"Scurrilous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... induced to change this determination at the request of many gentlemen of the place, who assured me that the whole thing arose from stories most industriously circulated by one or two ill-conditioned actors, backed by inflammatory handbills and a scurrilous print. ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... forget you are scandalizing one who is nearer to me than grandfather was to you, and that you sent her a low, scurrilous letter, full of bitter taunts and insults, which ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... the signature always assumed by Mr Alexander Hope,[6] in his contributions to the Press, and Lord Aberdeen does not doubt that it is written by him. It is only a wonder to find it in such a quarter; and it shows some disposition on the part of that scurrilous paper to alter its course. There is perhaps no great objection to the papers dealing with the subject as they think proper, before the meeting of Parliament, provided the Times takes no part at present; for as this paper is supposed ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... or naval forces of the United States, or shall wilfully obstruct or attempt to obstruct the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, and whoever, when the United States is at war, shall wilfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States, or any language intended to ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... on the other hand, he seemed certain that he had seen her face somewhere—probably in that study of yours, by the way; and he appeared to think that I ought to have heard of Crichton—Cyril Crichton. He told me that the man wrote clever, scurrilous articles on art and the drama for the Outcry. But I don't read English papers much. You see, our difficulty is that Cyril Crichton is obviously a nom de plume, and no one—not even the people at ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... instructions which Mr. Gerard is receiving. Our present enemies have gone literally raving mad, and leave no stone unturned in order to put obstacles in Wilson's way. This explains the attacks against the President, as also the scurrilous attempt engineered by the Republicans to charge the Administration with Stock Exchange speculations. Without any justification, of course, my name also was mentioned in this regard. The German Embassy, as is well ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... pretence of their being a peaceable and innocent sort of people. And peaceable probably they will remain while they are permitted, without control, to ruin families and riot in their debaucheries." Of all the attacks upon the Brethren, this book by Lavington was the most offensive and scurrilous; and the Brethren themselves could hardly believe that it was written by a Bishop. It was unfit for a decent person to read. The good Bishop knew nothing of his subject. As he could not read the German language, he had to rely for his information ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... from Alexander Hay, Clerk of the Privy Council, and heard of the publication of Buchanan's scurrilous "Detection" of Queen ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... Pott had it. But what is most significant is that in the very year Pickwick was coming out, to wit, 1836, Maginn had attracted general attention and reprobation by the scandal of his duel with Grantley Berkely, arising out of a most scurrilous review of the latter's novel. To this meeting he had been brought with some difficulty—just as Pott—the "Pot-valiant," declined to "serve him so," i.e., Slurk; being restrained by the laws of his country. He was an assistant editor to the "Standard," and had furnished ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... learned while on his travels. The courts of England, France and Spain, under fictitious names, are the chief marks for his ponderous satire, and some of the greatest men in the three kingdoms are lashed with his most scurrilous abuse. Under any circumstances the book was not one that Captain Ducie would have cared to wade through, and in the present case, after dipping into a page here and there, and finding that it contained nothing likely to interest him, he proceeded at ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... verse, so out of keeping in its curious impartiality with the scurrilous refrain, appears to me to carry its own signature. There can be no doubt that the verses give us young Shakespeare's feelings in the matter. It was probably reading ballads and tales of "Merrie Sherwood" that first inclined him to deer-stealing; and we have already ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... in his conduct and so bold in his opinions was the author of the Secchia Rapita. The composition of this poem grew out of the disputes which followed Tassoni's Remarks on Petrarch. He found himself assailed by two scurrilous libels, which were traced to the Count Alessandro Brusantini, feudal lord of Culagna and Bismozza. Justice could not be obtained upon the person of so eminent a noble. Tassoni, with true Italian refinement, resolved to give himself the unique pleasure ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... characteristic to the student of literature must always be the way in which it leads up to, without in the least foretelling, the bursts of eloquence already referred to. Even Milton's alternations of splendid imagery with dull and scurrilous invective, are hardly so strange as Raleigh's changes from jog-trot commonplace to almost inspired declamation, if only for the reason that they are much more intelligible. It must also be mentioned that Raleigh, like Milton, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... a man like Brown can say of you in an article or two, has no permanent weight with the public. Scurrilous stories of that type kill themselves by their very scurrility. No matter how eagerly the public may lap up the stuff, it cannot really heed it for, Enoch, America knows you and your service. America loves you. Brown cannot dislodge ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... he was an apothecary! Such a wonderful thing is an adventurous life! I thought he might as well have stayed at home; but you never can tell wherein a man's life consists, nor in what he sets his pleasure: one to drink, another to marry, a third to write scurrilous articles and be repeatedly caned in public, and now this fourth, perhaps, to be an apothecary in Brazil. As for his old father, he could conceive no reason for the lad's behaviour. 'I had always bread for him,' he said; 'he ran away to annoy ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time ago, 'give me a definition of poetry.' 'Tres-volontiers;' and he proceeded to his library, brought me a Dr. Johnson, and overwhelmed me with a definition. Shade of the immortal Shakespeare! I imagine to myself the scowl of your spiritual eye upon the profanity of that scurrilous Ursa Major. Think of poetry, dear B——, think of poetry, and then think of Dr. Samuel Johnson! Think of all that is airy and fairy-like, and then of all that is hideous and unwieldy; think of his huge bulk, the Elephant! and then—and then think of the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... electors for the extraordinarily good hearing they had been accorded; it being part of the humour of politics that the worse a candidate is boo-hooed the more stress he lays upon the good hearing given him, and the more scurrilous he is regarding his opponent the more frantically he assures one that he is a bosom ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... the arrival of a ship from Alexandria, supposed to be loaded with corn, filled the people with joy. It proved instead to be loaded with sand for the arena. In their disappointment the people broke at first into scurrilous jests against Nero, and then into rage and fury. A wild clamor filled the streets. On all sides rose the demand to be delivered from a monster. Even the Praetorian guards, who had hitherto supported the emperor, began to show signs of disaffection, and were wrought to a spirit ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... world's upper gallery treated that incident, I am well convinced, with their usual vociferation; and every term of scurrilous reproach was most probably vented on ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... in answer to the Dialogue of Sir Thomas More, who was commissioned to combat the "pernicious and heretical" works of the "impious enemies of the Church." Tyndale wrote also a bitter Answer to the Dialogue, and this drew forth from More his abusive and scurrilous Confutation, which did little credit to the writer or to the cause for which he contended Tyndale's longest controversial work, entitled The Obedience of a Christian Man, and how Christian Rulers ought to govern, although it stirred up much hostility against its author, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... Hogarth and his fellow-Governor at the Foundling, John Wilkes, that my next jotting relates. These strange colleagues in charity afterwards—as is well known—quarrelled bitterly over politics. Hogarth caricatured Wilkes in the Times: Wilkes replied by a North Briton article (No. 17) so scurrilous and malignant that Hogarth was stung into rejoining with that famous squint-eyed semblance of his former crony, which has handed him down to posterity more securely than the portraits of Zoffany and Earlom. Wilkes's action upon this was to reprint his ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... Captain Clinton," went on the lawyer severely, "I accuse you of giving an untruthful version of this matter to two sensational newspapers in this city. These scurrilous sheets have tried this young man in their columns and found him guilty, thus prejudicing the whole community against him before he comes to trial. In no other country in the civilized world would this be tolerated, except in a country overburdened ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... darkly insinuated in some highly scurrilous and abusive verses, of which I have an original copy. They are docketed as being written "Upon the late Viscount Stair and his family, by Sir William Hamilton of Whitelaw. The marginals by William Dunlop, writer in Edinburgh, a son of the Laird of Househill, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... certainly have appalled him. He was a person of some pluck, or perhaps the drunkenness of terror lent him the illusion of valour; at least, when he found a bloody end inevitable he made the best of the occasion. Into the heaving sides of the brute he drove desperate spurs, anew he shouted a scurrilous name at Clan Campbell, then fired his pistol as he fell upon the enemy. The dag failed of its purpose, but the breast of the horse struck an elderly man on the brow and threw him on his back, so that one of ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... book of one Monsieur Sorbiere, [Samuel Sorbiere, who, after studying divinity and medicine at Paris, travelled in different parts of Europe, and published his Voyage into England, described by Voltaire as a dull, scurrilous satyr upon a nation of which the author knew nothing.] that gives an account of his observations here in England; among other things he says, that it is reported that Cromwell did, in his life-time, transpose many of the bodies of the Kings of England from one grave to another, and that ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... having dealt with the subject chiefly on behalf of the Close and the admirers of the Close, had made no allusion to the fact that Mrs. Peacocke was a very pretty woman. One or two other local papers had been more scurrilous, and had, with ambiguous and timid words, alluded to the Doctor's personal admiration for the lady. These, or the rumours created by them, had reached one of the funniest and lightest-handed of the contributors to 'Everybody's Business,' and ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... celebrated contemporary sculptor, a native of Clazomenae. The satiric poet Hipponax, who was extremely ugly, having been portrayed by Bupalus as even more unsightly-looking than the reality, composed against the artist so scurrilous an invective that the latter hung himself in despair. Apparently Aristophanes alludes here to a verse in which Hipponax threatened ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... strange that a man will pay newspapers to say publicly about his wife or daughter things that he would knock his best friend down for saying to him privately; that he will deliberately set every scurrilous tongue wagging about the woman he loves and professes to honor; cause her form and features to be discussed in every dive? Should one of our American women overhear a male acquaintance commenting on the whiteness of her bosom, the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... this. I will weary out your life with persecutions; I will drag you from court to court; if there is justice to be had in France, it shall be rendered between you and me. And I will make you a by-word - I will put you in a song - a scurrilous song - an indecent song - a popular song - which the boys shall sing to you in the street, and come and howl through ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not wasting breath in speech. Now and again MacLean glanced aside at the girl, who kept beside him, moving as lightly as presently would move the leaves when the wind arose. He remembered certain scurrilous words spoken in the store a week agone by a knot of purchasers, but when he looked at her face he thought of the Highland maiden whose story he had told. As for Audrey, she saw not the woods that she loved, heard not the leaves beneath her feet, knew ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... of the article in the "Mirror" was, I do not know, but it was probably one of those scurrilous and defamatory attacks, from many of which he suffered in common with other persons of prominence, and which was called forth, perhaps, by his activity in the ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... and proper to notice only the more decent, respectable, and celebrated among the abolitionists of the North. Those scurrilous writers, who deal in wholesale abuse of Southern character, we have deemed unworthy of notice. Their writings are, no doubt, adapted to the taste of their readers; but as it is certain that no educated gentleman will ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... sacrilege, salient, salubrious, sardonic, satellite, saturnine, schism, scurrilous, sectarian, secular, sedative, sedentary, seditious, sedulous, segregate, seismograph, senescent, sententious, septuagenarian, sequester, sibilant, similitude, sinecure, sinuous, solicitous, solstice, somnolent, sophisticated, sophistry, sorcery, spasmodic, specious, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... to such straits for amusement, that one Wednesday afternoon, finding himself with nothing else to do, he was working at a burlesque and remarkably scurrilous article on 'The Staff, by one who has suffered', which he was going to insert in The Glow Worm, an unofficial periodical which he had started for the amusement of the School and his own and his contributors' profit. He was just ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... poets, Ben Jonson (in the person of Ajax) and John Marston (in the person of Thersites). Those two poets were engaged, with others, in the years 1601-2, in what is called the War of the Theatres, that is, they wrote plays to criticise and mock each other. These plays are often scurrilous and seldom amusing. During the course of the war the two chief combatants came ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... kidney to be. Instead of the careless, indolent sloven we knew at Oxford, I found him a busy talkative politician; a petit-maitre in his dress, and a ceremonious courtier in his manners. He has not gall enough in his constitution to be enflamed with the rancour of party, so as to deal in scurrilous invectives; but, since he obtained a place, he is become a warm partizan of the ministry, and sees every thing through such an exaggerating medium, as to me, who am happily of no party, is altogether incomprehensible ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... to see you to relieve my mind. I am very, very much troubled. Some scurrilous fellow has drawn an absurd caricature of me and another person, in whom we are both deeply interested. I regard it as a duty to assure you that I have had no hand in it.... I have given no sort of ground for such ridicule—on the contrary, I have always behaved ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... too, was his most enthusiastic admirer, for he had encouraged his going to spend his evenings in the neat attic rather than crawl to his own miserable abode to be contaminated with the fumes of rum and tobacco, and the scurrilous ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... drapery-hanger which he has chosen: he has been detected in the attempt to pass bad circles. He complains bitterly that his geometry, instead of being read and understood by you, is handed over to me to be treated after my scurrilous fashion. It is clear enough that he would rather be handled in this way than not handled at all, or why does he go on writing? He must know by this time that it is a part of the institution that his "untruthful ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... without doing them manifest injustice. Now, many of our printers make no scruple of gratifying the malice of individuals by false accusations of the fairest characters among ourselves, augmenting animosity even to the producing of duels; and are, moreover, so indiscreet as to print scurrilous reflections on the government of neighboring states, and even on the conduct of our best national allies, which may be attended with the most pernicious consequences. These things I mention as a caution to young printers, and that they ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... truths. If the inferior and less honorable class of mediums are now before the public, why is it? It is due solely, dear lady, to such people as yourself and your psychic society men, and "fellows of a baser sort," who follow your lead—to those whose censorious and sometimes scurrilous hostility against spiritual phenomena has driven into retirement or kept in concealment the most beautiful and holy phenomena that were ever known on earth. Angels do not confront the hissing mob. But their visits to-day are neither few nor far between. In every bower of perfect ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... noblest sciences, and his industrious studies bore a proportion to his capacities. He was a generous and constant friend, an indulgent parent, and a kind master. His temper was open and free; his conversation pleasant; his reflections just and modest; his repartees close—not scurrilous; he had a great deal of wit, and no malice. His mind was large and noble—above the little designs of most men; an enemy to dissimulation, and never feared to own his thoughts. He was a true Englishman, and lover of the liberties of his country, ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... smell the smoke: it was for you to find the spark, you who have had a free hand in Amboise. But you play nonsense games with Charles, hanging upon the skirts of the unscrupulous woman who tutors him to revolt, or drink in taverns with a scurrilous thief turned spy to save his neck from a deserved hanging. Do you think you serve the King by philandering in a rose garden, or playing at French and English in the Burnt Mill? Francois Villon! Ursula de Vesc! Stephen, you make yourself too much one with them—an unhung ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... none the less an important point. Yallobally I shall always recall with bitterness, for it was there I first felt the thorn of a vindictive press. The reader will see what little cause I had to love the Yallobally Record, a scurrilous sheet that often made my heart ache, for all I pretended to laugh and see the humour of its attacks. It was indeed a relief when I learned I might exert my authority and suppress its publication—and even hang the editor—which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... frequently observe, but wonder at, in men of slow parts, he seemed to anticipate the advice contained in Johnson's ode, and forbore a reply, though not his revenge.' This he gratified by reprinting in his own Magazine one of the most scurrilous and foolish attacks. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Blithers' daughter. That was more than could be expected of any self-respecting people! According to the Minister of Police, the name of Blithers was already a common synonym for affliction—and frequently employed in supposing a malediction. It signified all that was mean, treacherous, scurrilous. He was spoken of through clenched teeth as "the blood sucker." Children were ominously reproved by the threatening use of the word Blithers. "Blithers will get you if you don't wash your face," and all that ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... OF BOOKES, etc. From 1570, when Pope Sixtus V issued his bull of deposition against Queen Elizabeth, to 1590, great numbers of scurrilous pamphlets attacking the Queen and the Reformed church had been disseminated by ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... solemn and heroic accusation was the first public attack on his wife. Next we see him commencing a scurrilous attempt to turn her to ridicule in the First ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... gang" had swept down upon the office of the New Day, had wrecked it, and had set fire to the building, with the result that five houses were burned before the flames could be put out. The Free Press published, as a mere rumor, that the immediate cause of the outbreak had been an impending "scurrilous attack" in the New Day upon one of the political gangs of the slums and its leader. The Associated Press, sending forth an account of the riot to the entire country, represented it as a fight between rival gangs of workmen precipitated by the insults and ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... penknife was our sole cutlery; but we managed to cut through the skin, and we devoured the oily stuff like famished hounds, sir. We were ashamed; but, as the poet truly observes, 'Necessity knows no law,' and we endured the scurrilous language of the woman when, on the morrow, she found the bottom of the shovel encrusted with dirt and the top thickly coated with grease. That ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... spoke many scurrilous words; a friend being by, said, "You speak foolishly." He answered, "It is that ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... been cited. In the Old English, Hunferth taunts Beowulf, but he never forgets that his rival is 'doughty in battle' (l.526). Beowulf is always worthy of his respect. In Grundtvig, the taunting degenerates into a scurrilous tirade. Hunferth calls Beowulf a 'mudscow'; Breca and Beowulf swim like two 'dead herrings.' In like manner the character of Hunferth is cheapened. In Beowulf he is a jealous courtier, but he is always heroic. In Grundtvig he is merely a contemptible braggart, 'with his nose high in air,' who ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... the Democratic party in this state fallen. Had there ever been the slightest doubt that the Hon. J. Woodworth-Granger will be the nominee for governor of this state, it is now dissipated by the scurrilous attack made upon him—an attack of desperation that must and shall inevitably bring its own reward. Verily a man is known by the enemies ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... State. The results were almost miraculous. Two weeks of steady work not only turned the tide of popular feeling, but created a perfect frenzy of interest in the young orator. Even the Democrats, in spite of scurrilous attacks made on her by some of their leaders, received her everywhere with the warmest welcome, tore off their party badges, and replaced them by her picture, while giving wild applause to all she said. The halls where she spoke ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... have the full measure of the rest which he coveted. He had left England to escape persecution, and persecution followed him. Cobbett, who had assailed him in a scurrilous pamphlet at the time of his emigration, continued his attacks. Priestley was objectionable because he was a friend of France. Moreover he had opinions about things, some of which he freely expressed,—a habit he had contracted so early in life as to render it hopeless that he should ever break himself ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... written in prose relating to Joan of Arc that will be likely to live. The early chroniclers were monstrously unjust to her. It is enough to allude to the lying and scurrilous abuse which such writers as Robert Fabyan, in his chronicles on the history of England and of France, published in 1516, heaped upon Joan of Arc. Hall's and Holinshed's chronicles, from which the author of the First Part of King Henry ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... carry away and destroy half a dozen valuable lives. There was one coil of rope on board which the skipper had bought for cordage on the previous voyage from a homeward-bound English ship, and it was the butt of all the officers' scurrilous remarks about Britishers and their gear. It was never used but for rope-yarns, being cut up in lengths, and untwisted for the ignominious purpose of tying things up—"hardly good enough for that," was the verdict ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... of yelling niggers behind. We were lost, and I myself was nigh upon a dead man. Who would have cumbered himself with a corpse? Curse you and your vile hints, you mongrel, you hanger-on, you scurrilous beast! Out, and spread your stories, before my fingers get ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a-year, he knew no use of money but to keep his table open to those who had been his friends when young, and had impaired their own fortunes." As Mr Austin Dobson says, in commenting on one of Horace Walpole's scurrilous letters, [2] "it must always have been a more or less ragged regiment which met about that kindly Bow Street board." The man who parted with his own hardly won arrears of rent to relieve the yet greater need of a College friend, was little likely to be less generous when the tardy 'jade Fortune' ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... Presbyterian doctrine and discipline; and both in such a manner as they themselves had not yet agreed on; but up that government must. To which end there were many that wandered up and down and were active in sowing discontents and seditions, by venomous and secret murmurings, and a dispersion of scurrilous pamphlets and libels against the Church and State; but especially against the Bishops; by which means, together with venomous and indiscreet sermons, the common people became so fanatic, as to believe the Bishops to be Antichrist, and the only obstructers of God's discipline! and at last some ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... making it hideous with their riotous antics; or else we see the refuse of the people, fostered on our blood, becchini, as they call themselves, who for our torment go prancing about here and there and everywhere, making mock of our miseries in scurrilous songs. Nor hear we aught but:—Such and such are dead; or, Such and such art dying; and should hear dolorous wailing on every hand, were there but any to wail. Or go we home, what see we there? ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... disdain; and gave little encouragement to spies and informers. When he was told of the disaffection of one of his subject, he merely asked, "How many thousand men can he bring into the field?" He once saw a crowd staring at something on a wall. He rode up and found that the object of curiosity was a scurrilous placard against himself. The placard had been posted up so high that it was not easy to read it. Frederic ordered his attendants to take it down and put it lower. "My people and I," he said, "have come to an agreement ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... abuse from such people, the writer was prepared. Does anyone imagine that the writer was not well aware, before he published his book, that, whenever he gave it to the world, he should be attacked by every literary coxcomb in England who had influence enough to procure the insertion of a scurrilous article in a magazine or newspaper! He has been in Spain, and has seen how invariably the mule attacks the horse; now why does the mule attack the horse? Why, because the latter carries about with him that which the envious hermaphrodite ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... venture inside—poured forth a flood of ignoble insults. It so happened that Mathieu was absent; and Marianne had great trouble to restrain Gervais as well as Frederic, both of whom wished to thrust the miller's scurrilous language back into his throat. When Mathieu came home in the evening he was extremely vexed to hear of ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... who just turn over the pages of a book to find fault casually wherever they can—(I've seen them at it in newspaper offices!) or to quote unfairly mere scraps of sentences without context,—or to fly off into a whirlwind of personal and scurrilous calumnies against an author whom they don't know, and perhaps never will know,—that sort of thing is quite useless to me. It neither encourages nor angers me. It is a mere flabby exhibition of incompetency—much as if a jelly-fish should try to fight a sea-gull! Now you,—if you ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... Taylor, of Barrow, and of South; but his oratory was more correct and equable than theirs. No quaint conceits, no pedantic quotations from Talmudists and scholiasts, no mean images, buffoon stories, scurrilous invectives, ever marred the effect of his grave and temperate discourses. His reasoning was just sufficiently profound and sufficiently refined to be followed by a popular audience with that slight degree ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and rotten to its core; yet even this does less dishonor to Shakspeare's memory than the sequel attached to it. A sort of scurrilous rondeau, consisting of nine lines, so loathsome in its brutal stupidity, and so vulgar in its expression, that we shall not pollute our pages by transcribing it, has been imputed to Shakspeare ever since ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Blackwood is still more scurrilous; the circumstance of Keats having been brought up a surgeon is the staple of the jokes of the piece. He is told 'it is a better and wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet.'"—Milnes' Life of Keats, vol. i. p. 200, and compare pp. 193, 194. ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... opportunity for indulging that supreme pleasure which the press daily affords you of insulting the classes whose powers most of you know as little as you do their sufferings. Yes; the Chartist poet is vain, conceited, ambitious, uneducated, shallow, inexperienced, envious, ferocious, scurrilous, seditious, traitorous.—Is your charitable vocabulary exhausted? Then ask yourselves, how often have you yourself honestly resisted and conquered the temptation to any one of these sins, when it has come across you just once in a way, and not as they came to me, as they come to thousands ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... know whom their sting will strike first and sharpest, and therefore I was, for a time, the one most exposed to their spite. Sometimes a boy pretended to be reading very zealously in the catechism, which he held close before his face, but instead he whispered over the top of the page all sorts of scurrilous things in my ear, and asked me if I were still stupid enough to believe that children came out of the well, and that the stork fetched them up? Sometimes another called to me "If you want an apple, take it out of my ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... scurrilous and defamatory," replied Franklin. "But being at a loss on account of my poverty, whether to reject it or not, I thought I would put it to this issue. At night, when my work was done, I bought a twopenny loaf, on which I supped heartily, ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... elimination of natural wantonness is the appearance of hideous hypocrisy. Driven from the haunts of the Muses, expelled from the symposia of the wise and witty, the spirit of sexual irreverence takes refuge in the streets; and the scurrilous vulgarities of the tavern balance the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... had a dispute with a scurrilous fellow, who, in addition to obscene remarks and insolent abuse, reproached him with the misfortune of his mutilated person. "Look you," said {the Eunuch}, "this is the only point as to which I am effectually ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... policy, then this criminal, then his counsel, then his accomplices and hirelings, posted in newspapers and dispersed in circles through every part of the kingdom, represent him as an object of great compassion, because he is treated, say they, with, nothing but opprobrious names and scurrilous invectives. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... so successful that Wells's testimony was not called for. The case was withdrawn. No apology was even asked from Gilbert, whose solicitor tells me that Messrs. Lever "behaved very reasonably when once it was made clear to them that Gilbert was not a scurrilous person making a vulgar and slanderous attack ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... installation as Dean, the following scurrilous lines by Smedley, Dean of Clogher, were affixed to the doors ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the collection was one entitled Lola Montez, oder Des Mench gehoert dem Koenige ("Lola Montez, or the Wench who belongs to the King"). There was also a scurrilous, and distinctly blasphemous, broadsheet, purporting to be Lola's private ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... moment having burned it, but I shall regret all my life having made it known publicly, though I could hardly have done otherwise. I did not know my public, I did not know England." Here I think she was wrong in confusing England with a few anonymous letter- writers and scurrilous persons; for however opinions may differ upon the act itself, its wisdom or unwisdom, all right-thinking people honoured her for the sacrifice which she had made. They would have honoured her even more if they had known that she had done it for the ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... various estimates of our poet's worth have been as diversified as they have been in the main unfair. Alternately lauded as a master dramatic craftsman and vilified as a scurrilous purveyor of unsavory humor, he has been buffeted from the top to the bottom of the dramatic scale. More recent writers have been approaching a saner evaluation of his true worth, but never, we believe, has his real position in that dramatic scale been definitely and ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... men have already been mentioned from archbishops and abbots to the scurrilous impostors who used a religious exterior to rob poor people, at whose expense they lived well a wandering, loose, hypocritical life. In York, there were monks and friars, cathedral, parochial, and chantry priests, and clerks. The monastic life was a recognised profession. In ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... the city against him. Addressing the people, he represented that Alcibiades had ruined their affairs and lost their ships by mere self-conceited neglect of his duties, committing the government of the army, in his absence, to men who gained his favor by drinking and scurrilous talking, whilst he wandered up and down at pleasure to raise money, giving himself up to every sort of luxury and excess amongst the courtesans of Abydos and Ionia, at a time when the enemy's navy were on the watch close at hand. It was also objected to him, that ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... a low and scurrilous translation, or rather imitation of the epigrams of Martial and others, purporting to be "by the Rev. Mr. Scott, M.A.," and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... building of the new State House in Springfield, with misuse of the public funds. The commissioners made an apparently straightforward defense of their expenditures. The Republican doubted the statement and reiterated the charge in scurrilous language. Then the aggrieved commissioners, accompanied by their equally exasperated friends, descended upon the office of the Republican to take summary vengeance. It so happened that Douglas was at the moment comfortably ensconced in the editorial sanctum. He ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... this banditti in the administration of Walpole was Arnall, a young attorney, whose mature genius for scurrilous party-papers broke forth in his tender nonage. This hireling was "The Free Briton," and in "The Gazetteer" Francis Walsingham, Esq., abusing the name of a profound statesman. It is said that he received above ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... wish you had published them. Tell the author 'I forgive him, were he twenty times over a satirist;' and think his imitations not at all inferior to the famous ones of Hawkins Browne. He must be a man of very lively wit, and less scurrilous than wits often are: altogether, I very much admire the performance, and wish it all success. The Satirist has taken a new tone, as you will see: we have now, I think, finished with Childe Harold's ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... consideration that the laws of our country are too weak to punish effectually those factitious scribblers, who presume to blacken the brightest characters, and to give even scurrilous language to those who are in the first degrees of honour. This, my lord, among others, is a symptom of the decayed condition of our Government, and serves to show how fatally we mistake licentiousness ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and dine with me," he said; "I can't stand this! Yes, yes, I know her well," he whispered, as they went round the screen which was the only partition between pipes and plates; "but let me see what that scurrilous rag has to say while you order. I'll do the rest, and you had better make ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... lampoons, and libels began afresh. The relatives of the fallen statesman could not appear in the streets without being exposed to insult, and without hearing scurrilous and obscene verses against their father and themselves, in which neither sex nor age was spared, howled in their ears by all the ballad-mongers and broadsheet vendors of the town. The unsigned publication of the States-General, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... centuries ago—or that he considers somebody who does not invite him to supper as no better than a brute and barbarian, or invokes blessings on the man that does. Some are capped by another hand with a biting sarcasm on the first writer, and many, as might be expected, are scurrilous and indecent. Some of the graffiti on the interior walls and pillars of houses are memoranda of domestic transactions; as, how much lard was bought, how many tunics sent to the wash, when a child or a donkey was born, and the like. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... governesses, that their father and brother were a pair of reprobates, and that they themselves, being embittered by the fact that they were not admitted to the good society of their neighbourhood, had deliberately revenged themselves by writing scurrilous libels and caricatures in order to bring Yorkshire men and women into contempt. It all seems incredible now; yet this was the actual state of feeling prevalent in Yorkshire with regard to the ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... pages of scurrilous faction, with a deal of reflections on great persons. Under the notion of High-Churchmen, he runs down all uniformity and church government. Here is the whole Lower House of Convocation, which represents the body of the clergy and both universities, treated with rudeness by an ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... considerable centers of population from Boston to Charleston. In these organizations the voice of the disfranchised classes was articulate for the first time. With unprecedented virulence these Democrats attacked not only policies but personalities. Washington was libeled in such scurrilous fashion that even his composure broke down on one occasion, so Jefferson records; and he declared in a passion that by God! he had rather be in his grave than in ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... William's unpopularity was at its height. A party writer of the time had sought to inflame the general dislike to his Dutch favourites by "a vile pamphlet in abhorred verse," entitled The Foreigners, in which they are loaded with scurrilous insinuations. It required no ordinary courage in the state of the national temper at that moment to venture upon the line of retort that Defoe adopted. What were the English, he demanded, that they should make a mock of foreigners? They were the most mongrel race that ever ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... of clever but scurrilous tracts published under the name of Martin Marprelate, but which are the work of different writers in the time of Elizabeth against prelacy, and which gave rise to great excitement and some inquisition as to ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of the shoulders. The men of better feeling found themselves helpless. As each man's safety and ability to resent insult depended on his trigger finger, the newspapers of that time made interesting but scurrilous and scandalous reading. An appetite for personalities developed, and these derogatory remarks ordinarily led to personal encounters. The streets became battle-grounds of bowie-knives and revolvers, as rivals hunted each other out. This picture may seem lurid and exaggerated, but the cold ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... estimate of some of the heroes of the Commonwealth. Among various replies to his "Defensio," not deserving of notice here, appeared one of especial acrimony, "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum," published about August, 1652. It was a prodigy of scurrilous invective, bettering the bad example which Milton had set (but which hundreds in that age had set him) of ridiculing Salmasius's foibles when he should have been answering his arguments. Having been in Italy, he was taxed with Italian vices: he would have been accused of cannibalism ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... pedagogue hesitated a moment whether he should go after them; but Kennedy being a person in full confidence of the family, and with whom he himself had no delight in associating, "being that he was addicted unto profane and scurrilous jests," he continued his own walk at his own pace, till he reached ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... marched despondently back to Jaffa, and thence to Acre, the French and English mutually accusing each other of having been the cause of the failure to take Jerusalem. The Duke of Burgundy vented his spite by composing a scurrilous song about Richard, which was sung in the French camp. The King of England, much annoyed, revenged himself in a similar manner by writing a few stinging lines, in which he answered these "trumped-up scandals with a few plain truths" about the duke and his ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... a land-roll or register. In Lower Canada, which is essentially France, I recollect the label, "Papier Terrier," upon the door of a public-land-office. A friend of mine, clandestinely and under cover of darkness, removed the label, substituting for it a scurrilous one setting forth "Pasteboard Poodle," an announcement which did not appear to convey any particular idea whatever to the unsettled mind of the haggard provincial chef du bureau, as it flashed upon him next morning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... read in one paper—he proceeded to say—that a most difficult political situation had been avoided by the birth of this child, as there was no possible heir at all, and immense complications would ensue upon the death of the present ruler—the scurrilous rag even gave a resume of this ruler's dissolute life, and a broad hint that the child could in no case be his; but, as they pithily remarked, this added to the little prince's welcome in Ministerial circles, where the lady was greatly beloved and revered, and the King had only been put ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... proposal lapsed. It must be understood that throughout the war the Japanese were in a position to blackmail the Allies, because their sympathies were with Germany, they believed Germany would win, and they filled their newspapers with scurrilous attacks on the British, accusing them of ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... a coup would create upon the minds of the rest of the Slave Squadron. The Psyche, from her phenomenal lack of speed, and general unsuitability for the service upon which she was employed, had, with her crew, become the butt and laughing-stock of every stupid and scurrilous jester on the coast, and many a time had we been made to writhe under the lash of some more than ordinarily envenomed gibe; but now the laugh was to be on our side; we were going to demonstrate to those shallow, jeering wits the superiority of brains over a clean pair ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... our ancestors were for calling names,—particularly the gentlemen of the press! If they had been natives of the Island of Frozen Sounds, along the shore of which Pantagruel and Panurge coasted, they would have stood up to their chins in scurrilous epithets. The comical sketch of their rhetoric in "Salmagundi" is literally true:—"Every day have these slangwhangers made furious attacks on each other and upon their respective adherents, discharging their heavy artillery, consisting of large sheets loaded with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... affection for his daughter, indeed, was so extravagant that it was made the subject of scores of scurrilous lampoons to which even Voltaire contributed, and was a delicious morsel of ill-natured gossip in all the salons and cabarets of Paris. At fifteen the princess was already a woman—tall, handsome, well-formed, with brilliant eyes and the full ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... another side to the picture. Odd groups of loungers indulged in scurrilous jests; hoarse laughter and an occasional angry uproar issued from the hotels, and shabby men with hard faces slouched about the veranda of one. George noticed this, but he presently reached the ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... employs and sustains them all. Thus, for example, all food was once called 'meat'; it is so in our Bible, and 'horse-meat' for fodder is still no unusual phrase; yet 'meat' is now a name given only to flesh. Any little book or writing was a 'libel' once; now only such a one as is scurrilous and injurious. Any leader was a 'duke' (dux); thus "duke Hannibal" (Sir Thomas Eylot), "duke Brennus" (Holland), "duke Theseus" (Shakespeare), "duke Amalek", with other 'dukes' (Gen. xxxvi.). Any journey, by land ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... lewd fellow, Burns," exclaimed Moodie, angrily. "He did worse than hide his ten talents in a napkin. I wonder, my lady, you defile your mouth with his scurrilous words." ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... not more than four or five lines in length and was a bitter and most scurrilous attack on Dr. ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... "Dixie"; to be obliged to keep your sentiments to yourself—for I would not wound Brother by any Ultra-Secession speech, and such could do me no good and only injure him—if he is as friendly with the Federals as they say he is; to listen to the scurrilous abuse heaped on those fighting for our homes and liberties, among them my three brothers—could I endure it? I fear not. Even if I did not go crazy, I would grow so restless, homesick, and miserable, that I would pray for even Clinton again. Oh, I don't, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... "prince of darkness," "turkey buzzard," "ghoul." Somehow, in thinking of the old days, I find it hard to reconcile those men and women who lived under the Knickerbocker sway with their newspapers. It is pleasanter to dwell upon the old customs, to picture Mr. Manhattan leaving the scurrilous sheet behind him when he departed from his store or counting house, and repairing with clean hands to the wife of his bosom and his family, somewhere in Greenwich Village, or Richmond Hill, or Bond Street, or the beginnings ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... violence, not on the whole such good art-work as the earlier fiction, yet very fine in spots and containing such additional sea-dogs as Commodore Trunnion and Lieutenant Hatchway, whose presence makes one forgive much. The original preface contained a scurrilous reference to Fielding, against whom he printed a diatribe in a pamphlet dated the next year. The hero of the story, a handsome ne'er-do-well who has money and position to start the world with, encounters plenty of adventure in England and out of it, by land and sea. There is an ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... reflected again on his antagonist in his Annus Tenebrosus. Mr. Gataker's reply was entitled Thomas Gataker, B.D. his Vindication of the annotation by him published upon these words, "thus saith the Lord," (Jer. x. 2) against the scurrilous aspersions of that grand impostor William Lilly; as also against the various expositions of two of his advocates Mr. John Swan, and another by him cited but not named. Together with the Annotations themselves, wherein the pretended grounds of judiciary astrology, and ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... wool sold for that season. Mr. Dean subsequently purchased twenty lambs at my sale, that he might have some of the stock; which he sold to me again, when I called upon him some time afterwards. Out of this circumstance, an infamous and scurrilous falsehood was propagated in the columns of the Taunton Courier, representing me as having swindled my friend Mr. Dean out of a flock of sheep. When I come to that period of my history, I shall fully explain the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... a warehouseman in Manchester, England, published a scurrilous pamphlet, in which he endeavored to hold up the house of Grant Brothers to ridicule. William Grant remarked upon the occurrence that the man would live to repent of what he had done; and this was conveyed by some talebearer to the libeler, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... and qualities ascribed to the treacherous shepherd by Virgil. He was not without talent, for in one of the Eclogues he bears his part in the poetical contention with credit; but he was unfaithful and fraudulent in his amours, envious, quarrelsome, scurrilous, and a braggart; and his face was remarkable for its dark, Italian hue,—"quamvis ille fuscus," etc. Compared with the undoubted character of John Florio, as already exhibited, that of Menalcas so corresponds as to justify its appropriation to the rival ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... transferred with several other Scottish students to the papal seminary at Rome. Being soon forced by ill health to leave, he went to the English college at Douai, where he remained three years and took his M.A. degree. While at Douai he wrote a scurrilous attack on Queen Elizabeth, which caused a riot among the English students. But, if his truculent character was thus early displayed, his abilities were no less conspicuous; and, though still in his teens, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... monasteries; a man was a rarity she had hardly seen in two months, which was the time she had been there; so that she had leisure to think of her folly, bemoan the effects of her injustice, and contrive, if she could, to remedy her disagreeable life, which now was reduced, not only to scurrilous quarrels, and hard words; but, often in her fury, she flying upon him, and with the courage or indiscretion of her sex, would provoke him to indecencies that render life insupportable on both sides. While they lived at this rate, both contriving how handsomely to get quit ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... for Milne's notes, there are many of them that I think worth preservation as describing and identifying the individuals of whom Fountainhall wrote, although his silly party zeal makes him, like all such partizans of faction, unjust and scurrilous. ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... easily keep away, making a wry face and spitting out the abomination as they passed, after their liberal custom. This, however, was not enough. No sooner had the handbills been issued, than a most scurrilous placard appeared, calculated to inflame the passions of the ignorant, and to make them act after their kind. The Gospellers were accused of an attempt to poach on the Papal preserves, and it was mockingly stated ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Oystershell into the market place, written with the name of him he desired should be banished, without actuall accusing him, sometimes banished an Aristides, for his reputation of Justice; And sometimes a scurrilous Jester, as Hyperbolus, to make a Jest of it. And yet a man cannot say, the Soveraign People of Athens wanted right to banish them; or an Athenian the Libertie to Jest, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... scurrilous traitor," cried Rose, turning very red. "So that is how he talks of me behind my back, and calls me an angel to my face; I'll pay him for this. Do tell me, commandant; never mind what ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... impertinent behaviour, and the inhabitants withdrew their children from his school; but as his means of living decreased, his opinion of his own deserts enlarged; he mistook the cravings of want for spiritual illumination, and so perplexed his mind by reading the scurrilous libels of the day, as to be firmly persuaded that the King was the Devil's bairn, and Archbishop Laud the personal antichrist. A description of church ceremonies thrilled him with horror, and in every prosecution ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... too blind to see the happy chance that interfered with his presence on that occasion, and was sensible enough to realize that, had he been implicated in the least degree (he scorned the possibility of his taking any active part in such scurrilous proceedings), he would probably ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... of all who supported the reigning family of Florence. Poggio had the art of making enemies, though he was a courtier by profession and had been secretary to eight Popes. He raged against Philelpho in a flood of scurrilous pamphlets; Valla, the great Latin scholar, was violently attacked for a mere word of criticism, and Niccolo Perotti, the grammarian, paid severely for supporting his friend. Poggio was always in extremes. His eulogies in praise of Lorenzo de' Medici, and Niccolo Niccoli of Florence are perfect in ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... Wittenberg was a certain Simon Lemchen, or Lemnius, a lewd fellow of the baser {503} sort who published two volumes of scurrilous epigrams bringing unfounded and nasty charges against Luther, Melanchthon and the other Reformers and their wives. When he fled the city before he could be arrested, Luther revenged himself partly by a Catilinarian sermon, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... about just now as breeding-grounds for the pestiferous Influenza microbe. The worst "low-lying" districts Punch knows are the editorial offices of certain scurrilous journals, and the social pestilences they engender and disseminate sorely need abatement. Perhaps when they have duly fumigated the House, they will turn their attention ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 30, 1891 • Various
... of Christendom and Islamism. Emblems do not necessarily require any analogy between the objects representing, and the objects or qualities represented, but may arise from pure accident. After a scurrilous jest the beggar's wallet became the emblem of the confederated nobles, the Gueux of the Netherlands; and a sling, in the early minority of Louis XIV, was adopted from the refrain of a song by the Frondeur opponents of Mazarin. The portraiture of a ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... sorts of fun about the country pair. Now that is a pretty dangerous business, because there is no telling who may be an operator. Dick growled at him savagely under his breath and told him to shut up. Nay! Nay! Mr. Hanigan wouldn't shut up worth a cent. Finally he made some scurrilous remark, and then another knife and fork came into play. Mr. Bridegroom was doing the talking now, and this is what he ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... revives the old fable of a female pope, and loads her with all the crimes of which a priest, or a woman, could possibly be guilty. Shadwell's comedy of the "Lancashire Witches" was levelled more immediately at the papists, but interspersed with most gross and scurrilous reflections upon the English divines of the high church party. Otway, Lee, and Dryden were the formidable antagonists, whom the court opposed to the whig poets. Thus arrayed and confronted, the stage absolutely foamed with politics; the prologues and epilogues, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... conclusions. But, coming into collision with politics, personal as well as speculative, and with questions of real life, fitted to call for other accomplishments than those of a recluse scholar, it seemed probable that this great classical critic would be found pedantic and scurrilous; and upon the affairs of so peculiar a people, it was certain that he would be found ignorant and self-contradicting. Even Englishmen have seldom thoroughly understood the feud of the great Parliamentary war: the very word "rebellion," so ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... preface to "Adonais". (Shelley Memorials, page 121. Garnett's Relics of Shelley, pages 49, 190. Collected Letters, page 147, in Moxon's Edition of Works in one volume 1840.) It is clear that, though he bore scurrilous abuse with patience, he was prepared if needful to give blow for blow. On the 11th of June, 1821, he wrote to Ollier:—"As yet I have laughed; but woe to those scoundrels if they should once make me lose my temper!" The stanzas on the ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... scoff &c. (disrespect) 929. raise a laugh &c. (amuse) 840; play the fool, make a fool of oneself. Adj. derisory, derisive; mock, mocking; sarcastic, ironic, ironical, quizzical, burlesque, Hudibrastic[obs3]; scurrilous &c. (disrespectful) 929. Adv. in ridicule ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... by any man of honour! or feeling, to descend to answer a scurrilous person, signing himself ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... you will benefit the state, and improve the morals of society. The most wholesome truths may be told with pleasantry. Satire, to be severe, needs not to be scurrilous. The approval of the judicious will always follow the ridicule which is directed against ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... I am a printer, sir, and it is on my conscience to tell you I have, in the course of business, been compelled this very morning to receive orders for the printing of various squibs and, I much fear, scurrilous things.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... get, by the payment of a small sum, one of the daily papers of the city to write an article in his favor, entitled "Abduction!" During a few days, the editor of the same filthy sheet repeated his scurrilous attacks on Catholicity, not forgetting to squirt a good deal of his dirt on the Rev. Dr. Ugo, whom he blamed for encouraging the girl's vocation, and thus depriving the hungry Presbyterian Calvin of a fair wife ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... visited Scotland, and was warmly welcomed by his kinsman, the laird of Bonhill. In 1769, he published "The Adventures of an Atom," a stupid, foul, and scurrilous political satire, in which Lord Bute, having been his patron, was "lashed" in Smollett's usual style. In 1768, Smollett left England for ever. He desired a consulship, but no consulship was found for him, which is not surprising. He died at Monte Nova, near Leghorn, in September ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... "Varieties." In the second division were reprinted the two Latin Poems that had originally formed part of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, with their full titles as at first: to wit, the "Eucharistic Ode," to the great Salmasius for his Defensio Regia, and the set of scurrilous Iambics "To the Bestial Blackguard John Milton, Parricide and Advocate of the Parricide." With reference to the last there are several explanations for the reader in Latin prose at different points in the volume. At one place the reader ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... over its columns; and through them (let us add, as it is that of which we especially wish to speak,) over the reputation of Mr. WILLIS. The remarks in a late number of that journal, under the head of 'Mr. Willis's Defence' against a scurrilous attack on his private character in a down-eastern print, were equally just and felicitous. Had it been generally known in his native town who was the instigator of that attack, we have good authority for saying that, gross as it was, Mr. WILLIS would have considered it utterly beneath his notice. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... subjected,[1150] attempted to prove that the Protestant ministers had no "calling" to their office, and that recourse must be had to tradition to explain and supplement the Holy Scriptures. When Beza was about to reply, the floor was seized by a coarse Dominican friar, one Claude de Sainctes, who in a scurrilous speech went over much of the same ground, and, waxing more and more vehement, did not hesitate to assert that tradition stood on a firmer foundation than the Bible itself, which could be perverted to countenance the most opposite doctrines.[1151] An hour and ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... time the name Mercurius began to be very freely adopted for these periodicals. It had been already, for a long time, assumed as a nom de plume by writers and printers, but the title was now assigned to the publications themselves. One of the earliest of these was Mercurius Aulicus, a scurrilous print in the interest of the court party—as its name imports—which first appeared in 1642. Others were entitled respectively Mercurius Britannicus—Mercurius Anti-Britannicus—Mercurius Fumigosus, a Smoaking Nocturnal—Mercurius ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... reconsidered the subject we talked upon today. Nothing on earth shall make me risk the possibility of the Prince's goodness to me furnishing an opportunity for a single scurrilous fool's presuming to hint even that he had, in the slightest manner, departed from the slightest engagement. The Prince's right, in point of law and justice, on the present occasion to recall the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... it was good that he penned the scurrilous article. For I had allowed happiness to lull my radical conscience asleep. It was now goaded awake. I held a conference ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... the city wall, many fragments of which were then standing, and she had to pass through the Cripples Gate before she reached the squalid quarter bordering Moor Fields westward, where distressed poets, scurrilous pamphleteers, booksellers' hacks and literary ne'er-do-wells dragged out an ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... arguments and style of his opponents; "bawdy charms", "the very butchery of Christian souls", are samples of the names fastened by him upon the cause which they defended. [Footnote: Lodge, in his Defence of Poetry, Musick, and Stage Plays (1579 or 1580), is hardly less scurrilous. "There came into my hand lately a little (would God a wittye) pamphelet.... Being by me advisedly wayed, I find it the oftscome of imperfections, the writer fuller of words than judgement, the matter certainely as ridiculus as serius."—In ...
— English literary criticism • Various |
