline, their alertness, their elan, surprised ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... and in the small additional volume of letters to Simon Contarini, Venetian Ambassador at Rome, unearthed a few years since in the Venetian archives by Castellani, we have all that is known. It is but a small fraction of his epistolary work, but it enables us to form a clear opinion. The letters are well worthy of the man who wrote the history of the Council of Trent and the protest of Venice against ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... proceeding, on his own showing, was to pester me by writing to inquire if I knew anything about it. What the deuce should I know about it? Why alarm me as well as himself? I wrote back to that effect. It was one of my keenest letters. I have produced nothing with a sharper epistolary edge to it since I tendered his dismissal in writing to that extremely troublesome ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... the popularity of satire takes place towards the commencement of the third last decade of the eighteenth century, when, using the vehicle of the epistolary mode, an anonymous writer, whose identity is still in dispute, attacked the monarch, the government, and the judicature of the country, in a series of letters in which scathing invective, merciless ridicule, and lofty scorn were united to vigour and polish of style, ...
— English Satires • Various
... and other such subterfuges did Gladys keep her epistolary hand in, until the time came when she really had something of ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... ALETHEA,—I think it time there should be a little writing between us, though I believe the epistolary debt is on your side, and I hope this will find all the Streatham party well, neither carried away by the flood, nor rheumatic through the damps. Such mild weather is, you know, delightful to us, and though ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... Freval's letter, that the editor himself has worked up the story from the barest details of real life (which is, of course, what Richardson did). De Freval continues to speak of the work entirely as of creative writing. The epistolary style is aptly devised; the book will become a pattern for this kind of fiction; it is contrived for readers of all tastes. But, quite in contradiction, de Freval also implies that the editor has shown him the author's original work, ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson
... unlearn, prepare for the next stage of your enterprise. Lay out your scheme of emigration, get the money where you can, that is to say, call it flown from heaven and wile it out of earthly pockets, anticipate all possible emergencies and wants by land and sea, finish for the time the much epistolary correspondence to which this same fragment of humanity has given rise, tempt the deep with your restless charge, bear the discomforts of the stormiest of seas, and inwardly groan at the signs of other ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... might save your brother, and rescue a fortune of forty, perhaps sixty, thousand francs a year from the claws of that slut; but you either do not answer me, or you seem never to understand my meaning. So to-day I am obliged to write without epistolary circumlocution. I feel for the misfortune which has overtaken you, but, my dearest, I can do no more than pity you. And this is why: Hochon, at eighty-five years of age, takes four meals a day, eats a salad with hard-boiled eggs every night, and frisks about like a rabbit. I shall have ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... are of opinion; and he might have written fewer. Those in the Complete Letter-Writer style we could easily have spared. His teacher, Mr. Murdoch, furnishes some excellent examples of the stilted epistolary ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first place among those of his own color who have presented themselves to the public judgment, yet when compare him with the writers of the race among whom he lived and particularly with the epistolary class in which he has taken his own stand, we are compelled to enroll him at the bottom of the column. This criticism supposes the letters published under the name to be genuine, and to have received ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... the various questions, my dear friend, to which you request my particular attention, I can only promise that I will do my best to answer them as explicitly as possible, though at the same time I must remind you, that brevity in epistolary correspondence is not one of my excellencies. If I become too diffuse in describing mere matters of fact, you must bear with mine infirmity, and attribute it to my womanly propensity of over-much talking; so, for your comfort, ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... Canada, Quebec. She understood little of political complications, internal, or balance of power, external. In calculating the addenda of bills she frequently had recourse to digital aid. After completion of laconic epistolary compositions she abandoned the implement of calligraphy in the encaustic pigment, exposed to the corrosive action of copperas, green vitriol and nutgall. Unusual polysyllables of foreign origin she interpreted phonetically or by false analogy or by both: metempsychosis (met him ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... and punctuate as in other kinds of writing. Avoid blots, erasures, interlineations, cross lines, and all other offenses against epistolary propriety. The letter "bespeaks the man." Letters of friendship should be colloquial, chatty, and familiar. Whatever is interesting to you will be interesting to your friends, however trivial it may seem to ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... 'Darling,' and the like; but only for a moment. Usually, the overburdened heart hits at once upon the exact word or phrase which best expresses its ecstatic feeling. And so with less impassioned matters. There is a well-recognised gradation in the methods of epistolary salutation. The stranger is addressed as 'Sir,' the person of whom something is known as 'Dear Sir.' 'My Dear Sir' accompanies a rather better acquaintance; 'Dear Mr. Brown' marks an approach to intimacy; while 'Dear Brown' signifies the acme ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... We cannot all do all things, Sir, and if you save the State (As the great Twin Brethren mean to in despite of HARCOURT's hate), What does it matter, DICEY, if your letters are not quite In that style epistolary, which our fathers called "polite"? 'Tis a little too meticulous—in you—and rather late, After giving Mr. GLADSTONE such a wholesome slashing "slate." Take heart of grace, dear DICEY, and don't let Sir WILLIAM's "point" In your tough (if tasteless) armour ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 10, 1891 • Various
... increasingly clear that she had had about enough of this epistolary philandering, and she indicated this in no uncertain manner. "I will never think of anything without the consent of my family," she wrote. "Make no answer to this, if you can like me on my own terms. 'Tis not to me you must make the proposals; if ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... the same sort of high-toned epistolary rhetoric, written and sent by a dear hand, whose fanciful pen seemed touched by the ambrosial tints of Autumn. So the year was going out in a gorgeous carnival, before the Lent-like solemnity ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... in Italy is the book of Italian travel that he wrote, and the best effect is that sort of peripatetic novel which he may be said to have invented in Humphrey Clinker, and which has survived the epistolary form into our own time. It is a very simple shaft that rises over his grave, with the brief record, "Memoriae Tobiae Smollett, qui Liburni animam efflavit, 16 Sept., 1773," but it is imaginable with what wrath he would have disputed the record, if it is true, according to all the other authorities, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... misprints he discovers in it he frankly attributes to his MS. In a letter to his friend Rosen he writes that "it must be a deucedly comic pleasure to read my Sanskrit." But his musical handwriting appears to have been nearer to Sanskrit than his epistolary, if we may judge by the specimen fac-similes printed ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... operations to town, to which impenetrable scene she had also herself retired; and his raising of the first Two Hundred, during five exasperated and miserable months, and then of another Seventy piecemeal, bleedingly, after long delays and under the epistolary whiplash cracked by the London solicitor in his wretched ear even to an effect of the very report of Miss Cookham's tongue—these melancholy efforts formed a scramble up an arduous steep where steps were planted and missed, and bared knees ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... comprising several hundred letters have already appeared under the title, Assyrian Letters of the K. Collection (London, 1896). For a good summary of the character of the Assyrian epistolary literature, see Johnston's article in the Journal of the American Oriental ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... written, like the spoken tongue, was regulated by strict convention: the forms used by women were not those used by men; and those differences in verbal etiquette arising from the different training of the sexes resulted in the creation of a special epistolary style,—a "woman's language," which remains in use. And this sex-differentiation of language was not confined to letter-writing: there was a woman's language also of converse, varying according to class. Even to-day, ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... the epistolary or diary form suffer all the disadvantages of first person narrative; but they are also liable to others, equally serious, which are peculiarly their own. They are seldom natural, in the first place, for granted that people really do keep ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... was the only granddaughter of a vague and somewhat simple clergyman who existed, with an aunt, solely for Golly's epistolary purposes. There was, of course, intermediate ancestry,—notably a dead mother who was French, and therefore responsible for any later naughtiness in Golly,—but they have no purpose here. They lived in the Isle of Man. Golly knew a good deal of Man, for even ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... read a number of letters apologising for absence, one of which was, of course, from Lord Southbluff, who specialises in this epistolary form, proceeded to pour scorn on the Board of Trade's decision. How can the Board of Trade, he asked pointedly, know its business as well as we do? If it hopes, by curtailing the supplies of ink that come to England, to make room for the more important necessaries of life, it is mistaken. There ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... when all was looking dark, Schiller received a packet containing an epistolary greeting, an embroidered letter-case and four portrait sketches. The letter was anonymous, but he presently discovered that it came from Gottfried Koerner, a young privat-docent in Leipzig, who had united with three friends in sending this token of regard to a Suabian ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... opinion; but, knowing your wish to acquire every sort of information, I have exerted myself to obtain it from all quarters. To collect this budget has been no easy task; to compress it would have been still more difficult, and, alas! to have transmitted it, in an epistolary form, would have been totally out of my power, but for the assistance of two very ingenious artists, who have not a little contributed to lighten my labour. Introducing themselves to me, very shortly after my arrival, the one furnished me ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... at length arrived when you are to receive from me an account of some of the principal treasures contained in the ROYAL LIBRARY of Paris. I say "some":—because, in an epistolary communication, consistently with my time, and general objects of research—it must be considered only as a slight selection, compared with what a longer residence, and a more general examination of the contents of such a collection, might furnish. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... rare books which the author picked up in his travels, or saw in libraries. It was republished, with valuable additions, by Sancassani, at Venice, in 1734, 4to. See Cat. de Lomenie, No. 2563. Works of this sort form the ANA of bibliography! CONRINGIUS compiled a charming bibliographical work, in an epistolary form, under the title of Bibliotheca Augusta; which was published at Helmstadt, in 1661, 4to.—being an account of the library of the Duke of Brunswick, in the castle of Wolfenbuttle. Two thousand manuscripts, and one hundred ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting.' The other is on gilt paper; and interests us like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived and beneficently worked. We give it in the original: 'Herr Teufelsdroeckh wird von der Frau Graefinn, auf Donnerstag, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Venice, September 15, 1537, from that rogue of genius, Pietro Aretino. It opens in the strain of hyperbolical compliment and florid rhetoric which Aretino affected when he chose to flatter. The man, however, was an admirable stylist, the inventor of a new epistolary manner. Like a volcano, his mind blazed with wit, and buried sound sense beneath the scoriae and ashes it belched forth. Gifted with a natural feeling for rhetorical contrast, he knew the effect ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... one, Presto! his face changed, and he was another; And when that change was hardly well put on, It varied, till I don't think his own mother (If that he had a mother) would her son Have known, he shifted so from one to t'other; Till guessing from a pleasure grew a task,[hl] At this epistolary "Iron Mask."[540] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... presence, am I, your constant friend, to be blamed? I cannot alter the nature of these barbarians. But what has happened since I published an article which had, at any rate, the merit of truthful portraiture? Why, I have been overwhelmed with epistolary reproaches in every variety of feminine hand-writing. "A CAREFUL MOTHER" writes from Dorset—a locality hitherto associated in my mind with butter rather than with blame—to protest that she has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... Lakeside Farm for a visit which lengthened out far beyond its original limits. The days spent upon the farm were full of bliss to her, the only drawback to the perfect happiness of the little girl being the separation from her beloved fidus Achates, with whom she maintained an epistolary activity extraordinarily intimate and vivid. Upon this correspondence the Wakeham family came chiefly to depend for enlightenment as to the young lady's activities and state of health, and it came to be recognised as part of Larry's duty ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... upon experiments on language. [57] The poetry of his language consists not so much in its being imaginative, as in its employing the fittest words in the fittest places. Its general level is that of the best epistolary or oratorical compositions, according to the elevation of the subject. He loves not to soar into the empyrean, but often checks Pegasus by a strong curb, or by a touch of irony or an incongruous allusion prevents himself or his reader being carried away. [58] This mingling of irony and earnest ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... must lose the gratification of being present at the Woman Suffrage Convention at Concord and substitute an epistolary testimony for a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... soldiery conducted him, though this was to the great vexation of the multitude; for Cherea and Sabinus, two of Caius's murderers, went in the fore-front of them, in an open manner, while Pollio, whom Claudius, a little before, had made captain of his guards, had sent them an epistolary edict, to forbid them to appear in public. Then did Claudius, upon his coming to the palace, get his friends together, and desired their suffrages about Cherea. They said that the work he had done was a glorious one; but they accused ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... an answer virulently insolent in spirit and in language, accusing him of base jealousy of his own superior natural genius. I am not sure whether it was on this or another occasion of the like sort, that James varied the usual formulas of {p.082} epistolary composition, by beginning with "Damned Sir," and ending, "Believe me, Sir, yours with disgust, etc.;" but certainly the performance was such that no intercourse took place between the parties for some weeks, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... readiness, facility. The King ever found himself anticipated with the most delicate obsequiousness, beheld his struggling ideas change into winged words without ceasing to be his own. No flattery could be more adroit. The bishop accommodated himself to the King's epistolary habits. The silver-tongued and ready debater substituted protocols for conversation, in deference to a monarch who could not speak. He corresponded with Philip, with Margaret of Parma, with every one. He wrote folios to the Duchess ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... with even partial admiration, at bad art; and then, if the reader is willing to trust me in the matter, the following advice will be useful to him. In which, with his permission, I will quit the indirect and return to the epistolary address, as being the ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... the above that Greenough's epistolary style was florid and grandiose in the extreme, but no doubt there was a foundation of sincerity beneath it. A bitter disappointment awaited him. The ponderous figure reached Washington safely in 1843, and was ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... flowers without their sap or roots. All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. They prefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance. Hussein Effendi praised the epistolary style of Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller Botta, because of "the difficulty of understanding it; there was," he said, "but one person at Jidda, who was capable of understanding and explaining the Pasha's correspondence." ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the reputation of Madame Schinner, who is credited with the possession of epistolary talents, and styled the "Sevigne of the note", tired of hearing about Madame de Fischtaminel, who has ventured to write a little 32mo book on the education of the young, in which she has boldly ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... was of this advantage to me that it brought me first into epistolary communication, and later into personal contact with one of the greatest men of ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... from the Bey of Corinth, written to me by Notaras, the Cogia Bachi, and others by the dragoman of the Caimacam[266] of the Morea (which last governs in Vely Pacha's absence), are said to be favourable specimens of their epistolary style. I also received some at Constantinople from private persons, written in a most hyperbolical style, but in the true ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... satisfied with the pangs of my jealousy of Rogers, without actually making me the pander of your epistolary intrigue? This is the second letter you have enclosed to my address, notwithstanding a miraculous long answer, and a subsequent short one or two of your own. If you do so again, I can't tell to what pitch my fury may ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore |
