"Lear" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... date of composition, and in popular estimation at least among English readers, comes, 'Le Pere Goriot.' It is certainly trite to call the book a French "Lear," but the expression emphasizes the supreme artistic power that could treat the motif of one of Shakespeare's plays in a manner that never forces a disadvantageous comparison with the great tragedy. The retired vermicelli-maker is not as grand a figure ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Ran away from the subscriber, on Sunday night, 27th inst., my NEGRO GIRL, Lear Green, about 18 years of age, black complexion, round-featured, good-looking and ordinary size; she had on and with her when she left, a tan-colored silk bonnet, a dark plaid silk dress, a light mouslin delaine, also one watered silk cape and one tan colored cape. I have reason to be confident ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the ballad, but my impression is that it was condemned as a fabrication for this and other neologies. The button is not a conspicuous item of female attire as of the male, and Shakespeare has been attacked for the vulgarity of even making Lear say, 'Prithee, undo this button,' though I think ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... Broth, a piece of Butter, and a little Salt, after they have fryed a while, put to them a little Parsley, green Chibals, a little young Speremint and Tyme, all shred very small, and a little beaten Pepper; when you think they are fryed almost enough, have a lear made for them with the yolks of two or three Eggs, some Gravy of Mutton, a little Nutmegg, and juyce of a Lemon wrung therein, and put this lear to the Sheeps feet as they fry in the Pan, then toss them once or twice, and ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... persuasion, to join the rest of the party at dinner. In the evening, all (Fairthorn excepted) draw round the fire. Waife is entreated by George to read a scene or two out of Shakespeare. He selects the latter portion of "King Lear." Darrell, who never was a playgoer, and who, to his shame be it said, had looked very little into Shakespeare since he left college, was wonderstruck. He himself read beautifully—all great orators, I suppose, do; but his talent was not mimetic—not imitative; he ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... writing his plays, than Garrick for acting them. I think him a very good and very various player—but several have pleased me more, though I allow not in so many parts. Quin in Falstaff, was as excellent as Garrick in Lear. Old Johnson far more natural in every thing he attempted. Mrs. Porter and your Dumesnil surpassed him in passionate tragedy; Cibber and O'Brien were what Garrick could never reach, coxcombs, and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... perjured, and thou simular man of virtue, Thou art incestuous: caitiff, to pieces shake, That under covert and convenient seeming Hast practised on man's life: close pent-up guilts, Rive your concealing continents, and cry These dreadful summoners grace. — Lear. ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... soldier-like air and gesture," and in the same year Curwen mentioned his "fine figure" and "easy and agreeable address." Nathaniel Lawrence noted in 1783 that "the General weighs commonly about 210 pounds." After death, Lear reports that "Doctor Dick measured the body, which was as follows—In length 6 ft. 3-1/2 inches exact. Across the shoulders 1.9. Across the elbows 2.1." The pleasantest description is Jefferson's: "His person, you know, was fine, ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... secretary of Charles the Great, Turpin, Archbishop of Rheims, who was himself present in the scenes that he describes. It was—like Geoffrey of Monmouth's nearly contemporary "History of British Kings," from which were drawn tales of Gorboduc, Lear and King Arthur—romance itself, and the source of romance in others. It is at the root of many tales of Charlemagne and Roland that reached afterwards their highest artistic expression in Ariosto's ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... of this time are the death of Byrhtnoth, The Fight of Finsborough, and the Chronicle of King Lear and his Daughters, the last of which is the foundation of an old play, upon which Shakspeare's ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Wright brothers to bother; but when he got as far as London from Bath the wing-strings broke and he fell, plop! on a particularly hard temple of Apollo. After him reigned his son, no less a person than King Lear. I got this out of a queer little old book I bought the first day we came, but I assumed the air of having known it since childhood. There's another legend, it seems, about Bladud and a swine, but it's less esoteric than this, and Sir ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... on the old trade of Praetor, Consul, Proconsul, and Imperator, so as to get what he could of power and wealth and dignity in the scramble, was, I think, Caesar's purpose. The rest grew upon him. As Shakspeare, sitting down to write a play that might serve his theatre, composed some Lear or Tempest—that has lived and will live forever, because of the genius which was unknown to himself—so did Caesar, by his genius, find his way to a power which he had not premeditated. A much longer time is necessary for eradicating an idea from men's minds than ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... Shakspeare's fools and jesters—in some respects the wisest and thoughtfullest characters in his works—talk. If his words be "light as air," they vent "truths deep as the centre." If the Fool in "Lear" had written letters to his friends and acquaintances, I think they would have marvellously resembled this epistle to Patmore; and if, in saying this, I compliment the Fool, I hope I do not derogate from the genius of Elia. Jaques, it will be remembered, after hearing the "motley ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... definitely mapped-out and circumscribed. But he is far too good a craftsman to do no more than give a mere panorama of that daily Bath programme which King Nash and his dynasty ordained and established. He goes back to the origins; to the legend of King Lear's leper-father; to the Diary of the too-much-neglected Celia Fiennes; to Pepys[55] and Grammont's Memoirs; to the days when hapless Catherine of Braganza, with the baleful "belle Stewart" in her train, made fruitless pilgrimage ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... channels,—and to cause all things necessary for his people to be borne by the earth.' '(They told me I was everything. But when the rain came to wet me once, when the wind would not peace at my bidding,' says Lear, 'there I found them, there I smelt them out.)' This, in connection with the preceding anecdote, to which, in the opinion of this author, it comes properly so very near, may be classed of itself among the suggestive stories above referred to; but the bearing of these ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... leans her cheek upon her hand, And prattles to the night. Anon, a reverend form With tattered robe and forehead bare, That challenge all the torments of the air, Goes by! And the pent feelings choke in one long sigh, While, as the mimic thunder rolls, you hear The noble wreck of Lear Reproach like things of life the ancient skies, And commune with the storm! Lo! next a dim and silent chamber, where Wrapt in glad dreams, in which, perchance, the Moor Tells his strange story o'er, The gentle Desdemona chastely lies, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... always founded on nature, and therefore the feelings of a more polished generation immediately sympathize with them. We need no numerous notes, no antiquarian dissertations, to enable the most ignorant to recognize the sentiments and diction of the characters of Homer; we have but, as Lear says, to strip off our lendings—to set aside the factitious principles and adornments which we have received from our comparatively artificial system of society, and our natural feelings are in unison with those of the bard ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Lear to whose limber tongue there was constantly leaping words unprintable and names of tar, deserves no soft pity at our hands. All his life he had been training his three daughters for exactly the treatment he was to receive. All his life Lear had been lubricating the chute that was to give ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... Vocal and Instrumental Musick, for the Benefit of Mr. Edward Keen, the Father of twenty Children; and that this Day the haughty George Powell hopes all the good-natur'd part of the Town will favour him, whom they Applauded in Alexander, Timon, Lear, and Orestes, with their Company this Night, when he hazards all his heroick Glory for their Approbation in the humbler Condition ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... first violins haunting the G string,—while a harp and three flutes carry the burden of the accompaniment gracefully); a pleasant "Reverie" for string orchestra, harp, and organ; and two impromptus for string orchestra, a "Meditation" representing Cordelia brooding tenderly over the slumbering King Lear,—art ministering very tenderly to the mood,—and a ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... the one reading, the other sleeping, while the hours of the warm summer afternoon slipped away, ripples on the ocean of the lovely, changeless eternity, the consciousness of God. For a time the watching sister was absorbed in King Lear; then she fell to wondering whether Cordelia was not unkindly stiff toward her old father, but perceived at length that, with such sisters listening, she could not have spoken otherwise. Then she wondered whether there could be women so bad ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... on, "My prologue an anachronism, quotha! The groundlings will never mark it. Think'st thou wisdom came to mankind with the stenchful rocket and the sundered atomy? More, the Bard himself was topfull of anachronism. He put spectacles on King Lear, had clocks tolling the hour in Caesar's Rome, buried that Roman 'stead o' burning him and gave Czechoslovakia a seacoast. Go ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... the tumbledown houses "the dumb rhetoric," in which "tables, chairs, and joint stools are living, and significant things." In these passages Lamb seems to regard the comic merely as a means to an end;—"Who sees not," he asks, "that the grave-digger in Hamlet, the fool in Lear have a kind of correspondency to, and fall in with, the subjects which they seem to interrupt; while the comic stuff in 'Venice Preserved,' and the doggrel nonsense of the cook and his poisoning associates in the Rollo of Beaumont and Fletcher are pure irrelevant, impertinent discords—as ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... that in it he has given the world in thin disguise much of his own life-story? Shakespeare alone, of men of genius of the first rank, seems to have learned comparatively few of his lessons in the school of suffering. But, possibly, if more were known of Shakespeare, it would be found that Lear, Macbeth, and Hamlet are but the expressions of lessons learned ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... of a poet myself, you see! Well,—there's your property. And with what your Mother left you will buy books and writing paper! As for my property—that's going to Jack. I've got the papers for that too. Not being an idiot I've saved out enough for myself—no Lear business for mine! Well, boy—I'm sorry you're a fool. But you've got what you ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... revising my edition of Shakspeare, and remember that I formerly misrepresented your opinion of Lear. Be pleased to write the paragraph as you would have it, and send it[335]. If you have any remarks of your own upon that or any other play, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... doubt that the plays of Shakespeare which I have enumerated were all seen by Pepys in authentic shapes. Betterton acted Lear, we are positively informed, "exactly as Shakespeare wrote it"; and at the dates when Pepys saw Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and the rest, there is no evidence that the old texts had been tampered with. The rage for adapting Shakespeare to current theatrical requirements ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Saints' Day, after wandering awhile about a swampy churchyard in the suburb of Maria Hilf, to see the melancholy spot of light which glimmered at each grave-head, I went to the Burg Theatre, and witnessed Shakespeare's play of "King Lear" (and the best actor in Vienna played the Fool); and further, that I spent the evening of Christmas Day in Daum's coffee-house in reading Galignani's Messenger, in order to bring myself, in imagination at least, as near ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... The tragedy of Lear is deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shakespeare. There is, perhaps, no play which keeps the attention so strongly fixed; which so much agitates our passions, and interests our curiosity. The artful involutions of distinct interests, the striking oppositions of contrary characters, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Ghost). Have you any hearse-plumes at hand? Do not be angry with me. Can you hear my teeth? I am only a poor little old man. Will you please undo my necktie? (cf. "King Lear"). Let us go to breakfast. Will there be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 26, 1892 • Various
... short of its syllables, and the softening down of its terminations, and inflections of words.' Somewhere between 1180 and 1216, the majestic speech in which Shakspeare was to write 'Macbeth' and 'King Lear,' Lord Bacon his 'Advancement of Learning,' Milton his 'Paradise Lost' and 'Areopagitica,' Burke his 'Reflections,' and Sir Walter Scott the Waverley Novels, and whose rough, but manly accents were to be spoken by at least a hundred million tongues, commenced ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Beethoven, Goethe, and the antique Athenian stage poets are great. He would really not be great at all if it were not that he had religion enough to be aware that his religionless condition was one of despair. His towering King Lear would be only a melodrama were it not for its express admission that if there is nothing more to be said of the universe than Hamlet has to say, then 'as flies to wanton boys are we to the gods: they ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... up, up, until the Hoosiers had made a few hundred thousands, and then, when they thought they were going to make millions, letting it down and scooping them. My habit of listening intently to Uncle Nate's telegrammatic style of talk caused him to like me. I resembled King Lear: I talked with those who were wise, and said little, and Nathan's aphorisms about trade and politics made good paragraphs when boiled down to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... sought battle in their behalf and heaped them with favors. His eyes saw the depth of that resignation which gave to God the one jewel that would have atoned for the horrid sufferings of the past. If he were free! He thought of old Lear moaning ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... Lear, King of Britain, had three daughters; Goneril, wife to the Duke of Albany; Regan, wife to the Duke of Cornwall; and Cordelia, a young maid, for whose love the King of France and Duke of Burgundy were joint suitors, and were at this time making stay for that purpose ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... under whose sheltering shadow once slept in peace for near a thousand years the now storm-tossed nations of Western and Central Christendom, couldst thou indeed, when turned out a houseless[47] fugitive like Lear upon a night of tempest, still retain aught of thy ancient prestige, and through the might of belief rule over ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... the Southards, Mrs. Gray, Anne, Miriam and I. Anne, Miss Southard and Mr. Southard left New York City for California last week. Mr. Southard and Anne are to appear as joint stars in film productions of 'As You Like It,' 'Hamlet,' 'King Lear' and possibly other Shakespearian plays. It is their first experience in posing before the camera. Anne sent you her love. She will write you as soon as she ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... Lucrece, with only the intellectual material of a rakish Stratford lad's schooling and reading, and the culture coming of a few years' association with the primitive English stage and its hangers-on, was capable of broadening and deepening, with vital experience and vital culture, into the poet of LEAR and MACBETH. But the vital culture must come to it, like the experience: this was not a man who would go out of his way to seek the culture. A man so minded, a man who would bear hardship in order ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... class or subject nothing. The highest subjects, equally well-executed (which, however, rarely happens), are the best."[75] Though each is perfect in its kind, there can be no difficulty in deciding the question of greatness between "King Lear" and "The Comedy of Errors." "The greatest strength of genius is shewn in describing the strongest passions: for the power of imagination, in works of invention, must be in proportion to the force of the natural ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... no unimportant circumstance that Shakspeare brought out King Lear soon after the accession of James I, who, like his predecessor, loved the theatre; and that Francis Bacon dedicated to the King his work on the Advancement of Learning ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... On the title page of the autograph copy of the full score is inscribed the following quotation from King Lear: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the Gods; they kill ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... of these resolutions, a written message was received from the President, accompanying a letter from Mr. Lear, which he said, "will inform you that it had pleased Divine Providence to remove from this life our excellent fellow citizen, GEORGE WASHINGTON, by the purity of his life, and a long series of services to his country, rendered illustrious through ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... operas ever written. It has probably been one of the causes, however, why it is so rarely represented at the present time, its overture alone being well known to modern musical audiences. This opera has been compared by critics to Shakespeare's "King Lear," as being a great expression of anguish and despair in their more stormy phases. Chorley tells us that, when he first saw it, he was irresistibly reminded of the lines in ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... the poet in addressing so composite an audience are enormous: cuteness, coyness, archness and condescension are only the most obvious ones. Some great writers of children's verse—Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear—have successfully hedged themselves against these dangers by insistent comedy and parody (Carroll's "serious" children's verse is maudlin and embarrassing). By this means they have contrived what the child will take as lovely, unintimidating, mysterious, rational nonsense, and what the ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... that movable stocks were in use, which could be brought out whenever occasion required. A set of these exists at Garstang, Lancashire. The quotation already given from King Lear, "Fetch forth the stocks," seems to imply that in Shakespeare's time they were movable. Beverley stocks were movable, and in Notes and Queries we find an account of a mob at Shrewsbury dragging around the ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... Shakespeare's dramas, but to include in my course all Shakespeare's plays that it was possible to read with any hope of attracting or interesting an audience. My father had limited his range to a few of the most frequently acted plays. I delivered the following twenty-four: King Lear, Macbeth, Cymbeline, King John, Richard II., two parts of Henry IV., Henry V., Richard III., Henry VIII., Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, The ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... paused for a moment, "I see that it would take too long. You must deal with so many prejudices—such, for example, as that which supposes 'King Lear' and 'Othello' to ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... seems to have its special place in the economy of life as a sort of balance to the over-serious tendency. One of the two great masters of verse of this sort was the English author Edward Lear (1812-1888). He was also a famous illustrator of books and magazines. Among his juvenile books, illustrated by himself, were Nonsense Songs and More Nonsense Songs. All his verse is now generally published under the first title. Good nonsense verse precludes explanation, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the three words "boy," "wood-sawyer," and "Coriolanus," which always recurred in Field's various versions of "Why I did not go on the stage." Eugene returned to St. Louis and quietly disposed of the costumes he had prepared for such characters as Hamlet, Lear, and Spartacus. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... and cruel fables; with all its infamous doctrines; with its spirit of caste; with its spirit of hatred, and tell me whether it was written by a good God. Why, if you will read the maledictions and curses of that book, you would think that God, like Lear, had divided heaven among his daughters, and then, in the insanity of despair, had launched his curses upon the ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... a woman of great intelligence and a great beauty in her time. She was once taken out to dinner by General Washington when he was President. Madam Hancock, whose husband had been President of the Continental Congress and Governor of Massachusetts, complained to General Washington's Secretary, Mr. Lear, that that honor belonged to her. The Secretary told General Washington, the next day, what she said. The General answered that it was his privilege to give his arm to the handsomest woman in the room. Whether the reply was communicated to ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... ye gaun, ye broken men?' Quo' fause Sakelde; 'come tell to me!' Now Dickie of Dryhope led that band, And the nevir a word o' lear had he. ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... doublet of white satin is worn by the birch." The fault is not in any inaptness of the images, nor in the mere vulgarity of the things themselves, but in that of the associations they awaken. The "prithee, undo this button" of Lear, coming where it does and expressing what it does, is one of those touches of the pathetically sublime, of which only Shakespeare ever knew the secret. Herrick, too, has a charming poem on "Julia's petticoat," the charm being that he lifts the familiar ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... or read at many of the library story hours. Lear's nonsense rhymes and certain rhythmical story poems are especially enjoyed by the children. Outlines of stories or selections from books designed to lead to the reading of an entire book are mentioned in connection ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... personification. Thus at one time*1* he likens men to clover-leaves and the Course-of-things to the browsing ox, which makes way with the clover-heads; while at another he addresses an old red hill of Georgia as "Thou gashed and hairy Lear Whom the divine Cordelia of the year, E'en pitying Spring, will vainly strive to cheer."*2* Like other Southern poets,*3* Lanier sometimes fails to check his imagination, and in consequence leaves his readers "bramble-tangled in a brilliant maze," as in his description ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... greatness like theirs is never more than the highest degree of perfection which prevails widely around it, and forms the environment in which it grows. No such single mind in single contact with the facts of nature could have created a Pallas, a Madonna, or a Lear; such vast conceptions are the growth of ages, the creation of a nation's spirit; and the artist and poet, filled full with the power of that spirit, but gave it form, and nothing but form. Nor would the form itself have been attained by any isolated talent. No genius ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man, whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Riding-hood. She knows that it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet, in spite of her knowledge, she believes; she weeps; she trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... his years expressly as these constitute a deduction from the unknown sum total of those which have been appointed him; and when the utmost bravery of their affection must breathe, not Serus, but CITO in cadum redeas! O royal Lear of our literature, who have spurned from your love the dearest daughter of your thought, is it only left us to say, "How friendly is Death,—Death, who restores us to free relations with the whole, when our own ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... 'Hamlet, Othello, and Lear were roles in which he [Burbage] gained especial renown. But Burbage and Shakespeare were popularly credited with co-operation in less solemn enterprises. They were reputed to be companions in many sportive adventures. The sole anecdote ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... is for the most part hidden behind the persons of his creation. Yet there are certain of his characters in which we feel that there is something of self-portraiture. And it is not so much in his grander, more subtle and ingenious creations that we feel this—in Hamlet and King Lear—as in those slighter and more spontaneously developed figures, who, while far from playing principal parts, are yet distinguished by a peculiar happiness and delicate ease in the drawing of them; figures which possess, above all, that winning attractiveness which there is no ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... speaking in an accent much broader than the provincial dialect—"na, my faither was owre puir for giein me ony buke lear." This seemed to satisfy the damsel, and she intrusted him with the letter in its unclosed state, only enjoining him to show it to nobody, and give it into the hands of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... Browning once saw in the Carrara Mountains, a painting which caught his eye years later in Paris; and the figure of a horse in the tapestry in his own drawing-room—welded together in the remembrance of the line from "King Lear" which forms the heading ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... therefore less bitter—the tragedy of ingratitude. At stupendous cost I have supported, educated, clothed you. You turn upon me for more. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child! I am Lear." ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... Brutus and Cato, the rapid and hurried vehemence of Hotspur, mark the class of characters I mean. But he fails where a ready and pliable yielding to the events and passions of life makes what may be termed a more natural personage. Accordingly I think his Macbeth, Lear, and especially his Richard, inferior in spirit and truth. In Hamlet, the natural fixed melancholy of the prince places him within Kemble's range;—yet many delicate and sudden turns of passion slip through his fingers. He is {p.155} a lordly vessel, goodly and magnificent ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... received with wild enthusiasm. In Italy, during the most frenzied period of Garibaldian worship, my old friend, Lear the artist, asked a patriotic inn-keeper, who was in a wild state of excitement, to give him breakfast, to which the man replied: "Colazione! Che colazione! Tutto e amore e liberta!" In the Albanian village in which Miss Durham was residing when the Young Turks proclaimed their constitution, the ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... less than one of the Pleiades, and the only one of the sisters who seems to have married into a patriarchal family. "The reason why the seven stars are seven is a pretty reason"; but it is not "because they are not eight," as Lear suggests, but, as we now discover by patient investigation, because one of them had married and settled in Tuscany. We are not informed whether the lost Pleiad, thus found on the Arno, was happy or not, after her removal from that more elevated sphere which she had just ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... there is great vigor in the creation of character. The decrepit old rake, the Marquis de Noriolis, feeble in his folly and wandering in helplessness, but irresistible when aroused, is a striking figure; and still more striking is the portrait of his wife, now the Marquise de Noriolis, but once Fanny Lear the adventuress—a woman who has youth, beauty, wealth, everything before her, if it were not for the shame which is behind her: gay and witty, and even good-humored, she is inflexible when she is determined; hers is a velvet manner and an iron ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... own blood. It absorbs at its will the slang of the street gamin, the cant of thieves and beggars; is actually creative in the baby talk of mothers and nurses; drops, forgets, and actually invents new words with no pedigree like those of Lear, Carrol, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... snatches a dagger, exclaiming, "I will trust my resolution and my good hands." With the same swift instinct, Cassius trusts to his hands when he stabs Caesar: "Speak, hands, for me!" "Let me kiss your hand," says the blind Gloster to Lear. "Let me wipe it first," replies the broken old king; "it smells of mortality." How charged is this single touch with sad meaning! How it opens our eyes to the fearful purging Lear has undergone, to learn that royalty is no defence against ingratitude and cruelty! Gloster's exclamation about his ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... not be amiss to mention here another class of stories which come under the formula of "Persecuted Maiden." The class resembles in some respects the story of King Lear. The youngest daughter is persecuted by her father because he thinks she does not love him as much as her older sisters. A good example of this class is Pitre, No. 10, L'Acqua e ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... Many of the latter class, who have been branded as traitors and villains, were single-minded, earnest, valiant men; and, as for even O'Flynn, and those worse than him, what was really the matter with them was, that they were too honest—they spoke out too much of their whole minds. Bewildered, like Lear, amid the social storm, they had determined, like him, to become "unsophisticated," "to owe the worm no silk, the cat no perfume"—seeing, indeed, that if they had, they could not have paid for them; so they tore off, of their own will, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... comforted, good madam; the great rage, You see is cured in him: and yet it is danger To make him even o'er the time he has lost. Desire him to go in: trouble him no more, Till further settling. KING LEAR. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... smell of the forest as it is borne down from the mountains and carried seaward, to gladden, it may be, the heart of some hard-worked, broken-spirited sailor, who, in a passing ship, sees from aloft this fair, fair island with its smiling green of lear, and soft, heaving valleys, above the long lines of curving beach, showing white and bright in the morning sun! And, as you walk, the surf upon the reef for ever calls and calk; sometimes loudly with a deep, resonant boom, but ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... the Park Theater. Another night we spent in Philadelphia, and went to the Chestnut Street Theater. Staples had a fondness for theaters, and on these occasions I followed his example. I had been in a theater but one, when I saw Forrest in Boston, in King Lear. At Philadelphia I bought a copy of Byron for three dollars. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... or,—beneath the moon's Cloud-hurrying glimmer,—to the startled ear, Crazed, madman snatches of old, perished tunes, The witless wit of outcast Edgar there In the wild night; or, wan with all despair, The mirthless laughter of the Fool in Lear. ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... Lear had had his last desire, might have sung the merry and strange tune of Bedlam, like the slighter Ophelia and the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... pictures on the walls. First of all there was Guido Reni's Aurora, while opposite it hung English etchings of pictures by Benjamin West, made by the well known aquatint process. One of the pictures was King Lear in the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... hardware or software limitations, behaves like a teletype or some other printing terminal, thereby combining the disadvantages of both: like a printing terminal, it can't do fancy display hacks, and like a display terminal, it doesn't produce hard copy. An example is the early 'dumb' version of Lear-Siegler ADM 3 (without cursor control). See {tube}, {tty}; compare {dumb terminal}, {smart terminal}. See "{TV Typewriters}" (Appendix A) for an interesting true story about a ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... the greatest novelists of the day.... He goes on turning out one brilliant novel after another, steadily accomplishing for Devon what Mr. Hardy did for Wessex. This is another of Mr. Phillpotts' Dartmoor novels, and one that will rank with his best.... Something of kinship with 'King Lear' and 'Pere ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... Ariel—otherwise Marie Moke—had forsaken him and had married Pleyel. In a wild state of frenzy he would go to Paris at once and seek revenge. He started, got as far as Nice, grew calmer, remained at Nice for a month, during which time the Overture to "King Lear" was written, then returned to Rome by the ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... impetuous declamation of English poetry by Akshay Chowdhury, our initiator into English literature, there was the wildness of intoxication. The frenzy of Romeo's and Juliet's love, the fury of King Lear's impotent lamentation, the all-consuming fire of Othello's jealousy, these were the things that roused us to enthusiastic admiration. Our restricted social life, our narrower field of activity, was hedged ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... fairly on English ground now; of course, it is wet weather. The phenomena of the British climate have not changed much since the time when the rains "let fall their horrible pleasure" upon the head of the poor, drenched outcast, Lear. Thunder and lightning, however, which belonged to that particular war of the elements, are rare in England. The rain is quiet, fine, insinuating, constant as a lover,—not wasting its resources ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... jurisdiction, I find myself, through my easy compliances, insensibly stripped by degrees of one masculine prerogative after another. In a dream I go about my fields, a sort of lazy, happy-go-lucky, good-for-nothing, loafing old Lear. Only by some sudden revelation am I reminded who is over me; as year before last, one day seeing in one corner of the premises fresh deposits of mysterious boards and timbers, the oddity of the incident at length begat serious meditation. "Wife," ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... true one, the effect had been lessened by the fact that nothing has been left to the imagination. On the other hand there has, since Shakespeare, been nothing so fine as the treatment of Pere Fouan, that peasant King Lear, by his ungrateful family. It has been urged that Zola overdid the horrors of the situation and that no parent would have been so treated by his children. By a singular chance a complete answer to this objection may be found in a paragraph ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... its breath when it finds itself on the verge of natural expression, and to say to itself, "Good heavens! I had almost forgotten I was inspired!" But of Shakespeare we do not even suspect that he ever remembered it. He does not always speak in that intense way that flames up in Lear and Macbeth through the rifts of a soil volcanic with passion. He allows us here and there the repose of a commonplace character, the consoling distraction of a humorous one. He knows how to be equable and grand without effort, so that we forget the altitude ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... music on men under the influence of hypnotism have been, as reported, negative. Helmholtz goes so far as to state that the expression of sexual longing in music is identical with that of religious longing. It is quite true, again, that a soft and gentle voice seems to every normal man as to Lear "an excellent thing in woman," and that a harsh or shrill voice may seem to deaden or even destroy altogether the attraction of a beautiful face. But the voice is not usually in itself an adequate or powerful ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... frantic for the loss of her son—then look at Lear, maddened by the ingratitude of his daughters: why it is the west wind bowing those aspen tops that wave before our window, compared to the tropic hurricane, when forests crash and burn, and ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... would go up to her in the midst of the little party and broach one of these topics straight on end, without preface or introduction, as which was her favourite play of Shakespeare, and what did she think of the character of King Lear? It was not very wise, not any wiser than his neighbour was, who made pretty little Ursula into the ideal lady, the most gentle and stately figure in poetry; and yet no doubt there was something in both follies that was a great deal better than wisdom. The society formed by these two young ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... It is noteworthy that Shakspere, who borrowed his subjects and his heroes sometimes from authentic English history, sometimes from the legendary history of ancient Britain, Denmark, and Scotland, as in Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth, ignores the Saxon period altogether. And Spenser, who gives in his second book of the Faerie Queene, a resume of the reigns of fabulous British kings—the supposed ancestors of Queen Elizabeth, his royal patron—has nothing ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... humiliating him by means of the solemn sentence of the judge. It may be asked, What human being is fit to exercise this awful office of acting as judge of another? Remember the words of Shakespeare in King Lear: ". . . .See how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark in thine ear: change places; and . . . . which is the justice, which the thief?" Or recall what the Puritan preacher said when he saw from his window a culprit being led ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... room. The room seemed to have become inexplicably silent, as though all but the web and the weaving were at an end in the world. 'They have come to us; they have come to us,' the voice began again; 'all that have ever been in your reverie, all that you have met with in books. There is Lear, his head still wet with the thunder-storm, and he laughs because you thought yourself an existence who are but a shadow, and him a shadow who is an eternal god; and there is Beatrice, with her lips half parted ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... he was brought by Thetis, whose mother's prayer had moved the Heart of Zeus, to dwell with Cadmus and Peleus, is Achilles' true home; or the isle of the heroes of all time, described by Carducci, where King Lear sits telling OEdipus of his sufferings, and Cordelia calls to Antigone, "Come, my Greek sister! We will sing of peace to our fathers." Helen and Iseult, silent and thoughtful, roam under the shade of the myrtles, while the setting sun kisses ...
— Greek and Roman Ghost Stories • Lacy Collison-Morley
... 8. Lear King of England, and his Three Daughters, an Historical Play, acted at the Duke s Theatre 1687. It is one of Shakespear's most moving ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... last evening, the 31st, I took Louisa, at half-past seven, to the house of Mr. Hawes, an under Secretary of State, to see a beautiful children's masque. It was an impersonation of the "Old Year" dressed a little like LEAR with snowy hair and draperies. OLD YEAR played his part inimitably, at times with great pathos, and then introducing witty hits at all the doings of his reign, such as exploding cotton, the new planet, a subject ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... very handsome Face, inclining to round; fine wanton Eyes, with a plaguy Roguish Lear; plump, round, red Lips; not tall, nor low, and extremely well fashion'd. [Reads all this in her Tablets. —Ay, ay, you are ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the doctor, d'you see? Then—'Mr. Bright!' Old man comes up into the box. Stands there massive, bowed with grief, chest heaving, voice coming out of it like an organ in the Dead March. Stands there like Lear over the body of Cordelia. Stands there like the father of Virginia ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... as perhaps nothing else could do, such proof of a power of loving, of an amount of attendrissement, which is not less wonderful than the bodying forth of that myriad-mind which gave us Hamlet, and Lear, Cordelia, and Puck, and all the rest, and indeed explaining to us how he could give us all these;—while we hardly go so far, we agree with his other wise words:—"There is a weakness and folly in all misplaced and excessive affection;" which in Shakspeare's case is the more distressing, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... contention, which is one of the primordial instincts of the crowd. It must present its characters in some struggle of the wills, whether it be flippant, as in the case of Benedick and Beatrice; or delicate, as in that of Viola and Orsino; or terrible, with Macbeth; or piteous, with Lear. The crowd is more partisan than the individual; and therefore, in following this struggle of the drama, it desires always to take sides. There is no fun in seeing a foot-ball game unless you care about who wins; and there is very little fun in seeing a play unless ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... abandoned, the same exemplary character. In her poverty of guarantees at Stanhope Gardens there had been least of all, it appeared, a proviso that she shouldn't resentfully revert again from Goneril to Regan. She came down to the goose-green like Lear himself, with fewer knights, or at least baronets, and the joint household was at last patched up. It fell to pieces and was put together on various occasions before Ray Limbert died. He was ridden to the end by the superstition ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... short-story for the reason that they are not constructed for one single impression, but are in reality parts of possible longer stories. They are, as it were, parts of stories not unlike Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and A Lear of the Steppes, and lack those complete and concise artistic effects found in the short-stories, Markheim and Mumu, by the same authors. Both Ruth and the Prodigal Son are exceptionally well told, possess a splendid moral tone, and are excellent prophecies of what the nineteenth century ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... a disbelief in Italian actors having been always a heresy with him, and the deplorable length of dialogue to the small amount of action in their plays making them sadly tiresome. The first that he saw at the principal theatre was a version of Balzac's Pere Goriot. "The domestic Lear I thought at first was going to be very clever. But he was too pitiful—perhaps the Italian reality would be. He was immensely applauded, though." He afterwards saw a version of Dumas' preposterous play of Kean, in which ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... makes to Friederike Roberts (1825): "Das Ungeheuerste, das Ensetzlichste, das Schaudervollste, wenn es nicht unpoetisch werden soll, kann man auch nur in dem buntscheckigen Gewaende des Laecherlichen darstellen, gleichsam versoehnend—darum hat auch Shakespeare das Graesslichste im "Lear" durch den Narren sagen lassen, darum hat auch Goethe zu dem furchtbarsten Stoffe, zum "Faust," die Puppenspielform gewaehlt, darum hat auch der noch groessere Poet (der Urpoet, sagt Friederike), naemlich Unser-Herrgott, allen Schreckensszenen dieses ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... much of artificial tone and measured cadence, in the declamation of the theatre. The present writer well remembers being in conversation with Dr. Johnson, near the side of the scenes, during the tragedy of King Lear: when Garrick came off the stage, he said, "You two talk so loud, you destroy all my feelings." "Prithee," replied Johnson, "do not talk of feelings, Punch has no feelings." This seems to have been his settled opinion; admirable as Garrick's imitation ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... in the afternoon two very interesting things were performed. One was a fantasia, King Lear; the other was a quartette dedicated to the memory of Bach. Both were new and in the new style, and Levin was eager to form an opinion of them. After escorting his sister-in-law to her stall, he stood against ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Young's 'Night Thoughts', where the phrase occurs three times. See also 'Lear', act IV. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... now copied my mother's letters as they were written, omitting only the purely family matter which is of no interest to the public. Edward Lear's drawing of Luxor was printed in 'Three Generations of Englishwomen,' edited by Mrs. Ross, but the other illustrations are now reproduced ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... the gear Is gone where glint the pawky een. And aye the stound is birkin lear Where sconnered yowies wheeped yestreen, The creeshie rax wi' skelpin' kaes Nae mair the howdie bicker whangs, Nor weanies in their wee bit claes Glour light as lammies wi' ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... monument of a time of poetical energy in which old forms were displaced by new, and old subjects refashioned by successive poets. As in the Athenian or the English drama the story of Oedipus or of Lear might be taken up by one playwright after another, so in the North the Northern stories were made to pass through changes in the minds ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... of the above is, that he wanted to 'stint me of my sizings,' as Lear says,—that is to say, not to propose an extravagant price for an extravagant poem, as is becoming. Pray take his guineas, by all means—I taught him that. He made me a filthy offer of pounds ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... journeys, or by the violence of rival claimants to their thrones. The pretended records contain a vast number of legends, of very little interest or value, as the reader will readily admit when we tell him that the famous story of King Lear is the most entertaining one in the ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... table, with some vile jest tacked to it "like a tin kettle to a dog's tail," he awoke to the full measure of his misery—the cup was full. Fate had done her worst, and he might have exclaimed with Lear, "spit, fire-spout, rain," there was nothing in store for him of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... For the display of his declamatory powers, on the speech-days, he selected always the most vehement passages,—such as the speech of Zanga over the body of Alonzo, and Lear's address to the storm. On one of these public occasions, when it was arranged that he should take the part of Drances, and young Peel that of Turnus, Lord Byron suddenly changed his mind, and preferred the speech of Latinus,—fearing, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... I'm mad,' said John, unconsciously following King Lear; 'but, upon my word, I do ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I had an idea I would find you here, and—but what's the matter with you, man? Have you got the plague? or has your mysterious inamorata jilted you? or what other annoyance has happened to make you look as woebegone as old King Lear, sent adrift by his tender daughters to take care ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... that death is most miserable, not to say ignominious! Stupid pride is one of the symptoms of madness. Of the two madmen mentioned in Don Quixote, one thought himself NEPTUNE, and the other JUPITER. Shakspeare agrees with CERVANTES; for, Mad Tom, in King Lear, being asked who he is, answers, 'I am a tailor run mad with pride.' How many have we heard of, who claimed relationship with noblemen and kings; while of not a few each has thought himself the Son of God! To the public journals, and to the observations of every ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... have a letter in my pocket from a young friend in a country company, the ladies of which have their sensibility strung up to so fine a tone that he cannot take the tragedy of King Lear for his benefit, because not one of them will play either Regan or Goneril. If their feelings are so exquisite in the country, where our wise laws treat players as vagabonds, what must they be when loaded with all the legal, tragic, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... they owed their happiness. There was a mixture of novelty, of joy, of patriotic enthusiasm, felt by every heart. A committee of twelve was appointed in town-meeting to superintend the reception. The president left his carriage at Greenland, at the residence of Colonel Tobias Lear, and mounted his favorite white horse; he was there met by Colonel Wentworth's troop, and on Portsmouth plains the president was saluted by Major General Cilly, and other officers in attendance. From the west end of the State House, on both ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... there was a great deal of talk about the Santa Clans doings and the principal actor in them, and no end of speculations as to his inducements and purposes to be served in taking so much trouble. For Shampuashuh people were shrewd, and did not believe, any more than King Lear, that anything could come of nothing. That he was not moved by general benevolence, poured out upon the school of the white church, was generally agreed. "What's we to him?" asked pertinently one of the old ladies; and vain efforts were made to ascertain Mr. Dillwyn's ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... But when his spirit companions with our thought And in his fellowship our pain is healed; And we are likest God when we are brought Most near to all men. Bring us near to him, The gentle, human soul whose calm might wrought Imperious Lear and made our eyes grow dim For Imogen,—who, though he heard the spheres "Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubim," Could laugh with Falstaff and his loose compeers And love the rascal with the same big heart That o'er Cordelia could not ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... of Bodb Dearg was given to him as his wife. On her death, he married her sister, who transformed her step-children into swans.[304] Ler is the equivalent of the Brythonic Llyr, later immortalised by Shakespeare as King Lear. ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... resolved itself into a begging of the question. Shakespeare made Hamlet comprehensible to the groundlings by diluting that half of him which was Shakespeare with a half which was a college sophomore. In the same way he saved Lear by making him, in large part, a tedious and obscene old donkey—the blood brother of any average ancient of any average English tap-room. Tackling Caesar, he was rescued by Brutus' knife. George Bernard Shaw, facing the ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... form were enough to puzzle a Celtic scholar, and more than enough to puzzle Lord Macaulay, who, like the still more ignorant Doctor Samuel Johnson, knew nothing of the venerable language of the first inhabitants of the British Isles, and of all Western Europe, resolve themselves into Li! Li Beur! Lear-a! Buille na la, which signify, "Light! Light! on the sea, beyond the promontory! 'Tis the stroke (or dawn) of the day!" Like all the choruses previously cited, these words are part of a hymn to the sun, and entirely ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... Major Lear, of Texas, who was at the capture of the Harriet Lane, met on the captured steamer his ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... farcical. Audiences, which in the early days assembled before seven o'clock, had to be sent home happy. After the tragedy, the slap-stick or the loud guffaw; after "Romeo and Juliet," Cibber's "Hob in the Well"; after "King Lear," "The Irish Widow." (These two illustrations are taken at random from the programs of the Charleston theatre in 1773.) This custom persisted until comparatively recent times. The fathers and mothers of the present generation can ...
— Washington Square Plays - Volume XX, The Drama League Series of Plays • Various
... Atlantic Cable, but I declare that it astonishes(b) me far more to think that for his mere amusement(c), that to entertain a mere idle hour(c'), he has created(a') 'Othello' and 'Lear,' and I am more than astonished, I am awe-struck(b'), at that inexplicable elasticity of his nature which enables him, instead of turning away(d) from calamity and grief(e), or instead of merely defying(d') them, actually to make them the material ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... dialects in the South of India, as a matter of convenience the English language is much used for personal communication by the natives of different parts of the Presidency of Madras. Mr. Edward Lear, who has travelled much in that part of the country, gives the following interesting account of a journey:—"I was in a second-class railway carriage going from Madras to Bangalore. There was only one other passenger beside myself and servant, and he ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... LEAR, EDWARD (1812-1888).—Artist and miscellaneous author, b. in London, and settled in Rome as a landscape painter. He was an indefatigable traveller, and wrote accounts, finely illustrated, of his journeys in Italy, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... swaying him about in its fitful gusts, and he rather liked it. In his anguish of spirit it was a pleasure to contend with the storm. The wind, the lightning, the sudden sharp claps of thunder were on his own key. He felt in the temper of old Lear. The winds might blow and crack ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... admirable scene. Bottom, with the ass's head, sitting in a ring of elves, is excellent moving comedy, but also excellent still life. Falstaff with his huge body, Bardolph with his burning nose, are masterpieces of the pen; but they would be fine sketches even for the pencil. King Lear, in the storm, is a landscape as well as a character study. There is something decorative even about the insistence on the swarthiness of Othello, or the deformity of Richard III. Shakespeare's work is much more than picturesque; but it is picturesque. And ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... in daily, homespun dress, and stalking abroad through the centuries, the generous and brave nobility of King Lear, Caesar, Othello, and Hamlet, will be seen in marked contrast to Shylock, Brutus, Cassius, Iago, Gloster and Macbeth. His fools and wits were philosophers, while many of his kings, queens, dukes, lords and ladies were sneaks, frauds ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... its womb, usurped its throne, and ever since the maddened old creature, with hoary crest of foam, wails and laments continually, like King Lear exposed to ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... rounded with a sleep." The easy-going persons who reluct at the idea of a pessimistic Shakespeare should turn the pages of Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, and Timon of Athens. What we guessed as we read Hamlet and Lear grows a certainty as ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... out, and all the dancers disappeared. The masquerade was over; and again, through the darkness, rose the plaintive "All's well!" And it kept ringing in my ears until it became a mocking sound, from which I longed to be free. It was like the voice of Lear crying over the body of Cordelia: "Never, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... we find the fatality in "Hamlet," "King Lear," in "Macbeth"? Is its throne not erected in the very centre of the old king's madness, on the lowest degree of the young prince's imagination, at the very summit of the Thane's morbid cravings? Macbeth we may well pass by; not need we linger over Cordelia's father, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... ye gods, and wonder how you made him!" exclaimed Abraham, turning up his nose at his parent, and then looking to the ceiling with emotion—"You unnatural old Lear! you ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... enthusiastic, and wrote: "You will be very proud of 'Le Pere Goriot.' My friends insist that nothing is comparable to it, and that it is above all my other compositions."[*] Certainly the vivid portrait of old Goriot, that ignoble King Lear, who in his extraordinary passion of paternal love rouses our sympathy, in spite of his many absurdities and shortcomings, is a striking instance of Balzac's power in the creation ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... woldst vnderstand my sham Which I did grieue and blush to ope to thee, And had lear di'd then told thee of the same, Now be not slacke to lend thy helpe to me, Thou forst me for to open my disgrace, Then lend thy help to ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... repeat it!" cried the Captain, throwing off his assumption of the tragic father. The Oedipus Coloneus, the Lear—the venerable victim of winter winds and men's ingratitude—was transformed in a moment into an elderly Jeremy Diddler, lined with Lord Foppington. "He shall repeat it; I will have him at your feet ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Lieutenant-Colonels Garland and Wilson, commanding brigades in General Twiggs' division; Colonels Mitchell, Campbell, Davis, and Wood, commanding the Ohio, Tennessee, Mississippi, and 2d Texas regiments, respectively; and Majors Lear, Allen, and Abercrombie, commanding the 3d, 4th, and 1st regiments of infantry; all of whom served under my eye, and conducted their commands with coolness and gallantry against the enemy. Colonel ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat |
