"Prolixity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... two brothers, the accountant Francisco Beltran de Manurga and the inspector Matias Beltran de Manurga. Either of them is, in my opinion, a person as capable as is necessary for the said offices, as well as for things of more importance. I entreat your Majesty to pardon my prolixity in matters in which you have not asked my advice; for my zeal and desire for your royal service, and also for some one who may aid me therein, obliges me ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... Prolixity characterised these solemn utterances, packed full of cant phrases such as "undigested securities" and "the treacherous attack ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... this.—the poet who is now set up as a rival to the painter, but does not perceive that time sets a division between the words in which he describes the various parts of the beauty, and that forgetfulness intervenes and divides the proportions which he cannot name without great prolixity; he cannot compose the harmonious concord which is formed of divine proportions. And on this account beauty cannot be described in the same space of time in which a painted beauty can be seen, and it is a sin against nature to attempt to ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... now acquaint you (without prolixity if possible) with the few things I have been able to comprehend of all these sublime ideas. With regard to the system of our world, disputes were a long time maintained, on the cause that turns the planets, and keeps them in their orbits: and ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... at once the class of navigation to which it was dedicated. It was a Sicilian schooner from Trapani, built for fishing. An artistic calker had sculptured a wooden cray-fish climbing over the rudder. From the two sides of the prow dangled a double row of cray-fish carved with the innocent prolixity ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the old thinness of the school of Scribe and the old emptiness of the thousand vaudevillistes; which part of the exhibition, till modern comedy began, under the younger Dumas and Augier, had for its counterpart but the terrible dead weight, or at least the prodigious prolixity and absurdity, of much, not to say of most, of the romantic and melodramatic "output." It paid apparently, in the golden age of acting, to sit through interminable evenings in impossible places—since to assume that the age was in that particular ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... forms, and makes 666 in the most straightforward way. This explanation has as good a chance as any other. The work contains a general {353} attempt at explanation of the Apocalypse, and some history of opinion on the subject. It has not the prolixity which is so common ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... term was feverish. Corps work was revivified under the stimulus of war; the field days by Babylon Hill provided genuine excitement, in spite of the prolixity of Rogers's subsequent summary of the day's work. There were going to be very few football matches; but "uppers" were played with the old keenness, and there was fierce competition for the last places in the scrum. Ferrers wrote a long article to The Country ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... great thoroughness a certain device of witchcraft; and yet during all this time, through some special providence of our Lord, had practiced it to no profit. It is certain, too, that if he had been successful he would have ruined himself and harmed many others. But I say no more of this, to avoid prolixity. Another Indian had a book containing certain verses of poetry, which they call Golo [74]—most pernicious, because they included an express compact with the devil; this its owner freely gave up, that it might be burned, which was done. Most of the prisoners in the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... circumstances which he might have been expected to have retained, and adding others with good judgment and in general with good effect, but which by some fatality usually tend in his hands to excessive prolixity. This is certainly not the case with his dignified and spirited exordium, but in the fourth stanza he begins to copy history, and his muse's wing immediately flags. No more striking example of the superiority of dramatic ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... after much thought, he produced a close and telling composition. He also weeded it of every trait and every term he had observed in mad people's talk, or the letters they had shown him. So there was no incoherency, no heat, no prolixity, no "spies," no "conspiracy," no italics. A simple, honest, earnest story, with bitter truth stamped on every line; a sober, strong appeal from a sore heart but hard head to the arbiters of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... riches of this place consists in Indian nuts, or cocoa-nuts, and timber for ship-building. Passing from thence, by the cities of Pandara and Capagot[80], I came to the famous city of Calicut. To avoid prolixity, I pass over many other kingdoms and peoples, such as Chianul? Dabul, Onoue? Bangalore, Cananore, Cochin, Cacilon? and Calonue, or Coulan[81]. I have so done on purpose to enable me to treat more at large of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... these details even at the risk of incurring the charge of too great prolixity, as hitherto a one-sided account only has been given to the world. Every channel of information, whether it be the telegraph from Ragusa or the Slavonic press, does its best to mislead the general public, by exciting sympathy for the Christians, as unjust as it is undeserved. Even in the affair ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... that I had plenty to think about besides Randall, I meant to string off a list. My prolixity over the Volunteer Training Corps came upon me unawares. I wanted to show you that my time was fairly well occupied. I was Chairman of our town Belgian Relief Committee. I was a member of our County Territorial Association and took over a good deal of special work ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... taught literature in his monastery at Bury St. Edmunds. He appears to have been a bright, clear-minded, earnest man, with a love of the beautiful, and a faculty of pleasant, flowing verse. He wrote copiously and with tiresome prolixity whatever was required of him, moral tales, legends of the saints, and histories, and his total output is enormous, reaching 130,000 lines. His chief works are Troy Book (1412-20), written at the request of Henry V. when Prince of Wales, The Falls of Princes (1430-38), and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... was obliged to turn round and listen to a string of compliments, and a flow of small talk from my right hand neighbour, which it seemed as if nothing would stop but some lucky accident, some sudden overthrow of the regular course of things, so steady and even was the tenor of its gentle prolixity. He had an eye, the mildness of which was appalling, and a smile of despairing sweetness. As I looked at him, I wished (which had never happened to me to wish before in looking at anybody's face) that he had been very ugly; no ugly face could have been so hopelessly tiresome. If but for ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... find it such a keen personal joy to evoke and follow out, and realize to myself by means of pen and pencil, all these personal reminiscences; and with such a capital excuse for prolixity! ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... and the same words were repeated again and again in every-varying alternation, until the song died away like the soft breath of the wind as it were. Old Falieri appeared not to pay the slightest heed to the song; on the contrary, he was relating to the Dogess with much prolixity the meaning and history of the solemnity which takes place on Ascension Day when the Doge throws his ring from the Bucentaur and ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... times and at various places, but chiefly in bar-rooms, did this Ulysses of Monte Flat recount the story of his wanderings. There were several discrepancies in his statement; there was sometimes considerable prolixity of detail; there was occasional change of character and scenery; there was once or twice an absolute change in the denoument: but always the fact of his having visited his wife and children remained. Of course, in a sceptical community like that of Monte Flat,—a ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... rose from some remarkable natural feature of the spot; as it is first told, a shadowy unreality hangs over it, and it is doubtful whether it is more than a vision of the boy; but in the later prose all is crystalline; the story is drawn out, with a barren prolixity of detail, into a series of angelic visitations. And again, when Patrick is described, as the after-apostle, raising the dead Celts to life, the metaphor cannot be left in its natural force, and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... looking as helpless as animals of the male kind generally do when appealed to with such prolixity on feminine details; in reply to it ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... in America. The tale is a tragic one throughout, and the prevailing air of sombreness is rarely lightened by any success in the management of minor incidents. The introduction too was marked by (p. 075) one of Cooper's besetting faults, intolerable prolixity. But the main cause of his failure lay in his inability to delineate the Puritan character. It was not knowledge that was wanting, it was sympathy; or perhaps it is better to say that it was his lack of sympathy which prevented his having any genuine knowledge. ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... or prolixity a quality of these early narrators? What English prose written before 1640 is superior to the work of these three men? Why is it especially important for Americans to know something of their writings? What advance in prose narrative do you ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... of the story, but my friend, after exhausting his powers of speech and metaphor, was fain to wind up his tale with a most lame and impotent conclusion. I now give it to the reader, not from a wish to punish him as I was punished, but because from the prolixity of the narrator he necessarily most minutely described scenes and customs, which, though they had nothing on earth to do with the "Dragon's Mouth," may prove interesting to the reader, as illustrating the peculiarities of the people amongst whom we ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... do not repeat here because prolixity begets disgust; suffice it to observe how Don Gaiferos discovers himself, and that by her joyful gestures Melisendra shows us she has recognised him; and what is more, we now see she lowers herself from the balcony to place herself on the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... the prolixity of the eye-witness he was detailing the points of the battle; what troops were engaged; how the flank was turned; how the reserve was delayed; how the guns were planted; how the cavalry was ordered to charge over impracticable ground, and how in consequence ...
— The Lost Guidon - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... a-way," replied the trapper, almost irritating me with the prolixity of his style. "'Ee see them Injuns on t'other ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... he made no little investigation and practiced extortions to verify the matter, he was unable to ascertain who the person was, or why he was going, because the matter had been managed by a priest. And although a long relation can be made here of his objectionable acts, we shall, in order to excuse prolixity, touch on only ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... description show that he had a poet's feeling for beauty; he handles the language with the strength and skill of a master. On the other hand, he lacks all sense of proportion, and cannot shape an imaginative plan; his prolixity wearies the reader, and it cannot be denied that as a moral reformer he sometimes topples into immorality. The success of the poem was extraordinary, and extended far beyond France. It was attacked and defended, and up to the time of Ronsard its influence ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... having to change his dress, or not having yet quite recovered an unlucky extra tumbler of exciting fluids, and the green curtain has therefore unduly delayed its ascent, you perceive that the thorough-bass in the orchestra charitably devotes himself to a prelude of astonishing prolixity, calling in "Lodoiska" or "Der Freischutz" to beguile the time, and allow the procrastinating histrio leisure sufficient to draw on his flesh-colored pantaloons and give himself the proper complexion for a Coriolanus or Macbeth,—even ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in one of the French comedies, as you know, in which the dulness and prolixity of legal argument is intended to be severely satirized, while the advocate is tediously groping among ancient lore having nothing to do with his case, the judge grows impatient, and at last cries out to him to come down to the flood! I really ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... and moderns, who, in various forms, have exhibited their own portraits. Such portraits are often the most interesting, and sometimes the only interesting parts of their writings; and if they be sincere, we seldom complain of the minuteness or prolixity of these personal memorials. The lives of the younger Pliny, of Petrarch, and of Erasmus, are expressed in the epistles, which they themselves have given to the world. The essays of Montaigne and Sir William Temple bring us home to the houses and bosoms of ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... admirable, simple clarity, the excellent division and presentation of his argument. But it also causes his lack of depth and the prolixity by which he is characterized. His machine runs too smoothly. In the endless apologiae of his later years, ever new arguments occur to him; new passages to point, or quotations to support, his idea. ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... of them is properly a geyser. "How much better for you as seller and the nation as buyer ... than to sink ... in cutting one another's throats." Should be each other's. "A minister, noted for prolixity of style, was once preaching before the inmates of a lunatic asylum. In one of his illustrations he painted a scene of a man condemned to be hung, but reprieved under the gallows." These two sentences are so faulty that the only way to ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... seem to prepare an apology for prolixity even in writing essays, I will endeavour not to be tedious, and this endeavour may succeed the better perhaps by declining any over-strict observation of method. There are certain points of that which I esteem the first philosophy whereof I shall never lose ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... been an elaborate written embodiment of a policy which the Minister may have heard before from its author's mouth. It differs from Ralegh's letter in being absolutely in harmony with Howard's conduct at the time and after. In it the writer, with the 'Asiatic endless' prolixity which James himself ridiculed, propounded a plan for arranging that 'Cobham, the block all mighty that gives oracles, and Ralegh, the cogging spirit that prompteth it,' should be set in responsible positions in which they would be ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... other authors whereof I could have availed myself, had I not wished—contrary, perhaps, to the judgment of many—to leave each man free to see the fantasies of others in their proper sources; it appears to me expedient to do at present that which, in avoidance of tedium and prolixity (mortal enemies of attention), it was not permitted me to do then—namely, to declare more diligently my mind and intention, and to demonstrate to what end I have divided this book of the Lives into ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... The other treatise, put upon him by his Majesty's special command, 'De Authoritate Regum et Officio Subditorum,' ['On the Authority of Kings and the Duty of Subjects'] will shortly come to light.——Thus, craving pardon for this prolixity of scribbling, I take humbly ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... was deputed to accompany him, bearing a despatch* in which, to China's simple "greeting," Japan returned a "respectful address;" to China's expression of ineffable superiority Japan replied that the coming of the embassy had "dissolved her long-harboured cares;" and to China's grandiloquent prolixity Japan made answer with half a dozen brief lines. Imoko was now accompanied by eight students four of literature and four of religion. Thus was established, and for long afterwards maintained, a bridge over which the literature, arts, ethics, and philosophies ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... distortions, misrepresentations, and eccentric spelling. In the eighteen enormous folio volumes, which he filled with his minute and gothic characters, he gives his own version of the story of what he terms his downfall, and, having, notwithstanding his prolixity, exhausted this subject in the first five of the eighteen tomes, he proceeds to deal with so much of the history of his own day as came immediately under his notice ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... grossest improprieties of this poem discover an originality of invention, and its absurdities often border on sublimity. We are surprised that a poet should write one hundred cantos on hell, paradise, and purgatory. But this prolixity is partly owing to the want of art and method, and is common to all early compositions, in which everything is related circumstantially and without rejection, and not in those general terms which are used by modern writers." Warton is shocked at Dante's "disgusting ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... of Goettingen are generally divided into Students, Professors, Philistines, and Cattle, the points of difference between these castes being by no means strictly defined. The "Cattle" class is the most important. I might be accused of prolixity should I here enumerate the names of all the students and of all the regular and irregular professors; besides, I do not just at present distinctly remember the appellations of all the former gentlemen; while among the professors are many who as yet have no ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to say that he possesses the defects of his qualities. There is altogether too much of the "Go to: let me be Titanic" about the book. AEschylus has grown a trifle too well aware of his reputation, has taken to underscoring his points, and tends to prolixity in consequence. Mr. Hall Caine has not a little of Hugo's audacity, but, with it, not a little of Hugo's diffuseness. Standing, like Destiny, with scourge lifted over the naked backs of his two poor sinners, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... times, and in all places, their thoughts are bound up in this one subject, and have no sphere beyond. They relate the clever things their offspring say or do, and weary every company with their prolixity and absurdity. Mr. Whiffler takes a friend by the button at a street corner on a windy day to tell him a bon mot of his youngest boy's; and Mrs. Whiffler, calling to see a sick acquaintance, entertains ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... subjects with which it dealt have ceased to be disputed questions, or no longer attract much interest. Above all, its course was clouded and confused by verbal misunderstandings, arising in part, perhaps, from the occasional prolixity of Hoadly's style, but chiefly from the distorting ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... nightfall, I ran against a bow-kneed grey mare, and a cabriolet de place, which, by its label, belonged to Paris; the pair wandering the street under what it would be flattery to call the guidance of an eminently drunken driver. I boarded him; he dissolved at once into maudlin tears and prolixity. It appeared that on the 29th he had brought over a bourgeois family from the capital, and had spent the last three days in perambulating Etampes, and the past three nights in crapulous slumber within his vehicle. Here was my chance, and I demanded to know if for a price he would drive ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to avoid prolixity, I have not mentioned footmen particularly in the foregoing discourse, yet the complaints alleged against the maids are as well masculine as feminine, and very applicable to our gentlemen's gentlemen; I would, therefore, have them under the very same ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... but little worthy of his approval, he will not have reason at the same time to condemn their prolixity: their brevity will, at least in some degree, atone for their want of ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... Gazette, imitating the English ideal of prolixity in discussion, for which Engineering has recently patted it on the back approvingly, treats us, in its issue of February 11th, to a page article, to be continued, under the title of "Warming and Ventilation of Railroad Cars." In this article the writer takes the ground that people ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... ancient simplicity also departed. Theology, the spurious offspring of reason and faith, was already occupied in introducing its own tedious prolixity and solemn inanity into the old homely national faith, and thereby expelling the true spirit of that faith. The catalogue of the duties and privileges of the priest of Jupiter, for instance, might well have a place in the Talmud. They pushed the natural rule—that no ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... circumstance to write on purpose to certify the important fact of my being a little stronger or a little weaker on one particular morning. That I am always ready and rejoiced to write to you, you know perfectly well, and I have proved, by 'superfluity of naughtiness' and prolixity through some twenty posts:—and this, and therefore, you will agree altogether to attribute no more to me on these counts, and determine to read me no more backwards with your Hebrew, putting in your own vowel points without my leave! ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... insufficiency of such collective testimony. [Symbol: Aleph]AB with the rest of the uncials and, what is of more importance, the whole body of the cursives, exhibit [Greek: hote],—which, as every one must see, is certainly what St. John wrote in this place. Tischendorf's assertion that the prolixity of the expression [Greek: ephonesen ek tou mnemeiou kai egeiren auton ek nekron] is inconsistent with [Greek: hote][101],—may surprise, but will never convince any one who is even moderately acquainted ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... this prolixity, the visit to Jerusalem, and the two battles of Arbela and Issus mixed into one, are very rapidly passed over, though the murder of Darius and Alexander's vengeance for it are duly mentioned. Something like a new beginning (thought by some to coincide with a change of authors) ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... my prolixity, which is yet too brief for all I could wish to say.—God give you comfort and all that are of your household.—Our loves and best good wishes to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... plague and pestilence, and the chymicall oyle thereof is very availeable (as himselfe affirmeth to have sufficiently proved) against the stone and stopping of urine, and many other outward maladies and diseases, (Andernaeus and Gesner adde to these the Apoplexy) all which, for avoyding of prolixity, ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... Walter Montagu's Shepherds' Paradise at a length at all commensurate with its own were to set a premium on dull prolixity; there are, however, in spite of its restricted merits, a few points which give it a claim upon our attention. A brief analysis will suffice. The King of Castile negotiates a marriage between his son and the princess of Navarre. The former, however, is in love ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... recommend Adair to the patient reader, if such may be found in these United States, with the assurance that, if he will have tolerance for its intolerable prolixity and dryness, he will find, on rising from the book, that he has partaken of an infusion of real Indian bitters, such as may not be drawn from any of the more attractive ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... while the Merovingians, following in the steps of Chlodwig, were outdoing each other in bloodshed and cruelty. In the midst of this hard time Fortunatus stood out alone among the poets by virtue of his talent and purity of character. His poems are often disfigured by bombast, prolixity, and misplaced learning; but his keen eye for men and things is undeniable, and his feeling for Nature shews not only in dealing with scenery, but in linking it with the ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... that you may know when you please, purposely forbear in this Essay, though not strictly from pointing at, yet from making it a part of my present work explicitly and circumstantially to deliver, especially since I now find (though late and not without some Blushes at my prolixity) that what I intended but for a short Essay, is already swell'd into ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... serene expanse of heaven, and likewise in springtime flowers and leafy shrubs in the green meadows, so, damsels, in the hour of rare and excellent discourse, is wit with its bright sallies. Which, being brief, are much more proper for ladies than for men, seeing that prolixity of speech, where brevity is possible, is much less allowable to them. But for whatever cause, be it the sorry quality of our understanding, or some especial enmity that heaven bears to our generation, few ladies or none are left to-day that, when occasion prompts, are able to ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread, And range an Indian waste without a tree. Thanks to Benevolus [A]—he spares me yet These chestnuts ranged in corresponding lines, And though himself so polished still reprieves The obsolete prolixity of shade.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... fishermen forgot their nets; and the limber tongues of the town gossips steadily increased their clatter. Don Mario's store and patio assumed the functions of a departmental office. Daily he might be seen laboriously drafting letters of incredible length and wearisome prolixity to acting-Bishop Wenceslas; and nightly he was engaged in long colloquies and whispered conferences with Don Luis and others of his followers and hangers-on. The government arms had been brought up from Bodega Central ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... end to end, or longer. They lay in the sun in batches in every stage of incubation, and from almost every batch there were little crocodiles emerging, that made straight for the water. What worse monster preyed on them to keep their numbers down, or what disease took care of their prolixity we could not guess. Perhaps they ate one another, or just died of hunger. The owner of the boat vowed there were no fish left in the river, and that the crocodiles did not eat hippo unless it were ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... affix a date—with the exception of a "dramatic journal," kept by fits and starts during the Christmas holidays when he was sixteen. G.K. solemnly tells the reader of this diary to take warning by it, to beware of prolixity, and it does in fact contain many more words to many fewer ideas than any of his later writings. But it is useful in giving the atmosphere of those years. Great part is in dialogue, the author appearing throughout as Your Humble Servant, his young brother ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... enough to illustrate Guarini's laborious method of adding touch to touch without augmenting th force of the picture.[184] We find already here the transition from Tasso's measured art to the fantastic prolixity of Marino. And though Guarini was upon the whole chaste in use of language, his rhetorical love of amplification and fanciful refinement not unfrequently betrayed him into Marinistic conceits. Dorinda, for instance, thus addresses Silvio ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... not knowing the real reason of your absence, couldn't understand why you stay away. I had to squelch him, and Linda abetted me successfully. However, that's beside the point. I hope I haven't irritated you. I'm such a dumb sort of brute generally. I don't know what imp of prolixity got into my pen. I've got it all off my chest ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... its triumphant roll, and the curtains were divided and pulled back to the sides of the stage. Lest we repeat the only error in the sacred drama, that of prolixity, we will not give in minutiae what we saw and heard. The full text of the play is translated and published by my friend, the Reverend Doctor Dickey, pastor of the American Church of Berlin, and takes up 169 ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... and actions, the famous Apology. To William himself is undoubtedly due the material which the document embodies and the argument it contains, but it was almost certainly not written by him, but by his chaplain, Pierre L'Oyseleur, Seigneur de Villiers, to whom it owes its rather ponderous prolixity and redundant verbiage. Historically it is of very considerable value, though the facts are not always to be relied upon as strictly accurate. The Apology was translated into several languages and distributed to the leading personages in every neighbouring country, and made ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... to Saints and Bishops. I shall only instance one of each, because I hate prolixity. The first Saint that presents himself to me, is the renowned St. Augustin, who himself owns, that he used to get drunk sometimes. Crapula autem nonnunquam surrepit servo tuo misereberis ut longe fiat a me. Thy servant has been sometimes crop-sick through ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus
... remained two months and two days repairing our vessels and procuring necessaries for the voyage home. During our stay there we suffered many insults from the Christian inhabitants, the particulars of which are here omitted to avoid prolixity. Leaving that island on the 22d of July, we arrived at the port of Cadiz on the eighth of September[7], after a voyage of six weeks, where we were honourably received; having thus, by the blessing of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... Letamendi was prolixity and puerile ingenuity personified. Yet Letamendi was no different from all other Spaniards of his day, including even the most celebrated, such as Castelar, Echegaray ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... you will reproach me with the prolixity of these details. The subject is attractive to me, and I feel that you will accompany me with pleasure in my pilgrimage, from chapel to shrine, dwelling with me in contemplation on the relics of ancient skill and the memorials of the piety of the departed. Nor must it be forgotten, that ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... dispiriting labors and chagrins, such as were seldom laid on any man; almost beyond bearing, but incurable, and demanding to be borne. Wilhelmina is away, away; to D'Argens alone of mortals does he whisper of these things; and to him not wearisomely, or with the least prolixity, but in short sharp gusts, seldom now with any indignation, oftenest with a touch of humor in them, not soliciting any sympathy, nor expecting nearly as much as he will get from the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... part of what he sees in his subject, and there is hardly a limit to what he may omit. What is required is that he shall say what he elects to say discreetly; that he shall be quick to see the gist of a matter, and give it pithily without either prolixity or stint ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... about in the glare of the fire, talk about appearances and presentiments and religion. The guides cheer the night with bear-fights, and catamount encounters, and frozen-to-death experiences, and simple tales of great prolixity and no point, and jokes of primitive lucidity. We hear catamounts, and the stealthy tread of things in the leaves, and the hooting of owls, and, when the moon rises, the laughter of the loon. Everything is strange, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... biographer, novelist, he is always intent to smooth away the asperities of his subject, and, like some stately grandame enthroned in high-backed chair, he remembers that his simple auditors are to be not merely entertained by the matter of his discourse, but impressed by the suave tones and high-bred prolixity of the speaker. With a dignified courtesy unknown in these latter times—when biographers and historians do not scruple to take liberties with their heroes to the extent even of designating them by nicknames—the subject of the present memoir is introduced to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... digging for it. And the writer is enabled,—at any rate for a time, and till his neck has become, as it were, warm to the collar,—to throw off from him the difficulties and dangers, the tedium and prolixity, of description. This rushing "in medias res" has doubtless the charm of ease. "Certainly, when I threw her from the garret window to the stony pavement below, I did not anticipate that she would fall so far without injury to life or limb." When a story has been begun after this ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... The ponderosity and prolixity of Gabriel's "period of a mile," are described with a facetious extravagance, which may be given as a specimen of the eloquence of ridicule. Harvey ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... may be considered a schedule, or, as it were, a capita rerum, of the things which I have seen in these parts. Many things are omitted which are worthy of being mentioned, in order to avoid prolixity, and because they are found in my account of the voyage. As yet I tarry at Lisbon, waiting the pleasure of the king to determine what I shall do. May it please God that I do whatever is most to His glory and the salvation ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... pass! To right your wrong, Aspasia of the ardent South, Your poet means to sing a song With some prolixity of mouth. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... weary you with unnecessary prolixity. Let it suffice to say, that I was married to Lord Glenfallen with all the attendant pomp and circumstance of wealth, rank, and grandeur. According to the usage of the times, now humanely reformed, the ceremony was made, until long past midnight, the season of wild, uproarious, ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... an immense number of volumes behind him, which have been printed at various times, the greater number of them after his death. It would be possible to reduce them to a tenth part if we could rid them of all useless and foreign matter, and of a prolixity which I find almost overwhelming; were this only done, his books should be regarded as among the best we have on the subject of natural history in its entirety. The plan of his work is good, his classification distinguished for its good sense, ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... prolixity, as befits a virtuous, God-fearing man, the simple Jesuit relates a special instance of the way in which he was enabled to work both for his own glory and for the profit of the Lord. Not far from San Estanislao was situate the forest of M'baevera, in which grew quantities ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... appears intent only on conveying to others the result of his own inquiries and reflections on the most important topics, in as perspicuous a manner as possible; and the embellishments of diction come to him unbidden and unsought. His prolixity does not weary, nor his learning embarrass, the reader. If he had been more elaborate, he might have induced a suspicion of artifice; if he had been less so, the weightiness of his matter would seem to have been scarcely enough considered. But he has higher claims to the gratitude ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... for the familiar uses of himself and his mates, until a Villon arrives to prove that this language, too, was awaiting the advent of its bully and master. In the meantime, what directness and modest sufficiency of utterance distinguishes the dock compared with the fumbling prolixity of the old gentleman on the bench! It is the trite story,—romanticism forced to plead at the bar of classicism fallen into its dotage, Keats judged by Blackwood, Wordsworth exciting the pained astonishment of Miss Anna Seward. Accuser and accused alike recognise that a question of diction ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... little doubt he (Knox) has curtailed the same, and formed it so as to serve his own purpose: And had this Credit been contained in as few words as this author relates it, the Regent might have easily inserted the whole of it in her letter, without any unbecoming prolixity. I do, therefore, recommend to my readers not to satisfy themselves with this account of the Credit, but to look into that which Archbishop Spottiswood narrates; which, as it is much more distinct in answering to each part of complaint from the Congregationers, so it has all the air of ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... for parts, for ubiquity, for consistency, for fidelity, is in favor of war, his curious valuation of principle. Cabbage-heads, the, always in majority. Cabinet, English, makes a blunder. Caesar, tribute to, his veni, vidi, vici, censured for undue prolixity. Cainites, sect of, supposed still extant. Caleb, a monopoly of his denied, curious notions of, as to meaning of 'shelter,' his definition of Anglo-Saxon, charges Mexicans (not with bayonets but) with improprieties. Calhoun, Hon. J.C., his cow-bell curfew, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... has, in fact, become a finer art in our day than it was with Dickens and Thackeray. We could not suffer the confidential attitude of the latter now, nor the mannerism of the former, any more than we could endure the prolixity of Richardson or the coarseness of Fielding. These great men are of the past—they and their methods and interests; even Trollope and Reade are not of the present. The new school derives from Hawthorne and George Eliot rather than ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mankind.—And without suffering myself to be deterred, either by the fear of being thought to give the subject a degree of importance to which it is not entitled, or by the apprehension of being tiresome to my readers by the prolixity of my descriptions,—I shall proceed to investigate the subject in all its parts and details with the utmost care and attention. —And first with ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... cried D'Artagnan, losing all patience at the innkeeper's prolixity,—'Athos, what is become ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... determination (Book ii. l. 509.) to leave his country: and, fourthly, to give the reader some idea of the prior calamities of Sweden, which are to be developed in a future book. These, and other motives, induced me to insert this soliloquy, which may appear rather long, but the prolixity of which ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... last chapter. Most true it is, that were I to relate the entire of my life with a similar diffuseness, my memoir would extend to a length far beyond what I intend it to occupy. Such, however, is very remote from my thoughts. I have dwelt with, perhaps, something of prolixity upon the soldier-life and characteristics of a past day, because I shall yet have to speak of changes, without which the contrast would be inappreciable; but I have also laid stress upon an incident trivial in itself, because it formed an event in my own fortunes. It ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... admitting they had seen or heard any thing at all. Pausanias, who had consulted that oracle himself, and gone through all these ceremonies, has left a most ample description of it; to which Plutarch adds some particular circumstances,(84) which I omit, to avoid a tedious prolixity. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... fear there are many persons, even in Ireland, who are but imperfectly acquainted with the working of their own land laws, if, indeed, what sanctions injustice deserves the name of law. To avoid prolixity, I shall state very briefly the position of an Irish tenant at the present day, and I shall show (1) how this position leads to misery, (2) how misery leads to emigration, and (3) how this injustice recoils upon the heads of the perpetrators by leading to rebellion. ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... equipment necessary for the man who was to reform Italian opera. The school of Paisiello, notwithstanding its many merits, had several grievous weaknesses, of which the most prominent were uniformity of melodic type, nerveless and conventional orchestration, and intolerable prolixity. Rossini brought to his task a vein of melody as inexhaustible in inspiration as it was novel in form, a natural instinct for instrumental colour, and a firm conviction that brevity was the soul of wit. He leapt into ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... day. I ask you to compare Plutarch's lives of demigods and heroes with our modern biographies of deminoughts and zeroes. Those will appear but tailors and ninth-parts of men in comparison with these, every one of whom would seem to have had nine lives, like a cat, to justify such prolixity. Yet the evils of print are as dust in the balance to those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... with regard to security as before, and elected to stand his trial at once, which was precisely what the Attorney-General desired. The indictment, which may still be seen among the records at Osgoode Hall, was a truly formidable instrument, and set out the offence with great prolixity. The trial took place on Saturday, the 25th, before Mr. Justice Sherwood, who, in charging the jury, inveighed against the defendant with nearly as great vehemence as did the Crown prosecutor, stigmatizing him as "a ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... will soon appear, and with them will their cause be deserted by every friend to limited monarchy, and by every well-wisher to the interests of America. I have endeavored, in this uncultivated home-spun essay, to avoid prolixity as much as possibly I could. I have aimed at no flowers of speech, no touches of rhetorick, which are too often made use of to amuse, and not to instruct or persuade the understanding. I have ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... enrolment. In menacing tones, too, he intimated "the consequences of a violent, harsh policy, before the constitutionality of the Act is tested." It was evident he had given much thought to the question, but his prolixity betrayed the feeling of an official who, conscious of having erred in doing nothing in anticipation of riot and bloodshed, wished now to make a big ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... atoning for the renewal of glory in which he shone during the seventeenth century, when the Jansenists, in their inveterate obstinacy, identified him with the defence of their cause? The reputation of sour austerity and of argumentative and tiresome prolixity which attaches to the remembrance of all the writers of Port-Royal, save Pascal—has that affected too the work of Augustin, enlisted in spite of himself in the ranks of these pious schismatics? And yet, if there have ever been any beings who do not resemble Augustin, and whom probably ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Raphael had stifled every least whim, and had lived so as not to cause the slightest movement in the terrible talisman. The Magic Skin was like a tiger with which he must live without exciting its ferocity. He bore patiently, therefore, with the old schoolmaster's prolixity. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... by women, "wandering over the crooked hills of delicious pleasure"; but their reign over him was over, and long before Savonarola's famous "bonfire of vanities," he had destroyed those love-songs in the vulgar tongue, which would have been such a relief to us, after the scholastic prolixity of his Latin writings. It was in another spirit that he composed a Platonic commentary, the only work of his in Italian which has come down to us, on the "Song of Divine Love"—secondo la mente ed opinione dei Platonici—"according ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... and there still are, many who take a seeming delight in telling you how many conquests they have made, and they not infrequently have the bad taste to explain with wearisome prolixity the ways and the means whereby those conquests were wrought; as, forsooth, an unfeeling huntsman is forever boasting of the game he has slaughtered and is forever dilating upon the ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... path of duty, and to obey his father's counsels and example in the future administration of the provinces. This long address of the prelate was responded to at equal length by Jacob Maas, member of the Council of Brabant, a man of great learning, eloquence and prolixity, who had been selected to reply on behalf of the states-general, and who now, in the name of these; bodies, accepted the abdication in an elegant and complimentary harangue. Queen Mary of Hungary, the "Christian widow" of Erasmus, and Regent of the Netherlands ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... leaves the control of all these matters to him, when he is at the Hall. He inquired into the state of the horses; examined their feet; prescribed a drench for one, and bleeding for another; and then took me to look at his own horse, on the merits of which he dwelt with great prolixity, and which, I noticed, had the ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... most lascivious portion of my life, the events were disjointed, and fragmentary and my amusement was to describe them just after they occurred. Most frequently the next day I wrote all down with much prolixity, since, I have ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... on the revolution in epistolary correspondence. Through postal cards we not only come to economy in stamps, and paper, and ink, and envelopes, but to education in brevity. As soon as men and women get facility in composition they are tempted to prolixity. Hence some of us formed the habit of beginning to read a letter on the second page, because we knew that the writer would not get a-going before that; and then we were apt to stop a page or two before the close, knowing that the remaining ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... you'd leave metaphor and come to plain speaking," cried Lambert in an irritable tone, for the conversation was getting on his nerves by reason of its prolixity ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... volume comprehends a vast variety of sound opinion, and able though brief argument upon themes which relate to the social, moral and religious well-being of mankind. Touching the style of the writer, as evinced in these selections, we should say that it was formed mainly upon a due avoidance of prolixity, (an observance not always characteristic of BENTHAM'S writings,) concerning which he himself very justly remarks: 'Prolixity may be where redundancy is not. Prolixity may arise not only from the multifarious insertion of unnecessary articles, but ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... upon account of the meeting of the parliament, to make this letter of the usual length; and indeed, after the volumes that I have written to you, all I can add must be unnecessary. However, I shall probably, 'ex abundanti', return soon to my former prolixity; and you will receive more and more ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... surprising me, that which I saw then put me into a perfect ecstasy. I went into a large court, surrounded with buildings of an admirable structure, the description of which I shall pass by to avoid prolixity. This building had forty doors, wide open, and through each of them there was an entrance into a treasury, several of which were of greater value than the largest kingdoms. The first contained heaps of pearls; and, what is almost incredible, the number of these stones, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... explain and justify the state of feeling in which we enter on the consideration of a new poem by Robert Browning. Those who already feel with us will scarcely be disposed to forgive the prolixity which, for the present, has put it out of our power to come at the work itself: but, if earnestness of intention will plead our excuse, we need seek ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... written during a two years' captivity for his fidelity to the purer faith, and studied his whole history and experience till her soul took his soul's place and felt what he felt. Her poem of nineteen stanzas (152 lines) is the voice of Rutherford the Covenanter, with the prolixity of his manner and age sweetened by his triumphant piety, and that is why it belongs with the Hymns of Great Witnesses. The three or four stanzas still occasionally printed and sung are only recalled to memory by the above ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... those who, without sagacity to discriminate character, without elegance of style to relieve the tediousness of narrative, without enlargement of mind to draw any conclusions from the facts they relate, simply pour forth anecdotes, and retail conversations, with all the minute prolixity of a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... gives of the events, that took place in France, it is entitled to almost unqualified praise: in regard to what happened to other countries, he necessarily depended on the information which he received from them, and cannot therefore be equally relied upon. The prolixity, with which he is now reproached, was not felt at the time in which he wrote; every event, however small, was then thought to be important, and multitudes were personally interested in it. But the charm of his work is, that every ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... sooner admitted into his chamber, than we both instantly knew each other; for who should this person be but my good friend Mr Watson! Here I will not trouble you with what past at our first interview; for I would avoid prolixity as much as possible."—"Pray let us hear all," cries Partridge; "I want mightily to know what brought ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... this my prolixity of explanation, that we were so slow in comprehending all these points. No, we understood our situation well enough; we knew that to discharge our pieces—even though a horse should fall to every shot—was just what the enemy desired. That was the main object of their ruse; but we ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... great reforms effected by Linnaeus was in the matter of scientific terminology. Technical terms are absolutely necessary to scientific progress, and particularly so in botany, where obscurity, ambiguity, or prolixity in descriptions are fatally misleading. Linnaeus's work contains something like a thousand terms, whose meanings and uses are carefully explained. Such an array seems at first glance arbitrary and unnecessary, but the fact that it has remained in use for something like ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... are engaged has brought forth whole hosts of correspondents. They come not single spies, but in battalions. None of these letters, so far as we have read, can boast of any striking or peculiar excellence. Their great fault is their immense prolixity. Their words far outnumber their facts. An editor having once complained to a writer of the inordinate length of his composition, the writer replied that he had not had time to make it shorter. This is ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the favourite novel writer.[25] He is a very agreeable author were he not so prolix; yet we English have no right to complain of this fault, since there is no novel in all Germany to compare in point of prolixity with Clarissa, Sit Charles Grandison, or Tom Jones. The great fault of Augustus Lafontaine is that of including in one novel the history of two or three generations. A beautiful and very interesting tale of his, however, is entirely ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... close, we have not attempted to exhaust the subject; we refer it rather to the calm meditations of others, who will find materials enough within themselves. And lest the impatient should throw aside our essay with the disgust of satiety, or the persevering should by our prolixity be vexed with the very spirit which we would rather teach them to exorcise, we here take a respectful leave, with our sincerest wishes, that life may be to the reader a succession of pleasant emotions, and death a resting place neither ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... burlesque narratives (such as the Shepherd's Mazeppa-like ride on the Bonassus) are inimitably good, though they are too often spoilt by Wilson's great faults of prolixity and uncertainty of touch. The criticisms, of which there are many, are also extremely unequal, but not a few very fine passages may be found among them. The politics, it must be owned, are not good for ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... confusions in Amy Robsart's mystery. Mr. Froude practically aimed at giving the gist, as he conceived it, of the original papers of the period, which he rendered with freedom, and in his captivating style—foreign to the perplexed prolixity of the actual writers. But, in this process, points of importance might be omitted; and, in certain cases, words from letters of other dates appear to have been inserted by Mr. Froude, to clear up the situation. The ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... Consequently, readers who can bear to have their amusement diluted, who are content with an imperceptibly slow development of plot, and can watch without impatience the approach of a foreseen incident through a couple of volumes, may find the prolixity less intolerable than might be expected. If they will be content to skip when they are bored, even less patient students may be entertained with a series of pictures of character and manners skilfully ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the value of what remained, was a policy which poets would do well to imitate. It was a policy which no poet understood better than Lord Byron. Whatever his faults might be, he was never, while his mind retained its vigour, accused of prolixity. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... spring-time flowers in the green pastures, so, honourable damsels, in the hour of rare and excellent converse is wit with its bright sallies. Which, being brief, are much more proper for ladies than for men, seeing that prolixity of speech, when brevity is possible, is much less allowable to them; albeit (shame be to us all and all our generation) few ladies or none are left to-day who understand aught that is wittily said, or understanding ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... mountains, crossed several large rivers, either by means of improvised bridges or by throwing beams from one bank to another, and always succeeded in keeping his men in health. Rather than become wearisome and incur the reproach of prolixity, I make no mention of some of the trials and fatigues they endured, but I judge that I should not omit to report what took place between them and the caciques whom they ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... Variations, however interesting from a historical point[81] of view, are very labored and lack any real poetic growth. They are, moreover, often prolonged to an interminable length—one example, as late as Handel, consisting of an Air with sixty-two Variations; prolixity or "damnable iteration" being as bad a blemish in music as in any of the other arts. In the early days of instrumental composition, about all that composers could do was "to put the theme through its paces." ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... which I had taken up was the Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favourite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... is so great opportunity and occasion therefor. Were your Majesty eager and desirous of furthering your own particular advantage and interests, you would have also plenty of opportunity for it, as this place is exceedingly well fitted therefor. I beseech your Majesty to pardon my prolixity and daring, to which I am forced by the great importance of these matters, and by the obligation, love, and desire that I owe the service of God and of your Majesty; and by my having so few opportunities to write, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... fell into a deep thinking fit, as he does sometimes. He had had his own say, it is true, but he had established his character as a listener to my own perfect satisfaction, for I, too, was conscious of having preached with a certain prolixity. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... for speech.] Prolix to the point of somnolence. It might be affirmed without inexactitude that the prolixity of counsel is the somnolence of the judiciary. I am fatigued, ah! [A little suddenly, awaking to the fact that his orders have not been carried out to the letter.] Thomas! My Post is not in ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The New York Idea • Langdon Mitchell
... modified and abridged what follows, being impatient of its prolixity, as well as ashamed of what is truly called the ludicrous under-estimate of the mass of ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... how he had discovered the Indian on the ice, and introduced the subject with some prolixity, like not a few white men when they have a good story to tell. Moreover, the wily man had an eye to dramatic effect, and, observing that Adolay was not among the women, he made up his mind to what is called "prolong the agony" ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... again in the place. The hot blood of shame had burned my cheeks whenever I recalled my dismissal from the lips of the daughter of the house. But I had received a letter from Mrs. Bowser, setting forth that I was wanted at the house of Doddridge Knapp, and her prolixity was such that I was unable to determine whether she, or Mrs. Knapp, or Luella, wished to see me. But as all three appeared to be concerned in it I pocketed pride and resentment, and made my bow with some nervous quavers ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... the wet way, but it gives in many cases direct evidences of the presence or absence of many substances, which would not be otherwise detected, but through a troublesome and tedious process, involving both prolixity and time; for instance, the detection ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... and true from the hot iron of his mind; and in some of our best writers the improvising spirit is very faint. If a man writes with leisurely care, selecting deliberately the word that exactly matches his thought, aiming directly at the heart of his subject and avoiding prolixity, he may, like Walpole, Gray, and others, produce a delightful letter, provided only that he is sincere and open, has good stuff to give, and does not condescend to varnish his pictures. We want his best thoughts; we should like to have his best ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall |
