"Scribbler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... incident; if to have sent all France to the theatre to see in three dimensions those stories of Chicot, Edmond Dantes, d'Artagnan, which it knew by heart from books were an achievement within the reach of every scribbler who dabbles in letters; if all this were true, and Dumas were merely a piece of human journalism, produced to- day and gone to-morrow, there would still be enough of him to make his a memorable name. He was a ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... wishes for one word in your majesty's hand-writing—" "A most impertinent woman!" cried the king, walking with rapid strides up and down my room.— "She has dared not to believe me on my word! Writing!—signature! She mistrusts me as she would the lowest scribbler of France. A writing! My signature! My grandfather, Louis XIV, repented having given his to Charost. I will not commit a similar error." "But, sire, when a prince has a real desire to keep his word, it is of little import whether he gives it in writing." At these words, ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... my aunt and you I can afford the luxury of a quiet unobtrusive life of self-indulgence," said he laughing, "and I mean to have it. You know I like writing," he added after a pause of some minutes, "I have been a scribbler for years. If I am to come to the fore at all it must be ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... Oh, you fat-nose! To take an icicle, a rag for a personage of rank! Now his coach bells are jingling all along the road. He is publishing the story to the whole world. Not only will you be made a laughing-stock of, but some scribbler, some ink-splasher will put you into a comedy. There's the horrid sting. He won't spare either rank or station. And everybody will grin and clap his hands. What are you laughing at? You are laughing at yourself, oh you! [Stamps ...
— The Inspector-General • Nicolay Gogol
... cauchoises still worn by those of Normandy; and which excited the displeasure of Dan John in so great a degree as to have induced him to invoke the aid of his Muse in effecting their abolition. It seems no subject escaped that eternal scribbler's attention; and if his abilities had equalled his disposition, he would probably have become the Juvenal of his age. Upon this occasion, however, he appears to have soared on rather a higher wing than usual; and the moral of his lay is the truism which ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous
... of reputation; because their work is accessible to almost everyone. If it had been possible for Sir Walter Scott to be read and criticised by only some hundred persons, perhaps in his life-time any common scribbler would have been preferred to him; and afterwards, when he had taken his proper place, it would also have been said in his honor that he was in advance of his age. But if envy, dishonesty and the pursuit of personal aims are added to the incapacity ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... young girl's face. You forget what a miserable surface-matter this language is in which we try to reproduce our interior state of being. Articulation is a shallow trick. From the light Poh! which we toss off from our lips as we fling a nameless scribbler's impertinence into our waste-baskets, to the gravest utterances which comes from our throats in our moments of deepest need, is only a space of some three or four inches. Words, which are a set of clickings, hissings, lispings, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... snarl. "When he had done with it? Just so: I thank thee for that word! When it had been re-photographed, drawn, traced, autotyped, passed about from hand to hand, defiled by every ignorant eye in England, vulgarized by the blundering praise of every art-scribbler in Europe! Bah! I'd as soon give you the picture itself: why ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... ill-will; for the Mastix is then only doing a duty plainly prescribed. The theologian must censure, and trample as mire, the railing assailant of the truths which in his eyes contain salvation. The reviewer must review. But what, it may be asked, moves any follower of the Muses to satirise a scribbler? He seems to go out of his way to do so; for verse has naturally better associations. But the personal aggression on the wit by the dunce, may fairly instigate the wit to flay the dunce. Now he finds the object of his satire in the way. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... beautiful home in the country to pass a Sunday. It was an odd thing for Mr. Stokes to do, for I could little interest a brilliant and educated man like him. The reason for my receiving such an honor was a communication I had written for the "Pittsburgh Journal." Even in my teens I was a scribbler for the press. To be an editor was one of my ambitions. Horace Greeley and the "Tribune" was my ideal of human triumph. Strange that there should have come a day when I could have bought the "Tribune"; ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... woman who ever wrote was more criticized, more spied upon, more lied about, than Charlotte. It was as if the singular purity and poverty of her legend offered irresistible provocation. The blank page called for the scribbler. The silence that hung about her was dark with challenge; it was felt to be ambiguous, enigmatic. Reserve suggests a reservation, something hidden and kept back from the insatiable public with its "right to know". Mrs. Gaskell with all her indiscretions had not given it enough. The great ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... run higher, or assumed an aspect more startling to a European, than during my residence in the States; and though it is not my intention to deal largely with a subject which every brother scribbler, who spends his six months here, arranges to his great ease and perfect satisfaction, yet, whenever I think my object of making the people known may be advanced by giving a smack of their politics, ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... (for it must be remembered that not all are ignorant) are, indeed, well practised in abuse, and have long learned to call mathematicians and astronomers cheats and charlatans. They freely used their vocabulary for the benefit of De Morgan, whom they denounced as a scurrilous scribbler, a defamatory, dishonest, abusive, ungentlemanly, and ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... companion who kept him amused. No doubt, too, he knew her record and secretly despised her. Even if he did not care for her and told her so—even if he were willing to marry her, what then? She would be a fool to listen to him. What kind of a life could he, a penniless scribbler, give her compared with the comforts and gifts which Willard Brockton was able to shower ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... shout 'Io triumphe!' for that even in so delicate and intangible a matter as intellectual gifts, the famous doctrine of supply and demand is so thoroughly carried out. We raise, however, no hue and cry after 'poor trash.' Neither have we the blood-thirsty wish to run to ground the panting scribbler, or to adorn ourselves with the glories of his 'brush.' Let those who countenance him by reading his works, and who can reconcile the purchase thereof with their consciences, answer to their fellow men for the inevitable consequences. But it must be confessed that there is in this department ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... days we arrived at Tadousac the second time, to the no small astonishment of my brother scribbler residing there. After reloading our craft, we directed our course ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... shine, evaporate, and fall. On ev'ry stage the foes of peace attend, Hate dogs their flight, and insult mocks their end. Love ends with hope, the sinking statesman's door Pours in the morning worshipper no more; For growing names the weekly scribbler lies, To growing wealth the dedicator flies; From ev'ry room descends the painted face, That hung the bright palladium of the place; And, smok'd in kitchens, or in auctions sold, To better features yields ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... and powers of the earth, yet as I have met or seen or corresponded with about five hundred of the three thousand set down in "Men of the Time," and been kindly classed among them, it was worth while to mention my meetings with many of them. Had the humblest scribbler of the age of Elizabeth so much as mentioned that he had ever exchanged a word with, or even looked at, any of the great writers of his time, his record would now be read with avidity. I have really never in my life run after such men, or ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... computation. The woolen coat, for example, which covers the day-laborer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the product of the joint labor of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... club whose meeting place, with all its art treasures, is now a heap of ashes, but which was formerly 'Frisco's head-centre of mirth. Founded by Henry George, the world-famous single tax advocate, when he was an impecunious scribbler on the San Francisco Post, it grew to be the choicest place of ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... oriental to the other hemisphere of the terrestrial globe." Alas! poor Sir Thomas, who must needs babble the foolish hopes which wiser men reticently keep cloistered in their own bosoms! who confessed what every scribbler thinks, and so gets laughed at,—as wantons are carried to the round-house for airing their incontinent phraseology in the street, while Blowsalinda reads romances in her chamber without blushing. Modesty is very well; but, after all, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... wonderfully brought this precious volume to light, for the guidance of His Church at a most critical moment. The other party wondered that any importance could be attached to the nonsense of a nameless scribbler of the thirteenth century. Much was written about the deprivations of Chrysostom and Photius, of Nicolaus Mysticus and Cosmas Atticus. But the case of Abiathar, whom Solomon put out of the sacerdotal office for treason, was discussed with peculiar eagerness. No small quantity of learning ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... this morning, and I am empowered to arrest you. You can look at it for yourselves; you've both seen them before." He opened the paper and spread it out for them to read. "Walter Pennold, alias William Perry, alias Wally the Scribbler, number 09203 in the Rogues' Gallery. First term at Joliet, for forgery; second at Sing Sing for shoving the queer. This warrant only holds you as a suspicious character, Pennold, but we can dig up plenty of other things, if it's necessary; ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... Every scribbler of the day who has a Perryian pen in hand, is pleased to exercise it on the decline of the drama; one of the legitimate targets of penny-a-liners. But how inadequately are the goose quills, and ostrich quills, phoenix quills, and roc quills, of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... a most egregious scribbler; and so tormented with violent fits of printing, that he even printed lists and catalogues of his friends. I have even seen at the end of one of his works a list of names of those persons who had given him books. He printed his works at his own expense, as the booksellers had unanimously ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... hand Rip scooped up the scribbler while the Com-tech half turned to make adjustments to the controls, picking up a speaker ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... ardent a passion, that it must be satisfied on every occasion. I am informed, every morning when I wake, that some general and eternal law has just been discovered, which I never heard mentioned before. There is not a mediocre scribbler who does not try his hand at discovering truths applicable to a great kingdom, and who is very ill pleased with himself if he does not succeed in compressing the human race into the compass of an article. So ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... moment, she considered whether it would be advantageous to cultivate her pupil's talent for poetry. Excellence in the poetic art cannot be obtained without a degree of application for which a girl in her situation could not have leisure. To encourage her to become a mere rhyming scribbler, without any chance of obtaining celebrity or securing subsistence, would be folly and cruelty. Early prodigies in the lower ranks of life are seldom permanently successful; they are cried up one day, and cried down the next. ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... could see the man's head and the boy's bent close together, and turned from us so that the westering light could fall upon their books. Fred Esquillant was to be a great scholar and to do my father infinite credit when he went to the university. For me I was only a reader of English, a scribbler of verses in that language, a paltry essayist, with no sense of the mathematics and no more than an average classic. Therefore in the school I was a mere hewer of wood and drawer of water to ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... Charing Cross. Gaiety, movement, rollicking, Harry Lorrequer-like spirits were demanded for the Cheapside; a graceful union of brilliancy and depth was required for the Charing Cross. And, O, be sure the critics lay in wait to catch the young scribbler tripping! An anachronism here, a secondhand idea there, and the West End Wasp shrieked its war-whoop in an occasional note; or the Minerva published a letter from a correspondent in the Scilly Islands, headed "Another ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... crimsoned fire-orb's rim. O blessed, beauteous evening star, Well named for her whom earth adores,— The Lady of the dove-drawn car,— I know thee in thy white simar; But veiled in black, a rayless spot, Blank as a careless scribbler's blot, Stripped of thy robe of silvery flame,— The stolen robe that Night restores When Day has shut his golden doors,— I see thee, yet I know thee not; And canst thou call ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... are wondering what we are now doing, and speculating upon the scribbler with arch eyes and elevated crest, as if you would know the subject of his lucubrations. What the wiser or better wouldst thou be of human knowledge? Sometimes that little heart of thine goes pit-a-pat, when a great, ugly, staring contributor thrusts ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... of the Inner Temple,' I have delivered myself, and truly, a Templar born. Bell clamours upon this, and thinketh that he hath caught a fox. It seems that in a former paper, retorting upon a weekly scribbler who had called my good identity in question, (see P.S. to my 'Chapter on Ears,') I profess myself a native of some spot near Cavendish Square, deducing my remoter origin from Italy. But who does not see, except this tinkling cymbal, that in that idle fiction of Genoese ancestry I was answering ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... discusses the learning of Shakespeare, and easily shows that he was full of mythological lore. So was all Elizabethan literature. Every English scribbler then knew what most men have forgotten now. Nobody was forced to go to the original authorities- -say, Plato, Herodotus, and Plutarch—for what was accessible in translations, or had long before been copiously decanted into English prose and poetry. Shakespeare could get ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... that we can praise it ourselves, without incurring the reproach of bad taste. The folly we yearly practise, of flying into passion with some inferior English writer, who caricatures our faults, and tells dull jokes about his tour through the land, has only the effect to exalt an insignificant scribbler into notoriety, and give a nominal value to his recorded impertinence. If the mind and heart of the country had its due expression, if its life had taken form in a literature worthy of itself, we should pay little regard to the childish tattling ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... said Jorian. 'She set Edbury on to face him with the Dauphin. You don't fancy it came of the young dog "all of himself," do you? Why, it was clever! He trots about a briefless little barrister, a scribbler, devilish clever and impudent, who does his farces for him. Tenby 's the fellow's name, and it's the only thing I haven't heard him pun on. Puns are the smallpox of the language;—we're cursed with an epidemic. By ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... something of a physician, and elevated the emptiness of his purse into the dignity of a disease, which he termed impecuniosity, and against which he claimed a right to call for relief from the healthier purses of his friends. He was a scribbler for the newspapers, and latterly a dramatic critic, which had probably gained him an invitation to the dinner and reading. The wine and wassail, however, befogged his senses. Scarce had the author got into the second act ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... called forth a counter invective of unusual ferocity from some unknown scribbler, is the expression of a sentiment which, sound enough within limits, Byron pushed to an extreme. He had a rooted dislike, of professional litterateurs, and was always haunted by a dread that they would claim ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... dearest concern; and a thousand times have I trembled at the idea of those degrading epithets that malice or misrepresentation may affix to my name. I have often, in blasting anticipation, listened to some future hackney scribbler, with the heavy malice of savage stupidity, exulting in his hireling paragraphs—"Burns, notwithstanding the fanfaronade of independence to be found in his works, and after having been held forth to public view and to public estimation as a man of some genius, yet quite destitute ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... know there is no mistake," roared a voice which was accustomed to command. "He's been trying to hoodwink you. Watch the surprise in his face when he sees me, the cursed meddler and scribbler. It would be a pleasure to witness his hanging. ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... frequently given to a writer than that of being a genius. I have heard many a little sonneteer called a fine genius. There is not a heroic scribbler in the nation that has not his admirers who think him a great genius; and as for your smatterers in tragedy, there is scarce a man among them who is not cried up by one or ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... "God's truth! Mr. Scribbler," said the constable (whose son, as everyone knows, had treacherously deserted Mademoiselle de Piennes, to whom he was betrothed, to espouse Diana of France, daughter of the mistress of certain ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... self-respect and vanity. He had been muzzled, and muzzled, when all was said, by his paltry salary as an exciseman; alas! had he not a family to keep? Already, he wrote, he looked forward to some such judgment from a hackney scribbler as this: "Burns, notwithstanding the fanfaronnade of independence to be found in his works, and after having been held forth to public view and to public estimation as a man of some genius, yet, quite destitute of resources within himself to support his borrowed dignity, he dwindled into a paltry ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... power there. Even if these Institutes had been arbitrary, which they are not, they might have been excused as the acts of conquerors. But, my Lords, he is no conqueror, nor anything but what you see him,—a bad scribbler of absurd papers, in which he can put no two sentences together without contradiction. We know him in no other character than that of having been a bullock-contractor for some years, of having acted fraudulently in that capacity, and afterwards ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... followed closely on the heels of Dickens when the latter scored his great success in The Pickwick Papers. He was a most voluminous scribbler, but none of his productions are ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... told herself that even in stories no author would dare—not even the veriest amateur scribbler—would presume to affront intelligent readers by introducing such a coincidence as this appeared ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... theory of "special" writing was his own character, as it was revealed to me from day to day in intimate working contact with him under these conditions. Here, as I soon learned, and was glad to learn, was no namby-pamby scribbler of the old happy-ending, pretty-nothing school of literary composition. On the contrary he sounded, for the first time in my dealings with literary aspirants of every kind, that sure, sane, penetrating, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... glass, and, in short, all the valuable and time-honored institutions justly dear to our common humanity and especially to republicans, are made the butt of coarse and senseless ribaldry by this low-minded scribbler. It is time that the respectable and religious portion of our community should be aroused to the alarming inroads of foreign Jacobinism, sansculottism, and infidelity. It is a fearful proof of the widespread ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... think, the more it vexes me," said he. "It is bad enough to be a scribbler, without having recourse to such shifts to extort praise or deprecate censure, ... and all without my wish, and contrary ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... kind. Only the details differed. In "Not Really a Coward," Vincent Devereux had rescued the earl's daughter from a fire, whereas in "Hilda's Hero" it was the peppery old father whom Tom Slingsby saved. Singularly enough, from drowning. In other words, I, a very mediocre scribbler, had effected seven times in a single month what the powers of the universe could not manage once, even on the ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... entered into my actions. I am careless of personal fame. Look at me, boy! As I stand before you I am Homer, I am Shakespeare ... I am every cosmic manifestation in art. Men have doubted in each incarnation my individual existence. Historians have more to tell of the meanest Athenian scribbler or Elizabethan poetaster than of me. The radiance of my work obscured my very self. I care not. I have a mission. I am a servant of the Lord. I am the vessel ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... all my perverse views. But the result was, that my brother (having really, as my mother and aunt insisted, taken wrong measures with me) should write again in a more moderate manner: for nobody else was permitted or cared to write to such a ready scribbler. And, I having declared, that I would not receive any more of his letters, without command from a superior authority, my mother was to give it hers: and accordingly has done so in the following lines, written on the superscription of his ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... "Look here, Scribbler, what do you mean by this, 'Among the most beautiful girls was Alderman Horatio Dingley'? Old Dingley ain't a girl, you idiot! He's one of ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... since to make one for their new friend. But they stopped short at sight of the light and dark head so close together over something they did not know about, and when Martha drew nearer and informed the dark-haired scribbler that she had "brought it," Kate merely nodded her head ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... children up the brook, and come back with great bunches of wild white honeysuckle and blue flag, or posies of arrowheads and cardinal-flowers. Or suppose that I was very unwisely and reluctantly labouring at some serious piece of literary work, promised for the next number of THE SCRIBBLER'S REVIEW; and suppose that in the midst of this labour the sad news came to me that the fisherman had forgotten to leave any fish at our cottage that morning. Should my innocent babes and my devoted wife be left to perish of starvation while ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... that it was lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause,—and against Christ, for not allowing divorces: the same, O horrid! that defended the lawfulness of the greatest crime that ever was committed, to put our thrice-excellent King to death: a petty schoolboy scribbler, that durst grapple in such a cause with the prince of the learned men of his age, Salmasius, [Greek: philosophias pasaes aphroditae kai lyra], as Eunapius says of Ammonius, Plutarch's scholar in Egypt, the delight, the music of all knowledge, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... rode out to war, and fought and conquered or fought and fell over the possession of a nook in a forest, or a title, or a smaller matter still, with what scorn and contempt did they not look down upon the wretched little scribbler, the man of mere letters and jargon, half-clothed in untanned hides, his only weapon an inkhorn at his belt, his pennon the feather of a goosequill! How they laughed at him, calling him an atom or a flea, good for nothing! 'He does nothing, ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... his own person and writings. On the young man's return, Diderot asked him his grounds for making such an attack. "I am without bread," the satirist answered, "and I hoped you might perhaps give me a few crowns not to print it." Diderot at once forgot everything in pity for the starving scribbler. "I will tell you a way of making more than that by it. The brother of the Duke of Orleans is one of the pious, and he hates me. Dedicate your satire to him, get it bound with his arms on the cover; take it to him some ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... advantage, to obtain it by this conformity of their invention with real history! It is only a barbarous taste that requires this stimulant of a national interest to be captivated by beautiful things; and it is only a scribbler who borrows from matter a force to which he despairs ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... my stories to Miss Sylvia. In my own excuse I must allege that she tempted me to do it. I did not go around with manuscripts under my arm, inflicting them on defenceless females. But Miss Sylvia had discovered that I was a magazine scribbler, and moreover, that I had shut myself up in my room that very morning and perpetrated a short story. Nothing would do but that ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 1, and which resisted the action of all acids and alkalies alike. The pleased savant sent samples of it for trial to several banks and schools, where it gave general satisfaction; but, alas, an experimenting scribbler, thoughtlessly or otherwise, applied a simple test undreamt of by the Professor, and with a wet sponge completely washed off his 'indelible,' and thereby finished his career as an amateur ink-maker!" * * * * ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... our convenient spittoons, before we can hope to pass muster as Christians and gentlemen beyond our own borders? O free Demus! O wise Demus! O virtuous Demus! Will you betake yourself to cleanly, and well-ordered ways at the bidding of this scribbler?" Thus "they eat, and eke they swear;" vowing all the time that they "will horribly revenge." No doubt, however, the bitter pill of foreign animadversion, though distasteful to the palate, relieves the inflation of their stomachs, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... not be pleased to hear first," said Wildrake, "how this honest gentleman saw the devil to-night look through a pane of yonder window, and how he thinks he had a mighty strong resemblance to your worship's humble slave and varlet scribbler? Would you but hear this, sir, and just sip a glass of this very recommendable ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... observations on human life he has left a proof, which would do honour to the greatest names, in a small pamphlet, called the Author to be let[75], where he introduces Iscariot Hackney, a prostitute scribbler, giving an account of his birth, his education, his disposition and morals, habits of life, and maxims of conduct. In the introduction are related many secret histories of the petty writers of that time, but sometimes mixed with ungenerous reflections on their birth, their circumstances, or ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... 1744, and, in spite of its faults, nay, perhaps, partly in consequence of them, was received with loud applause; and the author—only twenty-three years of age—"awoke one morning, and found himself famous;" for although his name was not attached to the poem, it soon transpired. One Rolt, an obscure scribbler, then in Ireland, claimed the authorship, transcribed the poem with his own hand; nay, according to Dr. Johnson, published an edition with his own name, and was invited to the best tables as the ingenious Mr. Rolt. His conversation did ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... false concords and inconsequential criticisms, because the writer of them has the character of the first or second Greek or Latin scholar in the kingdom. If you do not swear to the truth of these spurious credentials, you are ignorant and malicious, a quack and a scribbler—flagranti delicto! Thus the man who can merely read and construe some old author is of a class superior to any living one, and, by parity of reasoning, to those old authors themselves: the poet or prose-writer of true ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... lost his secretaryship. This also is thought to have injured him in a tender point. He had already conceived an affection for the Countess-Dowager of Warwick, who had been disposed to encourage the addresses of the Secretary, but looked coldly on those of the mere man and scribbler Joseph Addison, who, to crown his misfortunes at this time, had resigned his Fellowship, suffered some severe pecuniary losses of a kind, and from a quarter which are both obscure, and was trembling lest he should be deprived of his small Irish office too. Yet, although reduced ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Books remain Unsold, Unread, Unregarded; while this Treatise of Mine shall be Bought by all who love Pudding or Dumpling; to my Bookseller's great Joy, and my no small Consolation. How shall I Triumph, and how will that Mercenary Scribbler be Mortify'd, when I have sold more Editions of my Books, than he has Copies of his! I therefore exhort all People, Gentle and Simple, Men, Women and Children, to Buy, to Read, to Extol these Labours of Mine, ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... the foolish. Long notices of it have appeared, from time to time, in the great English reviews, and in erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it has been laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly every newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world. Every scribbler, almost, has had his little fling at it, at one time or another; I had mine fifteen years ago. The book gets out of print, every now and then, and one ceases to hear of it for a season; but presently the nations and near and far colonies of our ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... in my time a great epistolary scribbler; but the passion, and with it the facility, at length wears out; and it must be pumped up again by the heavy machinery of duty or gratitude, when it should ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... not mount to Borgia heights without making enemies. The evil tale was taken up in all its foul trappings, and, upon no better authority than the public voice, it was enshrined in chronicles by every scribbler of the day. And for four hundred years that lie has held its place in history, the very cornerstone of all the execration that has been heaped upon the name of Borgia. Never was vengeance more terrible, far-reaching, and abiding. It is only in this twentieth century of ours that dispassionate ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... author, took this course, in consequence of the publication of articles disparaging a club of his originating, known as the "British and Foreign Institute." A Jew clothes-man, named Hart, obtained a small sum as damages from "Punch." But Alfred Bunn, lessee of Drury Lane Theater, libretto-scribbler, and author of certain trashy theatrical books, though most vehemently "pitched into," resorted to other modes than legal redress. He produced a pamphlet of a shape and appearance closely resembling his tormentor, filled not only with quizzical, satirical, and rhyming articles directed against Lemon, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... revived or written by Richard Johnson, the author of the well-known romance of the Seven Champions, and Delony, the writer of Jack of Newbury's Life, and the "Gentle Craft," who lived in the time of James and Charles.[61] One Martin Parker was a most notorious ballad scribbler in the reign of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... the last line, Nejdanov flung down the pen. "Well, now you must try and sleep and forget all this nonsense, scribbler!" he exclaimed, and lay down on the bed. But it was long before ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... Hades has long ago been moved, and to receive whom all the kings of the nation have risen up, and the little scribblers who have fancied themselves able to fathom and describe characters to whom they were but pigmies! Conceive a half- hour's interview between Queen Elizabeth and some popular lady- scribbler, who has been deluding herself into the fancy that gossiping inventories of millinery are history . . . 'You pretend to judge me, whose labours, whose cares, whose fiery trials were, beside yours, as the heaving volcano beside a boy's firework? You condemn my ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... violence to Scripture had been done by an obscure scribbler, or by an infidel quoting the word of God merely for a purpose, it would not have been matter of such profound astonishment. But is it not unspeakably shocking that a Christian man, nay, that a Christian minister and doctor of divinity, should thus set at naught the clearest, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... be straying in the direction of another love. Indeed, many are the young men who, on turning from Blackstone and Kent in a comfortable law office to Scott and Byron, have lost a lawyer's living, only to grasp the empty air of failure in the fascinating garret of the scribbler. But "nothing succeeds like success," and genius has a way of changing rules and forcing the gates of fortune. And when we see the proof that a fresh genius has once more wrought the miracle of reversing all the fine logic of facts, so as to bring success and fame out of the very circumstances ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... the cool examination of reason, preposterous. What! the heiress of so many millions, brought up doubtless in the expectation of the most brilliant worldly alliance, the heiress with the world presently at her feet, would she look at a lawyer's clerk and an unsuccessful scribbler? Oh, the vanity of youth and the conceit ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Even their abuse was a kind of admiration turned inside out, as in Swinburne's diatribes against Carlyle, who himself fought against the theory of Darwin, not philosophically, but as though it were a personal insult to himself. Such violence of taste is now gone out of fashion; every scribbler and dauber likes to believe himself on a level with the best, and the positive criterion of value which sincere admiration gave is lost to us. Hence the success of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... adventures and passions and all that sort of thing; and now, in the evening of his days, like an old French diplomatist, he takes it into his head to write his memoirs. To this end he has lured poor Theodore to his gruesome side, to mend his pens for him. He has been a great scribbler, says Theodore, all his days, and he proposes to incorporate a large amount of promiscuous literary matter into these souvenirs intimes. Theodore's principal function seems to be to get him to leave ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... Valley. There she soon found a use for it. A journalist, in a column account of her career, was ungallant enough to finish by enquiring "if she were the devil incarnate?" As the simplest method of settling the problem, "Lola summoned the impertinent scribbler and gave him such a hiding that he had no ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... your hands away—about this money, for I'm perfectly sober and desirous of telling you the truth. You have the right to know. One thing led to another, but the first of it was like this. I've always been a scribbler in my lazy moments, as you know, but perhaps you can't be expected to know that I have put care and strong thought, art and heart both, into some verse that I occasionally would take out and look over, and then lock away again. ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... presumption if it were possibly vain. In a single glance of the eye of the pardonable Master he read—having the sort of divination that belonged to his talent—that this personage had ever a store of friendly patience, which was part of his rich outfit, but was versed in no printed page of a rising scribbler. There was even a relief, a simplification, in that: liking him so much already for what he had done, how could one have liked him any more for a perception which must at the best have been vague? Paul Overt got up, trying to show his compassion, but at the same instant he found ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... obvious enough. He cares nothing, for example, for what we call the beauties of nature. There is scarcely throughout his books one description showing the power of appealing to emotions through scenery claimed by every modern scribbler. In passing the Alps, the only remark which one of his characters has to make, beyond describing the horrible dangers of the Mont Cenis, is that 'every object which here presents itself is excessively miserable.' His ideal scenery is a 'large ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... concerning the "great pine forest," the "dressed-stone mansion," etc. But I found out then, and never have forgotten since, that we never read the dull explanatory surroundings of marvelously exciting things when we have no occasion to suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; we skip all that, and hasten to revel in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... consideration, a very fine tune had been put to it by a doctor of music;[9] a romance had been founded upon it by a man of eminence; it was made the subject of a play, of an opera, and of a pantomime; it had been claimed by others; a sequel had been written to it by some scribbler, who professed to have composed the whole ballad; it had been assigned an antiquity far beyond the author's time; the Society of Antiquaries had made it the subject of investigation; and the author had ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... exquisite authors as Moore that are doomed to consume the oil of future antiquaries. Many a poor scribbler, who is now, apparently, sent to oblivion by pastrycooks and cheese-mongers, will then rise again in fragments, and flourish ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... English, will make as good a Protestant rhymer, as a dissenter from the Church of England a Protestant parson. Besides, if you encourage a young beginner, who knows but he may elevate his style a little, above the vulgar epithets of profane and saucy Jack, and atheistic scribbler, with which he treats me, when the fit of enthusiasm is strong upon him? By which well-manner'd and charitable expressions, I was certain of his sect, before I knew his name. What would you have more ...
— English Satires • Various
... the publisher of the Boston News Letter braved the wrath of womankind by inserting the following advertisement in his paper: "Just published and Sold by the Printer hereof, HOOP PETTICOATS, Arraigned and condemned by the Light of Nature and Law of God."[138] Many a scribbler hiding behind some Latin pen name, such as Publicus, poured forth in those early papers his spleen concerning woman's costume. Thus in 1726 the New England Weekly Journal published a series of essays on the vanities of females, and the writer evidently found much ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... ulcer to disfigure it. Sire! I made a very proper epithalamium for Mademoiselle of Flanders and Monseigneur the very august Dauphin. That is not a firebrand of rebellion. Your majesty sees that I am not a scribbler of no reputation, that I have studied excellently well, and that I possess much natural eloquence. Have mercy upon me, sire! In so doing you will perform a gallant deed to our Lady, and I swear to you that I am greatly terrified at ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... of his taste. At present his work has about it a softness bordering on effeminacy, which leads us to believe that his conception of the poet's art is rather imperfect. It is only in caricature that we discover the poet as a sighing, long-haired scribbler of gushing flights of infantile awe or immature adoration. Earnestness, dignity, and at times, sonorous stateliness, become a good poet; and such thoughts as are generally suggested by the confirmed use of "Oh", "Ah", "dear", "little", "pretty", "darling", "sweetest flow'ret of all", "where ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Boyse had spent the money and was found in bed, covered only with a blanket, through two holes in which he passed his arms to write. Boyse, it appears, when still in this position would lay out his last half-guinea to buy truffles and mushrooms for his last scrap of beef. Of another scribbler Johnson said, "I honour Derrick for his strength of mind. One night when Floyd (another poor author) was wandering about the streets at night, he found Derrick fast asleep upon a bulk. Upon being suddenly awaked, Derrick started up; 'My dear ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... incomprehensibleness of my description of the expression in a young girl's face. You forget what a miserable surface-matter this language is in which we try to reproduce our interior state of being. Articulation is a shallow trick. From the light Poh! which we toss off from our lips as we fling a nameless scribbler's impertinences into our waste-baskets, to the gravest utterance which comes from our throats in our moments of deepest need, is only a space of some three or four inches. Words, which are a set of clickings, hissings, lispings, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Robin, what can Traulus[2] mean By bellowing thus against the Dean? Why does he call him paltry scribbler, Papist, and Jacobite, and libeller, Yet cannot prove a ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... munificence, with the single exception of Johnson, can be said to have been well selected; and the public, not unnaturally, ascribed the selection of Johnson rather to the Doctor's political prejudices than to his literary merits: for a wretched scribbler named Shebbeare, who had nothing in common with Johnson except violent Jacobitism, and who had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Revolution, was honoured with a mark of royal approbation, similar to that which ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 1: This actual letter was written by Boyer, together with the reply which is dated 5 November, 1701. Julian was a well-known journalistic scribbler and ribald ballader of the time. William Peer [Pierre], a young actor of little account, is only cast for such walk-on roles as Jasper, a valet, in Shadwell's The Scowerers (1691); the Parson in D'Urfey's ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... that time be scarcely described as living; it was from his death-bed he shot the poisoned arrow. And what brought out the venom? Merely a few careless words of Moore's, in which he described Croker "as a scribbler of all work," words that Earl Russell would have erased, if it had occurred to him to do so. Another countryman, Thomas Crofton Croker, assailed after his death the man whose shoe-latchets he would have been proud to unloose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... shall become as arrant a scribbler as somebody else. I begin to like writing. A great compliment to you, I assure you. I see one may bring one's mind to any thing.—I thought I must have had recourse, when you and my brother left us, and when I was married, to the public amusements, to fill up my leisure: and as ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... been a fine and disagreeable episode (for me) there, if that pitiless court had discovered that the very scribbler of that piece of dictation, secretary to Joan of Arc, was present—and not only present, but helping build the record; and not only that, but destined at a far distant day to testify against lies and ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... women are even more numerous in the metropolis than lawyers or doctors. They are of all classes, from the great author of world-wide fame to the veriest scribbler. The supply is very largely in advance of the demand, and as a consequence, all have to exert themselves to get along. A writer in the World estimates the annual receipts of New York authors at about one million of dollars, and the number of writers at 2000, which would give ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... placed the Prefect John di Vico in prison, this Jesuit says, "To put a gloss upon this action before the eyes of the people, Rienzi gave out that the Governor, John di Vico, keeping a correspondence with the conspirators, came with no other view than to betray the Romans." And if this scribbler, who pretends to have consulted the Vatican MSS., had looked at the most ordinary authorities, he would have seen that John di Vico did come with that view. (See for Di Vico's secret correspondence with the Barons, La Cron. Bologn. page 406; and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... feelings and sensations connected with the writing of my first book and with my first contact with the sea," Mr. Conrad set down what is really nothing less than a Testament of all that is most precious in human life. And the sentiment with which one lays it by is that the scribbler would gladly burn every shred of foolscap he had blackened and start all over again with truer ideals for his craft, could he by so doing have chance to meet the Skipper face ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... Scribbler writes; and, having writ, No Rules of Rhetoric bother him a Bit, Or lure him back to cancel half a Line, Nor Grammar's protests ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... is dealt. "His scorn of the great is too often repeated to be real: no man thinks {35} much of that which he despises." And so once more to Pope's victims. If they would have kept quiet, he says, the Dunciad would have been little read: "For whom did it concern to know that one or another scribbler was a dunce?" But this is what the dunces are the last people to realize: indeed, "every man is of importance to himself, and therefore, in his own opinion, to others"; so the victim is the first to "publish injuries ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... sent for the Royal Scribbler, who was a very fat Pinky with large, pink eyes and curly pink hair, and had him carefully write the new law into the Great Book of Laws. The Royal Scribbler wrote it very nicely in pink ink, with a big capital letter at the beginning and ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... Hare, in the postscript to his third pamphlet, said: "The Examiner is extremely mistaken, if he thinks I shall enter the lists with so prostitute a writer, who can neither speak truth, nor knows when he hears it." He calls the writer "a mercenary scribbler," and speaks of his paper as "weekly libels." He then quotes an expression from the fourth number (published before Swift undertook "The Examiner"), and concludes by saying that he had met more than his match in the ingenious writer of "The Medley," even were he ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... I am at the mercy of every scribbler in the Palais Royal who covers waste paper with nonsense, or of every country squire ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... whom he used to harangue with great applause at the Palais Royal. Having no profession or means of subsistence, he, as Dr. Johnson observes of one of our poets, necessarily became an author. He was, however, no farther entitled to this appellation, than as a periodical scribbler in the cause of insurrection; but in this he was so successful, that it recommended him to the care of Petion and the municipality, to whom his talents and principles were so acceptable, that they made him ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... very yielding people and did not take much trouble to resist attempts of this kind. "Blackwood," however, was outdone in this rowdy style of reviewing by "Fraser's Magazine." From that periodical we learn that Cooper was "a passable scribbler of passable novels," a "bilious braggart," a "liar," a "full jackass," "a man of consummate and inbred vulgarity," "a bore of the first magnitude in society," who went about fishing for (p. 175) introductions. "But this," ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... having been lampooned by some obscure scribbler, who could not be discovered, the ministry, in consequence of her complaint, ordered no fewer than five-and-twenty abbes to be apprehended and sent to the Bastille, on the maxim of Herod, when he commanded the innocents to be murdered, hoping that the principal object ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... it to poison his mind {1753.}. The author was Henry Rimius.130 He had been Aulic Councillor to the King of Prussia, had met Moravians in Germany, and now lived in Oxenden Street, London. For two years this scribbler devoted his energies to an attempt to paint the Brethren in such revolting colours that the Government would expel them from the country. His method was unscrupulous and immoral. He admitted, as he had to admit, that such English Brethren as he knew were excellent people; and yet he gave ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... protested in dismay. "I should perish with shame if His Excellency were to be so beset by every sorry scribbler." ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... piece of verse, every essay, every entre- filet, is destined to pass, however swiftly, through the minds of some portion of the public, and to colour, however transiently, their thoughts. When any subject falls to be discussed, some scribbler on a paper has the invaluable opportunity of beginning its discussion in a dignified and human spirit; and if there were enough who did so in our public press, neither the public nor the Parliament would find it in their minds to drop to meaner thoughts. The writer has the ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mainly on his achievements as a precursor of the Revolution, to the eighteenth century he was as much a poet as a reformer. The whole of Europe beheld at Ferney the oracle, not only of philosophy, but of good taste; for thirty years every scribbler, every rising genius, and every crowned head, submitted his verses to the censure of Voltaire; Voltaire's plays were performed before crowded houses; his epic was pronounced superior to Homer's, Virgil's, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... or three of the more discerning among the great dealers, who occasionally asked his opinion or gave him a bargain. In short a really impressive John as he sees himself was growing up within the skin of poor John Baxter, feeble scribbler for the weak-kneed religious press. As he looked about his cluttered room of an evening he could whisper proudly, "No, it's not a collection, but I can wait. And there is meanwhile nothing in this room that is not good, ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... sagacious critic on earth, viz., my mother and two sisters, my old maiden aunt, and finally the strongest believer of the whole five, my own self. If I doubt the sincerity and correctness of any of my critics, it shall be of those who censure me. Hard would be the lot of a poor scribbler, if he may not ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... our readers to note how, even in this little trifle, the singular taste and genius of Mr. Tennyson break forth. In such a dear little room a narrow-minded scribbler would have been content with one sofa, and that one he would probably have covered with black mohair, or red cloth, or a good striped chintz; how infinitely more characteristic is white dimity!—'tis as it were a type of the purity of ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... misconception yet lingering among sciolists and pretenders to criticism, which regards a writer than whom no man was ever born with a finer or a stronger instinct for perfection of excellence in execution as a mere noble savage of letters, a rough self-taught sketcher or scribbler of crude and rude genius, whose unhewn blocks of verse had in them some veins of rare enough metal to be quarried and polished by Shakespeare. What most impressed the author of "Faust" in the work of Marlowe was a quality the want of which in the author of "Manfred" is proof enough to consign ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... print was far more likely to be true than one made orally. Then he who stood up in his proper person and uttered his facts on the responsibility of his personal character, was far less likely to gain credit than the anonymous scribbler, who recorded his lie on paper, though he made his record behind a screen, and half the time as much without personal identity as he would be found to be without personal character, were he actually seen and recognised. In our time, the ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... the scene is glimmering on my sight again, and as it brightens you fade away. O, I should be loath to lose my treasure of past happiness, and become once more what I was then; a hermit in the depths of my own mind; sometimes yawning over drowsy volumes, and anon a scribbler of wearier trash than what I read; a man who had wandered out of the real world and got into its shadow, where his troubles, joys, and vicissitudes were of such slight stuff, that he hardly knew whether he lived, or only dreamed of living. Thank ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... next day to a supper composed of men only, and for the day after that, to a supper at which women as well as men would be present. I went with him to the library where we saw M. Felix, an unfrocked monk, more of a scribbler than a scholar, and a young man named Schmidt, who gave good promise, and was already known to advantage in the literary world. I also had the misfortune of meeting here a very learned man of a very wearisome kind; he knew the names ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt |
