"Old English" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who married a first cousin of my father, an heiress, who brought him an estate of a thousand a-year. This gentleman is a declared opponent of the ministry in parliament; and having an opulent fortune, piques himself upon living in the country, and maintaining old English hospitality — By the bye, this is a phrase very much used by the English themselves both in words and writing; but I never heard of it out of the island, except by way of irony and sarcasm. What the hospitality of our forefathers has been I should be glad to see recorded, rather in the memoirs ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... even commendable in those who stay at home, and also very natural, since it is a part of our unreasonable nature to distrust and dislike the things that are far removed and unfamiliar. Let me at last divest myself of these old English spectacles, framed in oak and with lenses of horn, to bury them for ever in this mountain, which for half a century and upwards has looked down on the struggles of a young and feeble people against foreign aggression and domestic foes, and where a few months ago I sang ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... only a string of unconnected verses. They use an inconsecutiveness quite alarming to Western logic, and the connection between the stanzas of their longer odes is much like that between the refrain of our old English ballads, ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... us. He seemed to communicate to the house the change that had taken place in himself, from the reckless, racketty young Englishman to the super-exquisite foreign dandy. It was as if the fiery, effervescent atmosphere of the Boulevards of Paris had insolently penetrated into the old English mansion, and ruffled and infected its quiet native air, to the remotest corners of ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... of it went into a house of its own, or, in default of that, went into lodgings, or into a hotel of a kind happily obsolescent. Such a family now frankly goes into one of the hotels which abound in London, of a type combining more of the Continental and American features than the traits of the old English hotel, which was dark, cold, grim, and silently rapacious, heavy In appointments and unwholesome in refection. The new sort of hotel is apt to be large, but it is of all sizes, and it offers a home reasonably cheerful on inclusive terms not at all ruinous. It has a table-d'hote ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... translation is to give an accurate and readable modern English prose rendering of the Old English poetry. The translation of Richard Francis Weymouth, entitled A Literal Translation of Cynewulf's Elene, has been at hand, but I owe it practically nothing in this work. While I trust that my rendering has not departed so far from the text that it will be valueless to the student, yet at places ...
— The Elene of Cynewulf • Cynewulf
... An old English writer in describing tobacco says:—"When at its just height, it is as tall as an ordinary ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Stoss, "but your old English rector first filled his belly with a few hecatombs of human lives. Stop, look, listen! Don't be too quick to trust him. When he's done assimilating, he'll have a ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Slipper; A.E. Chalon, R.A. In this picture several figures are introduced seriatim, engaged at this old English, but now rather unfashionable, game. A little too much vulgarity is displayed, though in other respects the performance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... do not know his honoured father," said he, "so I cannot offer an opinion as to that half of him. But on his mother's side he is bloodhound, bulldog, collie, setter, pointer, St. Bernard, and Old English sheepdog." ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... Spenser."[23] Moreover, as to the hardness of the language—inasmuch as the subject matter of the poem will be familiar to all who may take up the present volume, the difficulty on the word-point will not be such as to deter the reader from understanding and appreciating the production of an old English poet, who—though his very name, unfortunately, has yet to be discovered—may claim to stand in the foremost ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... the christening of the ship takes place. A bottle of wine is broken against her bows and her name is pronounced by some distinguished person in a formula which varies more or less, but which is generally some version of the good old English benediction: 'God bless the Dreadnought and all who sail in her.' No matter what the name may be, the ship herself is always 'she.' Many ingenious and mistaken explanations have been given of this supposedly female 'she.' The schoolboy 'howler' on the subject is well known: ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... merely special varieties of the typically American magazine. I refer, of course, to The New Republic, The Nation, The Freeman, The Weekly Review in its original form, periodicals formed upon an old English model, devoted to the spreading of opinion, and consecrated to the propagation of intelligence. The success of these weeklies has been out of proportion to their circulation. Like the old Nation, which in a less ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... abroad. "The Papists in England," he said to the Parliament of 1656, "have been accounted, ever since I was born, Spaniolized; they never regarded France, or any other Papist state, but Spain only." The old English hatred of Spain, the old English resentment at the shameful part which the nation had been forced to play in the great German struggle by the policy of James and of Charles, lived on in Cromwell, and was only strengthened by the religious enthusiasm which the success of Puritanism had kindled ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... them are acting a Scout's play, sir; some are doing Cone Exercises; one or two are practising deep breathing; and the rest are dancing an Old English ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... boy, have him bound to them according to custom, and let them learn English by having to speak to him. About July a case came to his knowledge that roused all his sympathies, and at the same time afforded a good opportunity to try his plan. "I have taken a four-year-old English boy into our family. He was born in Charlestown, but somehow found his way to Savannah. His father was hanged, for murder I have heard, and his mother has married another man, and abandoned the child. A woman here took charge of him, but treated him most cruelly. Once ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... explains the origin of the decimal system. The simplest, and probably the earliest, measures of length are those based on various parts of the body. Some of our Indian tribes, for instance, employed the double arm's length, the single arm's length, the hand width, and the finger width. Old English standards, such as the span, the ell, and the hand, go back to this very obvious method ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... by the responsibility for the welfare of numbers of tenants upon his property—responsibility very often nobly sustained—produced in the old English aristocrat a very fine specimen indeed. And from him downwards in all the social classes, a high tone of honour was maintained. But now the democratic idea is sweeping away these classes and these standards. ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... Old English poem Cursor Mundi composed. It was founded on Caedmon's paraphrase ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... with these is our old English ensign, St. George's red cross on white field; Round which, from Richard to Roberts, Britons conquer or die, but ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... Upper Provinces of Tripoli, and I am greatly indebted to the Vice-Consul for his assistance in my researches. I must acknowledge likewise the kind attentions of the Doctor and the Turkish officers. I bade Mr. Gagliuffi an affectionate farewell, who answered with the plain earnest old English of "God bless you!" I left the Consul in but indifferent health. Three times has he had the fever, yet he is determined to keep up to the last. When Mr. Gagliuffi first went to Mourzuk, he expected that Abd-El-Geleel, whose agent he was, as ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... visitor; I have never been to Chesterton at all, either from a sense of unworthiness or from a faint superstitious feeling that I might be fulfilling a prophecy in the countryside. Anyone with a sense of the savour of the old English country rhymes and tales will share my vague alarm that the steeple might crack or the market cross fall down, for a smaller thing than the coincidence of a man ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... his life encountered anything which amused him so much, and his only regret was that he had not known the absurd but high-minded old English Quixote who, wiser in his generation than that noble knight, left it to his heir to redress the wrongs of the world, while he himself had the pleasure of the anticipation only, not perhaps unmixed with a malicious sense of all the confusions and ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... English kingdom, and was to be governed by an Englishman, Oswulf, with the title of Earl, an old Danish title equivalent to the English Ealdorman, having nothing to do, except philologically, with the old English ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... Ercildoune's housekeeper,—an old English lady she is, and she's lived with him ever since he was married, and before he came here,—a real lady, too,—came in with some sewing, some fine shirts for Mr. Robert Ercildoune. I asked after him, and you'll ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... Old English life—the great event of the day—was Noon-meat, or dinner in the great hall. A little before three, the chief and all his household, with any stray guests who might have dropped in, met in the hall, which stood in the centre ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... pitcher, sugar urn, and waste bowl. All the pieces have an overall repousse floral and strapwork pattern with the monogram "MTL" on one side and an engraved crest on the other. The crest seems to be an adaptation of the Todd family crest. The pieces are marked with a lion, an anchor, and an old English "G," which are the early marks of the Gorham Silver Company. It is assumed that this silver service was a presentation gift to Mrs. Lincoln during the time she was First Lady of the White House, as a letter dated July 19, 1876, from her to her son Robert ...
— Presentation Pieces in the Museum of History and Technology • Margaret Brown Klapthor
... to sit on the broad verandah of the hospital. Here still stood many of the little tables which used to serve for pleasant tea-parties when the building was an hotel in the days before the war. On these lay some old English newspapers. Godfrey picked up one of them with his left hand, and began to read idly enough. Almost the first paragraph that his ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... An old English proverb says, that more know Torn Fool than Tom Fool knows; and the influence of the adage seems to extend to works composed under the influence of an idle or foolish planet. Many corresponding circumstances are ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... plant is easily procured by distillation. Lemon grass otto, or, as it is sometimes called, oil of verbena, on account of its similarity of odor to that favorite plant, is imported into this country in old English porter and stout bottles. It is very powerful, well adapted for perfuming soaps and greases, but its principal consumption is in the manufacture of artificial essence of verbena. From its comparatively low price, great strength, and fine perfume (when diluted), the lemon grass otto may ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse
... French word, tete, a head: a piece of silver stamped with a head, which in old French was called "un testion," and which was about the value of an old English sixpence. Tester is ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... horse broken, a pointer trained, or who has visited a menagerie, or the exhibition of the Industrious Fleas, will not deny the validity of education. "A boy," says Plato, "is the most vicious of all wild beasts"; and, in the same spirit, the old English poet Gascoigne says, "A boy is better unborn than untaught." The city breeds one kind of speech and manners; the back-country a different style; the sea another; the army a fourth. We know that an army which can be confided ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... England, and out comes too a 'Smiles and Tears,' with a widow, an Irishman, and almost all my dramat. pers. I wrote the 'Indian Princess,' and an 'Indian Princess' appears in England. Looking over the old English dramatists, I am struck with the 'Damon and Pythias' of Edwards as a subject, but am scarcely set down to it, when lo, the modern play in London; and what is worse, with the fine part of Pythias absolutely transformed ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... Old English, I believe—has had its adventures like some other words. Lonely doesn't express as well the idea of being alone and sorrowful. We must do our best for your uncle and aunt. Your turn to leave us will come, and then Leila will ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... That old English gentleman, whom I just remember, when Ingham first went to sea, as the model of mild, kind old men, at Ingham's mother's house,—then he went to sea once himself for the first time,—and he had a mother himself,—and as he went off, she gave him the best ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... became lightly satirical. "Well we may wonder," said he; "search the wide world over! But reely and truly you've come to the wrong 'ouse this time. Here, stand to one side!" he commanded, as a lady in the costume of La Pompadour, followed by an Old English Gentleman with an anachronistic Hebrew nose, swept past me into the hall. He bowed deferentially while he mastered their names, "Mr. and Mrs. Levi-Levy!" he cried, and a second footman came forward to escort them up the stairs. To convince myself that this was my own house I ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... land. Now England has made it compulsory to leave no ground uncultivated. Golf-courses are now potato-patches. Parks and every bit of back yard all grow their quota of vegetables. The boys in the old English public schools work with the hoe ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker
... old English acquaintance, who was poor and asking charity,' she said, when questioned, but her manner led me to think there was something wrong, particularly as I saw her with him again, and thought she held ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... More engaged all the heads of the native Irish into the conspiracy. The English of the pale, as they were called, or the old English planters, being all Catholics, it was hoped would afterwards join the party which restored their religion to its ancient splendor and authority. The intention was, that Sir Phelim O'Neale and the other conspirators should ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... Wilkinson (Wellington Street, Strand) will sell on Monday next and two following days the valuable Dramatic and Miscellaneous Library of the late John Fullarton, Esq., which contains an extensive collection of the early editions of the Old English Dramatists. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... trampling down the last constitutional force which could hold the Monarchy in check. What he really did was to give life and energy to new forces which were bound from their very nature to battle with the Monarchy for even more than the old English freedom. When Cromwell seized on the Church he held himself to be seizing for the Crown the mastery which the Church had wielded till now over the consciences and reverence of men. But the very humiliation of the great religious body broke the spell beneath which Englishmen ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... that it seems rather impertinent and forth-putting for a new nation like that to be setting up opinions of its own, and finding fault with the good old English customs," said Imogen, petulantly. ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... social scale, we find, in class upon class, that as the annual income increases the number of children in the family diminishes, until we come to the old English nobility of whom, according to Darwin, 19 per cent. are childless. These last have every reason to wish for heirs to inherit their titles and what land and wealth they possess, and, as their record in war proves them to be no cowards' breed, it would ...
— Birth Control • Halliday G. Sutherland
... him up a marble stairway and a doddering old English butler opened the door for us. We entered a fine hall, its floor of beautiful parquetry muffled with silken rugs. High and spacious rooms were all aglow ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... George Wakeham, an old English fisherman from Devonshire, who had spent forty years of his life on The Labrador and had an Eskimo wife, welcomed us to his house. Near it was an eminence called Watch Hill, from which the general situation of the ice pack could be observed. Day after day I ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... legal power colonial women had is rather difficult to discover from the writings of the day; for each section had its own peculiar rules, and courts and decisions in the various colonies, and sometimes in one colony, contradicted one another. Until the adoption of the Constitution the old English law prevailed, and while unmarried women could make deeds, wills, and other business transactions, the wife's identity was largely merged into that of her husband. The colonial husband seems to have had considerable ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... disparaging our good old English moons," cried out Natty. "You forget the harvest moon; and, though it is not quite like this, it is a very beautiful object to gaze at, and useful to those who have to carry home the ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... broken-down form of the old English thoet, from which we also get "that," and is used to point out some particular person, thing, or class: as, "The headmaster of the school gave the boys permission." When "the" is used before the name of a particular class of persons or things it is called the "generic" ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... fashionable quarter of the city there stood a brownstone house, with grotesque turrets, winding steps, and glaring polished red tiles. There was a touch of the Gothic, of the Renaissance, of the old English manor; just a touch, however, a kind of blind-man's-buff of a house. A very rich man lived here, but for ten months in the year he and his family fluttered about the social centers of the world. And with a house ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... like a steeple in those days was the minister, when he stood up to pray. Sometimes he leaned a trifle backward to let the congregation see that there was no chance that he would ever bow down to that old English Church, against which the dust from his feet had ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... stood wide open and in the porch his mother was sitting. She had a piece of old English lace in her hand, which she was carefully darning. Suddenly she heard John's footsteps and she lifted her head and listened intently. Then with a radiant face she stood upright just as John came from behind the laurel hedge into the golden rays of the setting ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... later the British marched from their intrenchments, their bands playing a quaint old English tune, called The World Turned Upside Down, and, passing between 30 the French and American troops drawn up in line to receive them, laid down their arms. At the head of the victorious columns rode Washington, Hamilton, Knox, ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... on the sixty buildings which constitute the visible part of Harvard University, I perceived that, just as Kensington had without knowing it been imitating certain streets of Boston, so certain lost little old English towns that even American tourists have not yet reached had without knowing it been imitating the courts and chimneys and windows and doorways and luscious brickwork of Harvard. Harvard had a very mellow look indeed. No trace of the wand! The European in search of tradition would find it here ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... in a clear and straightforward Manner, omitting Foreign Quotations, setting up for illustration of his Points such Historical Characters as were familiar to his Hearers, putting the stubby Old English words ahead of the Latin, and rather flying low along the Intellectual Plane of the Aggregation that chipped in to ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... in large capitals the initials A. T. with the date MDCCCXII. Alone the shaft, from handle to wards, ran on either side the following sentence in old English lettering:— ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... usual delicious whimsical understanding, that some time soon after the wedding she shall ask about ten of our principal mutual friends to come in the afternoon, and she will present Alathea to them, and if anyone makes comments upon the matter, she will say that she is the daughter of an old English friend, and even if Coralie recognizes her as the girl who was with me at Versailles, she will not dare to say a word about any protegee of the Duchesse's. She is much too afraid of offending her, being received at the Hotel de Courville herself on sufferance ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... accent, of the woman who had been speaking, told that she was what, in good old English, used to be called a lady. Alec Trenholme, who had never had much to do with well-bred women, was inclined to see around each a halo of charm; and now, after his long, rough exile, this disposition was increased ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... let it never be forgotten that a cab is a thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything better. A hackney-cab has always been a hackney-cab, from his first entry into life; whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past gentility, a victim to fashion, a hanger-on of an old English family, wearing their arms, and, in days of yore, escorted by men wearing their livery, stripped of his finery, and thrown upon the world, like a once-smart footman when he is no longer sufficiently juvenile for his office, progressing lower and lower in the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... chintzes were so smartly calendered as hers, and on the walls were mezzotints of the ladies whom Sir Joshua had painted. The chimney-piece was adorned with Lowestoft china, and on the silver table was a collection of old English spoons. She had chosen her butler because he went so well with the house. His respectability was portentous, his gravity was never disturbed by the shadow of a smile; and Mrs. Crowley treated him as though he were a piece of decoration, with an impertinence that fascinated him. He looked ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... immediately followed, should the exuberance of the occasion warrant, by a ringing tiger. This I recall was the invariable habit of the playfellows described in such works as "Sanford and Merton" and "Thomas Brown's Schooldays." I also urged on them the substitution of the fine old English game of cricket for baseball, to which I found them generally addicted. It is true I had never found either opportunity or inclination for perfecting myself in one or both of these games; but the pictured representations ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... There were day-old English papers on the table, and the New York Herald. Through the glass doors he could see everyone who came in or went out. And he saw no one. There was a stillness as of ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... that purely agricultural countries are economically backward and intellectually stagnant, being condemned to pay tribute to the nations who have learned to work up their raw products into more valuable commodities. The good old English doctrine that certain countries were intended by Providence to be eternally agricultural, and that their function in the economy of the universe is to supply raw material for the industrial nations, was always in his eyes an abomination—an ingenious, nefarious ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Jeremy Taylor amongst the four great geniuses of old English literature. I think he used to reckon Shakspeare and Bacon, Milton and Taylor, four-square, each against each. In mere eloquence, he thought the Bishop without any fellow. He called him Chrysostom. Further, he loved the man, and was anxious to find excuses for some weak parts in his character. ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... women, a title which will not be denied by any who have read the preceding three volumes of this History. The first Woman's Rights Convention in the world was called at Seneca Falls in 1848.[377] New York was also a pioneer in beginning a reform of the old English Common Law, so barbarous in its treatment of women. And yet, with all the splendid work which has been done, the State has been slow indeed in granting absolute justice. At the commencement of the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... seen in the case of the Persian word khor, which means both "pig" and "harlot" or "filthy woman". The possibility of the derivation of the old English word "[w]hore" from the same ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... Poitou were still to some extent English in sympathy, and a considerable band of them and their followers took refuge in Thouars. On December 1 this last stronghold of Poitevin feudalism surrendered. The tidings of disaster roused the old English king to his final martial effort. A fleet was raised and sailed from Sandwich, having on board the king, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Lancaster, and many other magnates. Contrary winds kept the vessels near the English coast, and the vast sums lavished on the equipment of the expedition ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... ag'in the time when they might come back and dig it up, and carry it away to be used. Consisting of what, indeed! Consisting principally, accordin' to Daggett's account, of heavy doubloons; though there was a lot of old English guineas among 'em. Yes, I remember that he spoke of them guineas—three thousand and odd, and nearly as ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... etc. By the fish, is understood the Dauphin of France, as their kings eldest sons are called: 'Tis here said, he shall lament the loss of the Duke of Burgundy, called the Bosse, which is an old English word for hump-shoulder, or crook-back, as that Duke is known to be; and the prophecy seems to mean, that he should be overcome or slain. By the green berrys, in the next line, is meant the young Duke of ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... by a chorus of fresh children's voices, is perhaps the most perfect expression of the spirit of Christmastide. Especially is this true of the old English and German carols, which seem to grow only sweeter, more mellow, more perfectly expressive of the love and good-will that inspired them, as the years go by. Yet always at Christmas time there is with me ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... old English could be placed like "also" in different parts of a sentence. Thus, in Nymphidia, "She hies her then to Lethe spring, A bottle and thereof doth bring." {129} Atalantis, "As long as Atalantis shall be ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... paper, its Holy Mother over the fireplace, and pleasant books, and its pretty bronze vase, on one of the secretaries, filled with ferns. Except once Mr. Emerson, no one hunts us out in the evening. Then Mr. Hawthorne reads to me. At present we can only get along with the old English writers, and we find that they are the hive from which all modern honey is stolen. They are thick-set with thought, instead of one thought serving for a whole book. Shakespeare is preeminent; Spenser ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... you may chance to meet the mole-catcher of the place—an upholder of right traditions of an old English village. I met him searching disconsolately for a couple of his traps, which he had set too near the pathway and which had been carried off by thieving passers-by, on whom may malisons light. "I've got forty traps about here," he told me with some pride, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... vellum, opened and in it he read: "Livre des grandes Merveilles d'amour, escript en Latin et en francoys par Maistre Antoine Gaget 1530." "Has love its marvels?" pondered the disquieted young man. Turning over the title-page he came upon these words in sweet old English: ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... Condition governed his choice a good deal; he was fond of Spanish books, his mother having been a Spaniard, and of early German ones, being a German on his father's side. He took the classics and Americana rather hesitatingly, and there is no doubt that the old English literature interested him most powerfully, as it was most fully represented on his shelves. The folio volume of black-letter ballads, knocked down to his agent at the Daniel sale for L750, was regarded by him with special tenderness; ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... manger!" Now, it is clearly made out by the surviving evidence, that D'Arc would much have preferred continuing to say—"Ma fille as-tu donne au cochon a manger?" to saying "Pucelle d'Orleans, as-tu sauve les fleurs-de-lys?" There is an old English copy of verses ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... earth, the good, beautiful, green earth. And—must I avow it?—there was, besides, a little curiosity which retained me at the residence of Mother Lecacheur. I wished to become acquainted a little with this strange Miss Harriet and to know what transpires in the solitary souls of those wandering old English women. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... marriages, and the republican mind had not yet adjusted itself to all that such alliances might imply. It was yet ingenuous, imaginative and confiding in such matters. A baronetcy and a manor house reigning over an old English village and over villagers in possible smock frocks, presented elements of picturesque dignity to people whose intimacy with such allurements had been limited by the novels of Mrs. Oliphant and other writers. The most ordinary little ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have delighted generations of children, some culled from old English versions of the eighteenth century, some modernized from quaint chap-books, and all handsomely and modernly illustrated. With the aid of a scholar such as Mr. Lang, the entire world has contributed to this ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic
... cudgel would serve him in good stead. I had somewhat lost my taste for such things during the courtly life I had lately led. He laughed at my effeminacy, and urged me to arouse myself, and to practise the old English sports, which would fit me for the rough life I might be destined to go through. He promised to call for me whenever he could, and, as he had a good deal of liberty, his visits were ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... all save her spouse. But it is also an infinitive whose plur. is Harimtthe women of a family; and in places it is still used for the women's apartment, the gynaeceum. The latter by way of distinction I have mostly denoted by the good old English ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... much horse-play, too much ruffianism and "bully-ragging." And something of the same quality offends me in Byron. I lack the steadiness of nerves to deal with a coarseness which hits you across the head, much as the old English clowns hit one another with ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... passengers. After dinner my friend and I had champagne. While discussing its merits the conversation turned on Ireland. Opinions, of course, varied. Mine, it need scarcely be added, to an Englishman's ear sounded bloodily, and I urged them with the vehemence of baffled hope. An old English gentleman of that quiet school which affects liberality and moderation, but entertains deepest animosity, deprecated the violence of my language and sentiments, and expressed his painful astonishment at hearing such opinions ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... and the strong sense of the individual rights of property, are to be remarked. One found in a 'court,' courtledge (or homestead), by night (as we say in old English), may be killed. You know, I dare say, that in many Teutonic and Scandinavian nations the principle that a man's house is his castle was so strongly held that men were not allowed to enter a condemned man's ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... many small farmers, the growing interest was in trade and manufacture. The social distinctions were equally marked. The northern colonists were middle-class traders and small farmers, with democratic town governments, and with an intense pride in education. In the South, gentlemen of good old English families lived like feudal lords among their slaves and cultivated manners quite as assiduously as morals. Of forms of the Christian religion, the Atlantic coast presented a bizarre mixture. In the main, New England was emphatically Calvinistic and ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... Keeldar Castle. He was like the Spanish pointer, but much stronger, and untameably fierce,—colour, black and tawny, long pendulous ears,—had a deep back, broad nostrils, and was strongly made, something like the old English mastiff, ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... called Fatal Curiosity, founded on an old English story, was acted with success at the Hay-Market, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... the sound of drums and fifes; how the boar's head was brought in upon a silver dish; how the gentlemen in gowns, the trumpeters, and other musicians followed the boar's head in stately procession; and how, by a rule somewhat at variance with modern notions concerning old English hospitality, strangers of worth were expected to pay in cash for their entertainment, eightpence per head being the charge for dinner on the day of Christmas Eve, and twelve-pence being demanded from each stranger for his dinner ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon burhg, birig or byrig (town, castle or fortified place), was the site of a Saxon station, and an old English castle stood in Castle Croft close to the town. It was a member of the Honour of Clitheroe and a fee of the royal manor of Tottington, which soon after the Conquest was held by the Lacys. The local family of Bury held lands here ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... love, and the villain Varney, and the deep voice of George of Douglas—and the immoveable Balafre, and Master Oliver the Barber in Quentin Durward—and the quaint humour of the Fortunes of Nigel, and the comic spirit of Peveril of the Peak—and the fine old English romance of Ivanhoe. What a list of names! What a host of associations! What a thing is human life! What a power is that of genius! What a world of thought and feeling is thus rescued from oblivion! How many hours of heartfelt satisfaction has our author given to the gay and thoughtless! How many ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... recovered my self-possession; and, when I woke, found myself standing as before, close to my sister's bed."[2] Somewhat similar in effect were the fancies that came to this dreamy boy on Sunday mornings during service in the fine old English church. Through the wide central field of uncolored glass, set in a rich framework of gorgeous color,—for the side panes of the great windows were pictured with the stories of saints and martyrs,—the ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... into shapes and embellished with topiary work with the forms of animals and birds cut out of yews and boxes attracted much attention. The garden was filled with old-fashioned flowers. A water basin and fountain, typical of the old English gardens, were there, as also were stone statues and lead urns and vases. The garden became one of the sights of the exposition and was usually crowded with interested and ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... of this series of articles to tell how two peoples, the one from the South and the other from the North—the one the sons of the Puritans, and the other the children of the younger sons of the old English cavaliers—came together and settled in one Territory; how they were divided by the question of American slavery, and how they strove in an antagonism as fierce as that which once subsisted between the Saxon and Norman in Old England; how they peacefully settled their controversy, ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... the attractions of the world to the modern poet, that the vagabond singer has come into special favor lately. Of course he has appeared in English song ever since the time of minstrels, but usually, as in the Old English poem, The Wanderer, he has been unhappy in his roving life. Even so modern a poet as Scott was in the habit of portraying his minstrels as old and homesick. [Footnote: See The Lay of the Last Minstrel.] But Byron set the fashion among poets of desiring ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... it was owing to the qualities of its juice that the English were so courageous and had such a solidity of understanding, which raised them above all the nations in Europe; he preferred the noble old English pudding beyond all the finest ragouts that ever were invented by the greatest geniuses that France ever produced." These "ingenious strokes" were loudly applauded by the audience, it seems, who, in their delight at the abuse lavished upon the French, forgot that they came to condemn the play and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... on a theatre which possessed so little external splendour as the old English, those who are in the habit of judging of the man from his dress will not be inclined to entertain a very favourable idea. I am induced, however, from this very circumstance, to draw quite a contrary conclusion: the want of attractions of an accessory nature renders it the more necessary to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... cowardice has rendered useless the old English compromise. People have begun to be terrified of an improvement merely because it is complete. They call it utopian and revolutionary that anyone should really have his own way, or anything be really done, and done with. Compromise used to ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... don't notice you." This chant can be heard by anyone who cares to listen; it's the old American invitation to mediocrity. But while mediocre, as commonly used, means "indifferent, ordinary," it also has in old English the odd meaning "a young monk who was excused from performing part of a monk's duties." And that, too, fits. It is always worthwhile to ask a few very senior officers what they think of these jokers who refuse to study. ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... described localities. The noble bridge, built in the reign of Henry VII. by Sir Hugh Clopton, and afterwards widened, excited my admiration. It was a much finer piece of work than the one built long afterwards. I have hardly seen anything which gave me a more striking proof of the thoroughness of the old English workmen. They built not for an age, but for all time, and the New Zealander will have to wait a long while before he will find in any one of the older bridges that broken arch from which he is to survey the ruins ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... which compel the awe and wonder of those who "go down to the sea in ships and do their business in great waters." In the minds of early navigators, the experience of the terrors of the sea begot a sense of relationship to hostile powers. One of the oldest Aryan words for sea, the German Meer, Old English Mere, means death or destruction; and the destructive action of the ocean's untutored elementary force found personifications in the Teutonic Oegir (Terror), with his dreaded daughter, and the sea-goddess, Ran, his wife, who ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... Livy says, "popula bundi magis quam justo more belli." Jacobs: den Krieg als Freibeuter fahren. Another German: Streifzuge zu machen (guerilla warfare). Leland: "harass him with depredations." Wilson, an old English translator: "rob and spoil upon him."] and adopt such kind of warfare at first: our force, therefore, must not be over-large, (for there is not pay or subsistence,) nor altogether mean. Citizens I wish to attend and go ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... with Sir K. Digby on the subject of religion already mentioned, he was the author of an Apologie (1643, Thomason Tracts, E. 34 (32)), justifying his support of the king's cause; of Elvira ... a comedy (1667), printed in R. Dodsley's Select Collect. of Old English Plays (Hazlitt, 1876), vol. xv., and of Worse and Worse, an adaptation from the Spanish, acted but not printed. Other writings are also ascribed to him, including the authorship with Sir Samuel Tuke of The Adventures of Five Hours (1663). His eloquent and pointed speeches, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Dolphin's appearance in the remote little Chatteris theatre may be accounted for in this manner. In spite of all his exertions, and the perpetual blazes of triumph, coruscations of talent, victories of good old English comedy, which his play-bills advertised, his theatre (which, if you please, and to injure no present susceptibilities and vested interests, we shall call the Museum Theatre) by no means prospered, and the famous Impresario found himself on the verge of ruin. The great Hubbard had acted legitimate ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... been a villa, and a villa, in England at least, was not a place in which one could fancy him at home. But it was, to my vision, a cottage glorified and translated; it was a palace of art, on a slightly reduced scale—and might besides have been the dearest haunt of the old English genius loci. It nestled under a cluster of magnificent beeches, it had little creaking lattices that opened out of, or into, pendent mats of ivy, and gables, and old red tiles, as well as a general aspect of being painted in water-colours and inhabited by people whose lives ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James
... kind of liquid bread, it is natural for the two to commingle in Rabbits whether they are blond Dutch or black pumpernickel. And since cheese is only solid milk, and the Cheddar is noted for its beery smell, there is further affinity here. An old English proverb sums it up neatly: "Bread and cheese are the two ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... beef was the Englishman's food, It ennobled our hearts, and enriched our blood; Our soldiers were brave, and our courtiers were good. O, the Roast Beef of old England, And O, the old English ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... the stereotyped commonplaces that most people can find to say with their senses blindfolded. Mrs. Hale was making rather more exertion in her answers, captivated by some real old lace which Mrs. Thornton wore; 'lace,' as she afterwards observed to Dixon, 'of that old English point which has not been made for this seventy years, and which cannot be bought. It must have been an heir-loom, and shows that she had ancestors.' So the owner of the ancestral lace became worthy of something more than the languid exertion to be agreeable ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... new communities which our emigrating habit now constantly creates, this prosaic turn of mind is intensified. In the American mind and in the colonial mind there is, as contrasted with the old English mind, a LITERALNESS, a tendency to say, "The facts are so-and-so, whatever may be thought or fancied about them". We used before the civil war to say that the Americans worshipped the almighty dollar; we now know ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... question I should so like to ask you, Mr. Shawn. In watercolours did Mr. Carve use Chinese white freely or did he stick to transparent colour, like the old English school? I wonder if you ...
— The Great Adventure • Arnold Bennett
... refuse to die. Through centuries of turbulence and slaughter and racial transplanting, see how some Roman words stay and refuse to go, knowing as little of retreat as a Roman legion! "Chester" and "coin," as good old English terminals, are tense with interest, since they as plainly record history as did minstrels in old castle hall. Chester is the Roman "castra," camp, and where the name occurs across Britain, indicates with undeviating fidelity that there, in remote decades, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... was kept alive in our country by King Alfred's affection for the old English songs. We know that he used to recite them himself and would make his children get them by heart. He was not much of a scholar himself, but he had all the learning of Mercia to help him. Archbishop Plegmund and his chaplains were the King's secretaries, ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... exhaustion and slavery—slavery to a people who were coming across the western sea, hard-headed, hard-hearted, caring nothing for art, or science, whose pleasures were coarse and cruel, but with a certain rough honesty, reverence for country, for law, and for the ties of a family—men of a somewhat old English type, who had over and above, like the English, the inspiring belief that they could conquer the whole world, and who very nearly succeeded in that- -as we have, to our great blessing, not succeeded—I mean, of ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... "Lewis had an old English map, made by a man named Arrowsmith, based on reports of a Hudson's Bay trader named Fidler, who had gone a little south of the Saskatchewan and made some observations. Now look at your Journal, and see what Lewis thought ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... not imagine how her Portia could endure to hear the old English Prayer-book droned out. For her part, she liked one thing or the other, either a rousing Nonconformist sermon in a meeting-house ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at one time been in Germany, and had made friends with some of these German and Swiss Protestants, and he invited them to England to consult and help him and his friends. Several of them came, and they found fault with our old English Prayer-book—though it had never been the same as the Roman one—and it was altered again to please them and their friends, and brought out as King Edward's second book. Indeed, they tried to persuade the English to be like themselves—with very few services, ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which was surrounded by a low wall. Within was a lawn and an ancient yew tree. The porch was overgrown with ivy, and the trees that rose behind the grey tiles of the roof set the old house in a frame of foliage. A fine old English homestead, where any man might be proud to dwell. But the farmer did not turn up the drive. He followed the road till he came to a gate leading into the rickyard, and, there getting out of the gig, held the gate open while the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... OF BEOWULF. Done out of the Old English tongue by William Morris and A. J. Wyatt. Large 4to. Troy type, with argument, side-notes, list of persons and places, and glossary in Chaucer type. In black and red. Borders 14a and 14, and woodcut title. 300 on paper at two guineas, 8 on vellum at ten pounds. Dated ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris
... staging an old English costume piece, and this Greek theater of Mrs. Markley's just fits in. Our president worked the deal for us. And we've got to do a thousand feet between now and five o'clock. Not in the ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... he spoke in high praise of the singing of Catalani, a prima donna whom he knew and liked personally. He was always ready to point out the absurdity of many operatic situations and conventionalities, and often confessed that he had been rarely to the theatre. But that he was exceedingly fond of old English, Scotch, and German ballads, I had the best possible evidence. Frequently he entered our rooms, saying playfully, "I wish to make a bargain with you. I will give you these flowers if you will give me ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... professors of English who do not know these facts, and who, if called upon, could neither prove them nor disprove them. They have not worked in the Bodleian, in the British Museum, or in other foreign libraries, on Old English texts and authorities. They think themselves well up in Old English if they can translate the text of Beowulf fairly well, remember its most difficult vocabulary, and can tell a tale or two from ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... thinking that he had better lie down for fear of being very tired next day, he reached out his hand to draw in the casement, but kept it there, for a very familiar sound now struck upon his ear: Clap, clap, clap, clap of wings, and then a thoroughly hearty old English cock-a-doodle-doo! and the boy burst into a ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn |
