"Scutcheon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the pear as a charge upon their scutcheon. The incredible thing may have been that the people were so simple and free from jealousy as to allow a public gate to bear the name of a private family. The "little circle" was the circle of ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... Between the solemn pinewoods, carry the lovely lady sleeping, Out of the cold grey Northern mists, with banner and scutcheon, plume, and lance, Carry her southward, palled in purple, weeping, weeping, weeping, weeping,— O, ma patrie, La plus cherie, Adieu, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... late at night, he would make his way back, with weary limbs and aching ribs, his head whirling confusedly with bombast and loud talk, through the sleeping city to the Faubourg Saint-Germain. There, as he strode past some aristocratic mansion and saw the scutcheon blazoned on its facade and the two lions lying white in the moonlight on guard before its closed portal, he would cast a look of hatred at the building. Presently, as he resumed his march, he would picture himself standing, musket in hand, on a barricade, in ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... Lilith and Eve After Andrea del Sarto Any Wife to any Husband Aristophanes' Apology Asolando Balaustion's Adventure Bean Stripe, A Before Bells and Pomegranates Bifurcation Bishop Blougram Bishop orders his Tomb at St. Praxed's Church, The Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A By the Fireside Caliban upon Setebos Cavalier Tunes Cenciaja Charles Avison Cherries Childe Ronald Christmas Eve Cleon Colombe's Birthday Confessions Count Gismond Cristina Cristina and Monaldeschi Daniel Bartoli Death in ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Colonel Sterett, conducts himse'f in them painful scenes between him an' the goat an' that Red Dog editor in a manner to command respects, an' he returns with honors from them perils. Ther's no more to be done. The affair closes without a stain on the 'scutcheon of Wolfville, or the fair fame of Colonel Sterett; which last may continyoo to promulgate his valyooable paper, shore of our confidence an' upheld by our esteem. It is not incumbent on him ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... seems to me that love Should level all degrees; Pure honour, and a stainless heart Are Nature's heraldries. No scutcheon needs a noble soul (Alas! how thinks the age?); He is not poor who freedom hath For his broad heritage. Then welcome sternest teacher, Toil; Vain dreams of youth, farewell; The future hath its duty's prize— ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... sculptor-monk endeavoured to work out here was the triumph of Death over Life, meets with fewer objections. There are three figures or heads symbolizing Death, of which the central one wears a diadem that bristles with dead men's bones. Immediately below is Death's scutcheon emblazoned with allegorical bearings. On each side of this is a row of heads rising from the tomb, in which a pope, an emperor, a bishop, and a peasant are to be recognised. In the middle part of the composition are two kneeling angels blowing trumpets, and above these is a vast ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... know,' said Charteris, 'but I'm very glad to hear it. For hist! I have a ger-rudge against the person. Beneath my ban that mystic man shall suffer, coute que coute, Matilda. He sat upon me—publicly, and the resultant blot on my scutcheon can only be wiped out with blood, or ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... in fateful hour 1483-1485 Smothered his nephews in the Tower, He murdered them the Crown to gain; A heavy price for three years' reign. The Scutcheon's blotted terribly Of this King Richard number Three, For it seems his recreation Was ordering decapitation. 1485 On Bosworth Field when sorely pressed He made a bid th'uncommonest 'My kingdom for a horse' he cried; No ...
— A Humorous History of England • C. Harrison
... the false herald that painted your shield: True honor to-day must be sought on the field! Her scutcheon shows white with a blazon of red,— The life-drops ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... panes of quaint device, Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings; And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... Musketeers of the French King's, one out of this realm, to our disgrace, shamefully fled; and he (by report) Rittmaster Dugald Dalgetty. Till which, bruit be either abolished, and the stain—as an ill blot on a clean scutcheon—wiped away, or as shamefully acknowledged as it is itself shameful, I abide, as ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... it in the few things that still kept their grip on the past: on the wall an old, black painting of a knight in ruff and quilted doubtlet; a pounce-box and a hawking-glove on the chimney-piece, and above it an oval scutcheon, with a golden eagle naissant from a fesse vert. And hope was ever new-born here, but it was the hope centred in the Virgin-Mother, posed in ivory over a wooden prie-Dieu. Nor did I feel that I had shifted ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... that holy sign In deathless light among His stars To make its blazonry divine A scutcheon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... are proud of the antiquity of their house; and they defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance, afraid of derogating from their nobility, and carefully avoiding a sort of blot in their scutcheon, which they ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... sward. From a cloud over the lion proceeds an arm clothed in chain mail, and holding in the hand, suspended by a baldrick, a shield bearing the arms of France (modern[3])—Azure, three fleurs-de-lis or. On a scutcheon of pretence in the centre, Argent, a lion ramp. gules, debruised with ragged staff, proper. This device forms the 1st quarter of the quarterings of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... appertain; But people from the change have nothing won. Rid of the evil one, the evil ones remain. Lord Baron call thou me, so is the matter good; Of other cavaliers the mien I wear. Dost make no question of my gentle blood; See here, this is the scutcheon that I bear! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... so far as his heart, his head, and other secret places were concerned, he had properties which rendered him most praiseworthy. An angel (pray believe this) would have walked a long way without meeting an old warrior firmer at his post, a lord with more spotless scutcheon, of shorter ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... he growled through a cloud of swirling cigar smoke. "I believe you are crazy. I told you to go home, Bushrod. Miss Lucy said that, did she? Well, we haven't kept the scutcheon very clear. Two years ago last week, wasn't it, Bushrod, when she died? Confound it! Are you going to stand there all night ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... jack, ancient, gonfalon, union jack; banderole, " old glory " [U.S.], quarantine flag; vexillum[obs3]; yellow-flag, yellow jack; tricolor, stars and stripes; bunting. heraldry, crest; coat of arms, arms; armorial bearings, hatchment[obs3]; escutcheon, scutcheon; shield, supporters; livery, uniform; cockade, epaulet, chevron; garland, love knot, favor. [Of locality] beacon, cairn, post, staff, flagstaff, hand, pointer, vane, cock, weathercock; guidepost, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... against Philip II. Gourgues, happy once more to cross swords with the Spaniards, gladly embraced this offer; but, on his way to join the Portuguese prince, he died at Tours of a sudden illness. The French mourned the loss of the man who had wiped a blot from the national scutcheon, and respected his memory as that of one of the best captains of his time. And, in truth, if a zealous patriotism, a fiery valor, and skilful leadership are worthy of honor, then is such tribute due ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... to him.] Ah, now I have it. There's an elephant Upon the scutcheon; show her that, and say— Here's ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... lay there he could not tell; but when he came to himsell he was lying in the auld kirkyard of Redgauntlet parochine, just at the door of the family aisle, and the scutcheon of the auld knight, Sir Robert, hanging over his head. There was a deep morning fog on grass and gravestane around him, and his horse was feeding quietly beside the minister's twa cows. Steenie would have thought ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... noontide of your prosperity, an unwelcome remembrancer, a perpetually recurring mortification, a drain on your purse, a more intolerable dun upon your pride, a drawback upon success, a rebuke to your rising, a stain in your blood, a blot on your scutcheon, a rent in your garment, a death's-head at your banquet, Agathocles' pot, a Mordecai in your gate, a Lazarus at your door, a lion in your path, a frog in your chamber, a fly in your ointment, a mote in your eye, a triumph to your enemy, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... rights of trusting husbands to invade; I say the Cid would force such knaves as these To beg the city's pardon on their knees; And with the flat of his all-conquering blade Their rank usurped and 'scutcheon would degrade. Thus would the men of former times, I say, Treat the degenerate ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... history of Spain than this poor, mistreated Juana la Loca, "the mad Juana," and to every diligent student of Spanish history this instance of woman's inhumanity to woman will ever be a blot on the scutcheon of the celebrated Isabella ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... thy shield betrays The moral of thy life; a forecast wise, And that large honour that deceit defies, Inspired thy fathers in the elder days, Who decked thy scutcheon with that sturdy phrase, TO BE RATHER THAN SEEM. As eve's red skies Surpass the morning's rosy prophecies, Thy life to that proud boast its answer pays. Scorning thy faith and purpose to defend The ever-mutable multitude at last Will hail ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... die, and so is to rejoin her lover; but, thus rejoined, will "blots upon the 'scutcheon" seem to them the all-sufficient claim for Thorold's deed—Thorold who dies with these words on ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... words, he would consider his honor ineffaceably stained by either keeping the boy on the one hand or receiving any payment on the other. Don Filipo would lose ten times the amount of the purchase money rather than suffer the shadow of a shade of reproach to rest for one instant on his 'scutcheon." ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... I noticed a large house in the midst of the vines not far off the road. On drawing near I found that it was ruinous, and had been long since abandoned. It had been a rather grand house once, and must have belonged to people of importance in the country. There was a finely-carved scutcheon with arms over the Gothic door, and the mullioned windows, which had lost all their glass, had something of the pathos of gentility that, becoming poor and old, has been abandoned to all winds and weathers. The little courtyard was full of high weeds and shrubs, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... last quarter of a century we have caught a glimpse of a new national honor. It is the belief that battle and bloodshed, except for the immediate defense of hearth and home, is a blot on the 'scutcheon of any nation. It is the creed of modern men who rise in their majesty and say: "We will not stain our country's honor with the bloodshed of war. God-given life is too dear. The forces of vice, evil, and disease are challenging us to marshal ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... that their fathers have no reverence for the generation before them, then will they in turn have no reverence for their fathers. Let them be taught that the sins of their ancestors involve their own honour so little that they need not take any trouble to clear the blot off the scutcheon, but may safely sit down and laugh over it, saying, 'Very likely it is true. If so, it is very amusing; and if not—what matter?'—Then those young people are being bred up in a habit of mind which contains in itself all the capabilities ...
— Froude's History of England • Charles Kingsley
... great-great-grandfather's great gray beard, By my father's sword, by my uncle's hat, By my spinster aunt's Angora cat, By my ancient grandame's buckled shoes, By my uncle Gregory's marvellous brews, By Sir Sydney's wig, And his ruff so big,— Indeed, by his whole preposterous rig,— By the scutcheon and crest, and all the rest Of the signs of my house, I vow this vow: That whoever beneath this mistletoe bough Shall first kiss me, he—none but he— My partner ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... action, not dissipating it on useless things which occupied the minds of other persons. He drew his thought from his heart like his sword from its scabbard, holding it aloft in his ermined hand, as on his scutcheon, shining with sincerity. That secret once penetrated, all is clear. We can comprehend the depth of convictions that are not thoughts, but living principles,—clear, distinct, downright, and as immaculate as the ermine itself. We understand that sale made to his sister before ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... Montacute himself being in the Dragoon Guards, was of much the same order, a black hunter with racing blood in him, loins and withers that assured any amount of force, and no fault but that of a rather coarse head, traceable to a slur on his 'scutcheon on the distaff side from a plebeian great-grandmother, who had been a cart mare, the only stain in his otherwise faultless pedigree. However, she had given him her massive shoulders, so that he was ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. 'T is insensible, then? yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I 'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon. And so ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Christ forgave His enemies in death? He never loved a woman! Strength and resolution returned to me. Let common sailors and rag-pickers resort to murder and suicide as fit outlets for their unreasoning brute wrath when wronged; but as for me, why should I blot my family scutcheon with a merely vulgar crime? Nay, the vengeance of a Romani must be taken with assured calmness and easy deliberation—no haste, no plebeian fury, no effeminate fuss, no excitement. I walked up and down slowly, meditating on every point of the bitter drama in which I had ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... down from the scutcheon On me with familiar face; I greet the old friends of my boyhood, And speed through the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the study wiser and sadder men. They knew more about the properties of a certain flexible wood than they had ever dreamed of before. They also felt themselves marked men in high quarters, with a blot on their new boy's scutcheon which it would take a heap of ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... clear-headed, and quite determined that now or never the overscored slate of suspicion should be wiped clean. I still forlornly and foolishly felt, I suppose, that he might yet usher before me some miraculously simple explanation that would wipe his scutcheon clean, that would put everything back to the older and happier order. But as I heard his deep-wrung cry of "Oh, what's the good of all this?" I knew that life wasn't so romantic as we're always ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... To have at least waited your payment rather Than paid myself, had I been eager of Your gold. I also know, that were I even The villain I am deemed, the service rendered So recently would not permit you to Pursue me to the death, except through shame, Such as would leave your scutcheon but a blank. But this is nothing: I demand of you 230 Justice upon your unjust servants, and From your own lips a disavowal of All sanction of their insolence: thus much You owe to the unknown, who asks no more, And never thought to have ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... into naked jingoism spread wonder and indignation through the Liberal Party, and shook the faith of many who, down to that time, had regarded Gladstone as a sworn servant of Peace. The Egyptian policy of 1882 must, I fear, always remain the blot on Gladstone's scutcheon; and three years later he gave away the whole case for intervention, and threw the blame on his predecessors in office. In his Address to the Electors of Midlothian before the General Election of 1885 he used the following words: "We have, according to my conviction ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... if you were a better, or a younger, man: but I will not stain the Empire of which you were chosen to be a stay, and are the shame, with the blood of such as you. You are beneath judgment: and that clemency which is our scutcheon I extend to you. Live, therefore, and repent, O'Hara. I, however, you understand, now turn from you for ever. And I discharge you like a menial, sir. See to it that within six months you have your affairs regulated, and send in your ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... that he became Governor of New Jersey. He loved and respected his father, and called Deborah mother, and loved her very much. And she was worthy of all love, and ever treated him with tenderness and gentlest considerate care. Possibly a blot on the 'scutcheon may, in the working of God's providence, not always be a dire misfortune, for it sometimes has the effect of binding broken hearts as nothing else can, as ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... a hundred golden St. Andrews," he muttered, "if I could make out the scutcheon. It looks most like a black dragon couchant on a red field, which is not a Scottish bearing. The lady is French, doubtless, and passes through from Ireland to visit the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... distinctions between them, even in the sight of God. Yet, as their coffins were borne one after another through the street, the bell has tolled a requiem for all alike. What mattered it, whether or no there were a silver scutcheon on the coffin-lid? "Open thy bosom, Mother Earth!" Thus spake the bell. "Another of thy children is coming to his long rest. Take him to thy bosom, and let him slumber in peace." Thus spake the bell, and Mother Earth received her child. With the self-same ...
— A Bell's Biography - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... de Geldern, the Police Minister. He was of Dutch extraction, and, what is more, of a family of Dutch Jews. Although everybody was aware of this blot in his scutcheon, he was mortally angry if ever his origin was suspected; and made up for his fathers' errors by outrageous professions of religion, and the most austere practices of devotion. He visited church every morning, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... why Lois should continue to own a house for which she had no use; but there was less reason why her former husband should acquire the property merely, as it seemed, from motives of sentiment. Every weed in the garden—and the crop was abundant—called attention to the blot on the Montgomery 'scutcheon. And if Kirkwood was silly enough to cling to the old home, while living in a rented house in a less agreeable neighborhood, there was no reason why he should refuse to lease it and devote ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... cathedral of St. Patrick's a superb organ, surmounted by his own armorial bearings. It was placed facing the nave of the church. But after Ormond's attainder, Swift, as Dean of St. Patrick's, received orders from government to remove the scutcheon from the church. He obeyed, but he placed the shield in the great aisle, where he himself and Stella lie buried, and where the arms still remain. The verses have suffered much by the inaccuracy of the noble ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... I, choking on the word. "Lies, madam? Why then, how cometh my picture here—my coat of arms above the mantel yonder, the Conisby 'scutcheon on your gates? What do you ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... their road to distinction. The Earl of Sussex, moreover, was of more ancient and honourable descent than his rival, uniting in his person the representation of the Fitz-Walters, as well as of the Ratcliffes; while the scutcheon of Leicester was stained by the degradation of his grandfather, the oppressive minister of Henry VII., and scarce improved by that of his father, the unhappy Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, executed on Tower Hill, August 22, 1553. But in person, features, and address, weapons so formidable ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... that peril of the deep With smiling lips and in your eyes the light, Steadfast and confident, of those who keep Their storied 'scutcheon bright. ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... fitting poetical co-worker, in whose moods he seemed to see a perfect reflection of his own—Heine, in whom the bitterest irony was wedded to the deepest pathos, "the spoiled favorite of the Graces," "the knight with the laughing tear in his scutcheon"—Heine, whose songs are charged with the brightest light and deepest ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Pook, tho coy in the matter of cleansing his scutcheon before a judge and jury, was not wholly without weapons of defense and offense. Arriving at the office next day, Roland found a scene of desolation, in the middle of which, like Marius among the ruins of Carthage, sat Jimmy, the vacant-faced office boy. Jimmy was reading an illustrated comic ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... sad Consort, stealing through the gloom Of Hangs in mute anguish o'er the scutcheon'd hearse, Or graves with trembling style ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... the BAR-SINISTER in his scutcheon. Hence he could never be acknowledged by the family; hence, too, the Lady Theodora's spotless purity (though the young people had been brought up together) could never be brought ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... retirement somewhere in the back premises of Sir Pitt's mansion. It reappeared now for poor Rose Dawson. Sir Pitt was a widower again. The arms quartered on the shield along with his own were not, to be sure, poor Rose's. She had no arms. But the cherubs painted on the scutcheon answered as well for her as for Sir Pitt's mother, and Resurgam was written under the coat, flanked by the Crawley Dove and Serpent. Arms and Hatchments, Resurgam.—Here is ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... consider the possibility of marriage with a girl of her training, even although it is on a false basis, with a monstrosity of nose on my face, as with the legend of retail grocery across my scutcheon," he told himself. He even laughed ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... return. Our gracious King, who really is extraordinarily kind, has given my brother the reversion of the post of first gentleman of the chamber, which his father-in-law now fills, on the one condition that the scutcheon of the Mortsaufs should be placed side by side with that of ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... play, 'A Blot on the "Scutcheon,"' is chiefly interesting, as it was the occasion of a quarrel between its author and that most eccentric of theatrical personalities, Macready. The quarrel was, our critic points out, a matter of money. But Browning failed to see this; ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... were baffled and defeated". But "baffled" implies far more than this; it contains allusion to a custom in the days of chivalry, according to which a perjured or recreant knight was either in person, or more commonly in effigy, hung up by the heels, his scutcheon blotted, his spear broken, and he himself or his effigy made the mark and subject of all kinds of indignities; such a one being said to be 'baffled'{202}. Twice in Spenser recreant knights are so dealt with. I can only quote a portion of the ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... unadorned simple man that you welcome to your bosom, or a thing of stars and garters, a patch of parchment, the minion of a throne, the lordling of twenty descents, in which each has been weaker than that before it, the hero of a scutcheon, whose glory is in his quarterings, and whose worldly wealth comes from the sweat of serfs whom the euphonism of an effete country has learned to decorate with the ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... window that would have been very handsome if two side-lights had not been obscured by the two Tables of the Law, with the royal arms on the top of the first table, and over the other our own, with the Fordyce in a scutcheon of pretence; for, as an inscription recorded, they had been erected by Margaret, daughter of Christopher Fordyce, Esquire, of Chantry House, and relict of Sir James John Winslow, Kt., sergeant-at-law, A.D. 1700—the ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the heraldic emblems with which it was charged. Lions and bears, rampant, couchant, gardant, and other fauna in becoming attitudes, bends, bars, engrailed, dancetty, raguly, gules, azure, argent or otherwise—all these things of beauty vanished from Dalibor's scutcheon while the assembled multitude wondered "What next?" Thereupon Dalibor held forth, in impressive manner and impassioned tones, on the iniquity of the system, the inequality of condition, under which they were all forced to ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... see," Henry Wimbush rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I can only think of two suicides, one violent death, four or perhaps five broken hearts, and half a dozen little blots on the scutcheon in the way of misalliances, seductions, natural children, and the like. No, on the whole, it's a placid and ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... the union of its members was blessed by the Church, expired, and no legitimate offspring were left. Gilbert's spouse, accordingly, must, if a genuine Oliverres, have come into the world with a considerable blot on her 'scutcheon. ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... With statue of stone, and scutcheon of brass, Slumbers a great lord of the village. All his life was riot and pillage, But at length, to escape the threatened doom Of the everlasting, penal fire, He died in the dress of a mendicant friar, And bartered his wealth for a daily mass. But all that ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Francois, who, after passing eighteen years in prison, yet won the grace and love of Joan of Naples by his charms. But the real temper of this fierce tribe was not shown among troubadours, or in the courts of love and beauty. The stern and barren rock from which they sprang, and the comet of their scutcheon, are the true symbols of their nature. History records no end of their ravages and slaughters. It is a tedious catalogue of blood—how one prince put to fire and sword the whole town of Courthezon; how another ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... how would it be afterwards, when they had settled down to the routine of every-day life? It would be a tremendous experiment, but she could not let him enter on that close union in ignorance of the blot on her scutcheon, and then the door would be closed on the earlier half of her life, which had been so bitter-sweet. How little peace she had known since her mother's death! how heavenly sweet her life had been when she knew no deeper care than ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... perpetrators at least were worthless boys, and the other was away from Grandcourt, and might possibly never come back. Was it worth risking so much for so small a scruple? Did not his duty to Grandcourt demand sacrifices of him, and could he not that very night remove a dark blot from its scutcheon! ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... Mildred and Mertoun, which blots the Tresham 'scutcheon, is in origin as innocent as that which breaks into flower across the royal ambitions of Colombe; and their childlike purity of passion becomes, in spite of the wrong to which it has led them, the reconciling fact upon which at the close ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... pleasure opens to thee—to me a new career of fame. Let them speak the doom which I despise, and erase the name of Bois-Guilbert from their list of monastic slaves! I will wash out with blood whatever blot they may dare to cast on my scutcheon." ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... was that famous captain, the noble Captain Credence. His were the red colours, and Mr. Promise bare them. And for a scutcheon he had the Holy Lamb and the golden shield; and he had ten thousand men at his feet.' Now, this same Captain Credence from first to last of the war always led the van both within and around Mansoul. In ordinary ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... than matched the rival pastors That tute a credulous Fatherland; And we admit that you are proved our masters When there is dirty work in hand; But in your lore I notice one hiatus: Your Kaiser's scutcheon with its hideous blot— You've no corrosive in your apparatus Can ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... listen," responded the young man, solemnly, "I will unfold before your eyes the one blot upon the 'scutcheon of my promising career. My full name is Jonathan ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... pair of stairs, at the head of which stairs is a handsome spacious place to walk in, somewhat like unto a gallery. Wherein, upon one of the walls, right over against you as you enter the said place, so as your eye cannot escape the sight of it, there is described and painted in a very large scutcheon the arms of the King of Spain; and in the lower part of the said scutcheon there is likewise described a globe, containing in it the whole circuit of the sea and the earth, whereupon is a horse standing on his hinder part within the globe, and the ...
— Drake's Great Armada • Walter Biggs
... Gnomes; their deception in the matter of the self-supplying tables had weakened their loyalty seriously for a time; the projected alliance of the Princess Edna with the surviving member of a race whose scutcheon bore the taint of Ogreism had aroused their bitter resentment. But all these grievances had been redressed, and the amiable easygoing Maerchenlanders were willing to forgive and forget them. Now they were called upon to put up with a ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... waved the scutcheon of the president. Glittering were the glories of the hundred quarterings of the house of Darrell. 'Si non e vero e ben trovato,' was the motto. Lord Darrell's grandfather had been a successful lawyer. Lord Squib's emblazonry was a satire on its owner. 'Holdfast' was the motto of a ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... page carrying a scutcheon argent, charged with an eagle displayed proper: then VISUS, with a fan of peacock's feathers: next LUMEN, with a crown of bays and a shield with a bright sun in it, apparelled in tissue: then ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... had a knife—such as the beauty that once cut his throat—or even a scrap of iron or of really hard pointed wood, honour could be satisfied and a stain removed from the scutcheon of Moussa Isa ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... thy life, Bans all who aid thee in the strife; Nay, each whose succor, cold and scant, With meanest alms relieves thy want; Haunts thee when living; and, when dead, Dwells on thy yet devoted head, Rends honor's 'scutcheon from thy hearse, Stills o'er thy bier the holy verse, And spurns thy corpse from hallowed ground Flung like vile carrion to the hound; Such is the dire and desperate doom For sacrilege, decreed by Rome; And such the well-deserved meed Of thine ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... length three yards and a half up to the boss, having eight sides all of one piece; from the socket it was fixed into the boss above, into which boss the stalk was deeply soldered with lead. In the midst of the stalk, in every second square, was the Neville's cross; a saltire in a scutcheon, being Lord Neville's arms, finely cut; and, at every corner of the socket, was a picture of one of the four Evangelists, finely set forth and carved. The boss at the top of the stalk was an octangular stone, finely cut and bordered, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... gods And wrong them of their dues. Bethink ye well, The eye of Heaven beholds the just of men, And the unjust, nor ever in this world Has one sole godless sinner found escape. Stand then on Heaven's side and never blot Athens' fair scutcheon by abetting wrong. I came to you a suppliant, and you pledged Your honor; O preserve me to the end, O let not this marred visage do me wrong! A holy and god-fearing man is here Whose coming purports comfort for ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... who were suspected to be spies; a servant of his had paid a visit to Cardinal Pole in Italy, whence he was suspected of holding a correspondence with that obnoxious prelate; he had quartered the arms of Edward the Confessor on his scutcheon, which made him be suspected of aspiring to the crown, though both he and his ancestors had openly, during the course of many years, maintained that practice, and the heralds had even justified it by their authority. These were the crimes for which a jury, notwithstanding ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... from the house of the Attalids. He could show no legitimate scutcheon; but this was a small matter. If there was a chance of a national outbreak, it could best be fomented by a son of Eumenes. Aristonicus was believed to have been born of an Ephesian concubine of the king.[509] We know nothing of his personality, but ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... national institution, make the compact of the Constitution carry it into all Territories, cover it with the national images, set it up as part of our great republican profession, stamp on our flag and our shield and our scutcheon the emblem of human slavery,' ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... scutcheon, pavise, scutum; defense, protection, palladium, bulwark, safeguard. Associated Words: ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... been this respect for shoebuckles. Where, for instance, would the Empire of Napoleon have been, if Ney and Lannes had never sported such a thing as a coat-of-arms, and had only written their simple names on their shields, after the fashion of Desaix's scutcheon yonder?—the bold Republican who led the crowning charge at Marengo, and sent the best blood of the Holy Roman Empire to the right-about, before the wretched misbegotten imperial heraldry was born, that was to prove so disastrous to the ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... out, on which there was, however, no sign of a grave, and, at last, they uncovered the skeleton of an old gentleman in a wig and peruke! There was little doubt now that the boy, no matter what the blot on his 'scutcheon, was of his own flesh and blood, and the Major was tempted to go back at once for him, but it was a long way, and he was ill and anxious to get back home. So he took the Wilderness Road for the Bluegrass, and wrote old Joel the facts and asked him to send Chad to him whenever he would come. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... tattered and diminished 'Scutcheon that hung upon the time-worn walls of thy princely stairs, BLAKESMOOR! have I in childhood so oft stood poring upon thy mystic characters—thy emblematic supporters, with their prophetic "Resurgam"—till, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... meantime we heap up the pine wood and feel perfectly warm with these thick palace walls between us and the outside air. Also my husband's new edition is on the edge of coming out, and we have had an application from Mr. Phelps, of Sadler's Wells, for leave to act his 'Blot on the 'Scutcheon,' which, if it doesn't succeed, its public can have neither hearts nor intellects (that being an impartial opinion), and which, if it succeeds, will be of pecuniary advantage to us. Look out in the papers.... My love and my husband's ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... delicately respected my incognito, for which I thank you. You know who and what my ancestors were, and can certify that the family of de Sigognac has been noble for more than a thousand years, and that not one who has borne the name has ever had a blot on his scutcheon." ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... pursuivants, whom tabards deck, With silver scutcheon round their neck And there, with herald pomp and state, They hail'd Lord Marmion: They hail'd him Lord of Fontenaye, Of Lutterward, and Scrivelsbaye, ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... embarked on board two hundred ships for a specific and definite object on the side of the Christians and under the command of their most celebrated admiral; and yet the balance of advantage was actually gained by the inferior force. No subsequent glories can ever wipe this stain from the scutcheon of Doria, or can excuse the fact that at the most supreme moment of his career he failed to fight the battle that he was in honour, in conscience, and in duty bound to deliver. Next day the wind came fair for Corfu, and ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... town guard, with partisans over the shoulders. Then came the sheriff of the county and his attendants. Next followed the twenty-six alms-knights (for such was their number), walking two and two, and wearing red mantles, with a scutcheon of Saint George on the shoulder, but without the garter surrounding it. Then came the thirteen petty canons, in murrey-coloured gowns, with the arms of Saint George wrought in a roundel on the shoulder; then the twelve canons, similarly attired; ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Earl Tresham, we have an admirable picture of the head of a great house, proud above all things of the honour of the family and its yet stainless 'scutcheon, and proud, with a deep brotherly tenderness of his sister Mildred: a strong and fine nature, one whom men instinctively cite as "the perfect spirit of honour." Mertoun, the apparent hero of the play, is a much less prominent ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... and harbour him, as if he had any claim to that sort of nest. If I could guide that benignant heart, I believe I should counsel it to exclude one who does not profess to have any higher aim in life than that of patching up his broken fortune, and wiping clean from his bourgeois scutcheon ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... at the head of the unpopular favourite, and the weapon which they considered as a badge of affectation and finery. Mrs. Lilias crested and drew up her head with all the deep-felt pride of gratified resentment; while the steward, observing a strict neutrality of aspect, fixed his eyes upon an old scutcheon on the opposite side of the wall, which he seemed to examine with the utmost accuracy, more willing, perhaps, to incur the censure of being inattentive to the sermon, than that of seeming to listen with ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... this anguish, welcome to my heart These rankling wounds inflicted by the god, Who on his scutcheon bears the monster-fish[50] Slain by his prowess; welcome death itself, So that, commissioned by the lord of love, This fair one be my executioner. Adorable divinity! Can I by no reproaches excite your ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... individual, attired in a "surcoat of sky-blue," and holding a banner emblazoned with the arms of Spain, turned its head as the Duke entered the square, saluted the new sovereign, and then dropping the Spanish scutcheon upon the ground, raised aloft another bearing the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... conservatory to view it more closely, the parlour chimney engaged my attention. It was a pile of massive stone, entirely out of proportion to the size of the apartment. On the front had once been an armorial scutcheon; for the hammer, or chisel, which had been employed to deface the shield or crest, had left uninjured the scroll beneath, which bore the pious motto, 'TRUST IN GOD.' Black-letter, you know, was my early passion, and the ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... on April 22, 1756, and she and her brother and little sister starved in their mouldering tower, kept alive by the charity of the neighbours and of the cure, who begged clothes for these descendants of kings. But their scutcheon was—and Jeanne never forgot the fact—argent, three fleurs de lys or, on a fesse azure. The noblesse of the family was later scrutinised by the famous d'Hozier and pronounced authentic. Jeanne, with bare feet, and straws in her hair, is ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... a line of clerks and small merchants; but as indemnity for the lack of a family 'scutcheon, we are told that his uncle, Reuben Browning, was a sure-enough poet. For once in an idle hour he threw off a little thing for an inscription to be placed on a presentation ink-bottle, and Disraeli seeing it, declared, "Nothing like this has ever ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... lady. To associate the name of Liftore with his would be to blot the scutcheon of Lossie. He is not fit to walk the street with men: his touch is to you an utter degradation. My lady, in the name of your father, I beg a word with you ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... this good man's scutcheon; and a strange blot it is, that such an one as Noah should be thus overtaken with evil! One would have thought that Moses should now have began with a relation of some eminent virtues, and honourable actions of Noah, since now he was saved from the death that overtook ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... of work tells upon style. Browning has, I think, fared better than some writers. To me, at all events, the step from 'A Blot in the 'Scutcheon' to 'The Ring and the Book' is not so marked as is the mauvais pas that lies between 'Amos Barton' and 'Daniel Deronda.' But difficulty is not obscurity. One task is more difficult than another. The angles at the base of the isosceles ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... with a Soul as open as her longing arms, and with her Petticoat put off her modesty. Gods! How could he change a whole Field Argent into downright Sables.' ''Twas done,' returned Celesia, 'with no small blot, I fancy, to the Female 'Scutcheon.' In short, after some more discourse, but very sorrowful, Wildvill takes his leave, extreamly taken with the fair Belvira, more beauteous in her cloud of woe; he paid her afterwards frequent visits, and found her wonder ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... become of Mormonism? We all know and admit it to be a hideous wrong—a great immoral strain upon the 'scutcheon of the United States. My belief is that its existence is dependent upon the life of Brigham Young. His administrative ability holds the system together—his power of will maintains it as the faith of a community. When he dies—Mormonism ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... hope of future favors, here and now, Upon this breezy hill-top, in the eye Of the bright day-god rising from his sleep, Perform thine orisons: 'Father and King, While here thy quickening breezes round me play, And yonder comes thy visible delegate With his bright scutcheon, to diffuse again All day the rays of thy beneficence Over this lovely earth, thy six days' work; To Thee, ALMIGHTY ONE! thy child would raise A loud thanksgiving. And if this, my strain Of joy and thanks, ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... honor, which reflected upon men from the wars, in ancient time. There be now, for martial encouragement, some degrees and orders of chivalry; which nevertheless are conferred promiscuously, upon soldiers and no soldiers; and some remembrance perhaps, upon the scutcheon; and some hospitals for maimed soldiers; and such like things. But in ancient times, the trophies erected upon the place of the victory; the funeral laudatives and monuments for those that died in the wars; the crowns and garlands personal; the style of emperor, which the great kings of the world ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... reign of James the First: the porch, opening on the terrace, with its mullion window above, was encased with pilasters and reliefs at once ornamental and massive; and the large square tower in which it was placed was surmounted by a stone falcon, whose talons griped fiercely a scutcheon blazoned with the five-pointed stars which heralds recognize as the arms of St. John. On either side this tower extended long wings, the dark brickwork of which was relieved with noble stone casements and carved pediments; the high ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... my grand uncle had carried his head high indeed, and deemed so greatly of his scutcheon and his knightly forbears that he scorned all civic dignities as but a small matter. Then, whereas in the middle of the past century all towns were forbid by imperial law to hold tournaments, he went to Court, and had been dubbed knight by the Emperor Charles, and won fame and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the great! Here wrapped in the arms of quiet let me lie, Quiet, companion of obscurity. Here let my life, with as much silence slide, As time that measures it does glide. Nor let the breath of infamy or fame, From town to town echo about my name; Nor let my homely death embroidered be With scutcheon or with elegy. An old plebeian let me die, Alas, all then are such, as well as I. To him, alas, to him, I fear, The face of death will terrible appear; Who in his life, flattering his senseless pride By being known to all the world beside, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... contained too much psychology and too little movement for a popular success. Mr. Browning, however, did not, for a long time to come, cease to be a "writer of plays," though it was not till eleven years after that another drama of his, "A Blot on the Scutcheon," was performed on the stage. The interval, however, was full of poetic activity. The energetic search of the members of the Browning Society, and especially of its founder, Mr. Furnivall, has succeeded in putting on record the place ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... "On the scutcheon we'll have a bend OR in the dexter base, a saltire MURREY in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron VERT in a chief engrailed, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Master Gottfried, moved more than by all that had gone before. "Ach, I thought ye all wiser. And spake she not of Sir Kasimir's offers?—Interest with the Romish king?— Yea, and a grant of nobility and arms to this house, so as to fill the blank in your scutcheon?" ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... names, till at last she stopped short, and covering one medallion with her finger, she said, "Pass over that, dear Lady Killpatrick. You are not to see that, Lord Colambre—that's a little blot in our scutcheon. You know, Isabel, we never talk of that prudent match of great uncle John's: what could he expect by marrying into that family, where, you know, all the men were not sans peur, and none of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... best of his captains had scarcely the will, if they had the power, to restrain the license that soon became barbarity unimaginable, he spoke sadly overnight of his dread of the day of surrender, when it might prove impossible to prevent deeds that would be not merely a blot on his scutcheon, but a shame to human nature; looking back to the exultation with which he had entered Harfleur as a mere effect of ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quite make out what kind of fishes these are," said the Rev. John Stalworth. "They are certainly not pike which formed the emblematic blazon of the Hotofts, and are still grim enough to frighten future Shakspeares on the scutcheon ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... visit to Earlscourt (which he never did when he could possibly help it) to make the desolating announcement that he and his Eliza were thinking of blackening the Largelady scutcheon by opening a shop, he found the little household already convulsed by a prior announcement from Clara that she also was going to work in an old furniture shop in Dover Street, which had been started by a fellow Wellsian. This appointment Clara owed, after all, to her old ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... obsolete on many other subjects. Much of her indignation was necessarily, and very justly bestowed on the then flourishing institution of domestic slavery; but that foul blot on her scutcheon America wiped out in blood, the blood of thousands of her bravest children. Her criticism upon manners and social customs has also, to a great extent, lost its power of application. Of its liveliness and pungency ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... the essays, "Blakesmoor in H——shire," the author let his memory and fancy play about the old house, lately razed, in which his grandmother Field had held sway as housekeeper, in which as child he had passed many happy holidays. Its tapestries, its haunted room, its "tattered and diminished 'Scutcheon," its Justice Hall, its "costly fruit garden, with its sun-baked southern wall," its "noble Marble Hall, with its Mosaic pavements, and its Twelve Caesars—stately busts in marble—ranged round," each of these recalled by memory suggests some deep thought or some pleasant turn. The opening ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... among them. "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is always a favorite with the young people, as are "How they brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix," "Herve Riel," and "Ratisbon." His most popular poems are "Pippa Passes," "The Ring and the Book," "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," and ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... manifestation of curiosity is a blot on the scutcheon of true politeness! The rest of the account of this, her longest visit to London, shall be told in ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... was done, their ways separated. Mrs. Van Camp, in the prime of her unusual faculties, died, having decorated the Hambleton 'scutcheon like a gay cockade stuck airily up into the breeze. She had no part nor lot in the family pride, but understood it, perhaps, better than the Hambletons themselves. Her crime was that she played with it. Aleck, a full-fledged biologist, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... Might with thee and others like thee Not be very ceremonious; But might throw thee down the staircase, Which is steep and very slippery, And might prove injurious to thee. Now, my Muse, mount upward to the Castle gate, behold there sculptured The three balls upon the scutcheon. As in the armorial bearings Of the Medici in Florence— Signs of ancient, noble lineage; Now ascend the steps of sandstone, Loudly knock at the great hall door, Then step in and give report of What thou ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... woollen jersey, with the letters 'N. A.' [52] embroidered on the breast, and at the top of a very long pole it looked most impressive. After him followed our chef, Juell, with 'peik's' [53] saucepan on his back; and then came the meteorologists, with a curious apparatus, consisting of a large tin scutcheon, across which was fastened a red band, with the letters 'Al. St.,' signifying 'almindelig stemmeret,' or 'universal ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... of the Storeys of Netherby," I answered, which was true enough; and when he questioned me about my kin, I showed him that I knew every name and scutcheon of the line, my mother having instructed me in all such ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... man had answered. "I have no son; but, of course, the fees and revenues will be yours. If, for a whim, you beggar yourself, I cannot stay you. But take it whilst I live; and wear Montfichet's shield in the days when my eyes can be rejoiced by so brave a sight, for you will ne'er disgrace our 'scutcheon, I warrant me. Perchance 'tis Geoffrey's sole chance that you should wear the badge of Gamewell. I might choose to bequeath ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... Jew—the Jew lived sumptuously in the palaces of her proud nobles. He looked round the magnificent long-stretching dining-room, with its rugs, oil-paintings, frescoed ceiling, palms; remembered the ancient scutcheon over the stone portal—a lion rampant with an angel volant—and thought of the old Latin statute forbidding the Jews to keep schools of any kind in Venice, or to teach anything in the city, under penalty of fifty ducats' fine and six months' imprisonment. Well, the Jews had ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a scutcheon bright, By our dead fathers bought; A fearful blot distains its white— ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... not to pass without another memorable incident, one to which we owe "Strafford," and probably "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon." Just as the young poet, flushed with the triumphant pleasure of the evening, was about to leave, Macready arrested him by a friendly grip of the arm. In unmistakable earnestness he asked Browning to write him a play. With a simplicity equal to the occasion, the poet ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... to his origin and his career, in marked contrast to the two aristocratic poets beside whose dramas his "Blot in the 'Scutcheon" is here printed. His father was a bank clerk and a dissenter at a time when dissent meant exclusion from Society; the poet went neither to one of the great public schools nor to Oxford or Cambridge; and no breath of scandal touched his name. Born in London ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... neighbours on points of etiquette and the disputed property of hedgerow trees; a fever in the family ceases to raise the pulse of any inmate, except the patient; death itself is no relief to the dulness; a funeral is little better; the yawn of the grave seems a sort of unhallowed mockery; the scutcheon hung out on the front of the old dismal hall, is like a sign on a deserted Spittal; along with sables is worn a suitable stupidity by all the sad survivors.—And such, before the era of Periodicals, such was the life in—merry ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 406, Saturday, December 26, 1829. • Various
... baker's family by not paying them; you may make Mr. Mann maintain you for eighteen months, as a public minister, out of his own pocket, and still be a man of honour! But, not to pay a common sharper, or not to murder a man that has trod upon your toe, is such a blot in your scutcheon, that you could never recover your honour, though you had in your veins "all the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... not know our cognisance, the pipes?" pointing to the armorial bearings sculptured on the oaken scutcheon, around which ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... father of four children, by less legitimate affections. He subsisted in his extreme old age by a pension from the present Earl of Selkirk's grandfather. Will Marshal is buried in Kirkcudbright Church, where his monument is still shown, decorated with a scutcheon, suitably blazoned with two tups' horns and ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... through the grass of sunny meadows, and now tunnelled through the dense green of shady forests, till it led him to the town of the Oneidas, containing about a hundred bark houses, with twice as many fighting men, the entire force of the tribe. Here, as in the four Mohawk villages, he planted the scutcheon of the Duke of York, and, still advancing, came at length to a vast open space where the rugged fields, patched with growing corn, sloped upwards into a broad, low hill, crowned with the clustered lodges of Onondaga. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... placed his head and limbs on spikes in various towns of his country. But now his grave, in St. Giles's Church in Edinburgh, is the most beautiful and honourable in Scotland, adorned with his stainless scutcheon, and with those of Napiers and Grahams, his kindred ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... close scrutiny five thousand supposed citizens had a blot on their 'scutcheon. The property of these five thousand men was immediately confiscated and the men sold into slavery. The total number of free men, women and children in the city of Athens was about seventy-five thousand, and of the slaves or helots about the same, making the total population of the city about ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... month [August] she had told me she was already resolved and that she assuredly meant to marry. Now she has coolly told me that she cannot make up her mind, and that she does not intend to marry.' (Mr. Gairdner's translation, 1898.) So the blot on the Queen's scutcheon as to her foreknowledge and too previous announcement of Amy's death disappears. But how did Mr. Gairdner, in 1886, using Mr. Froude's transcript of the original Spanish, fail to see that it contained no Arch Duke, and no 'third of the month'? Mr. Froude's transcript of the original ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... good-natured fellow working on his own account neither good nor ill—whatever being it is, it certainly suits one's mood, for I never yet knew a man determined to be lazy that had not ample opportunity afforded him, though he were poorer than the cure of Maigre, who formed a syndicate to sell at a scutcheon a gross such souls as were too insignificant to sell singly. A man can always find a chance for doing nothing as amply and with as ecstatic a satisfaction as the world allows, and so to me (whether it was there before I cannot tell, and if it came miraculously, so much the more amusing) appeared ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... And Heav'n remits its discipline; Whose sweet subdual of the world The worldling scarce can recognise, And ridicule, against it hurl'd, Drops with a broken sting and dies; Who nobly, if they cannot know Whether a 'scutcheon's dubious field Carries a falcon or a crow, Fancy a falcon on the shield; Yet, ever careful not to hurt God's honour, who creates success, Their praise of even the best desert Is but to have presumed no less; Who, should their own life ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... opened on a spacious gallery leading into a great hall, and above the portico hung the arms of Spain—a globe representing the world, a horse leaping upon it, and in the horse's mouth a scroll with the haughty motto, 'Non sufficit orbis.' Palace and scutcheon were levelled into dust by axe and gunpowder, and each day for a month the destruction went on, Drake's demands steadily growing and the unhappy ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... and was withal a man of much gentleness and generosity of character. He was beloved by all and respected by all. Paes writes of him that he was "gallant and perfect in all things." The only blot on his scutcheon is, that after his great success over the Muhammadan king he grew to be haughty and insolent in his demands. No monarch such as the Adil Shah could brook for a moment such a humiliation as was implied by a peace the condition of which was that he should kiss his triumphant ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... Square, about whom I remember Mrs. Perkins made so much ado at her last ball; and whom old Perkins conducted to supper. When Sir Thomas Kicklebury died (he was one of the first tenants of the Square), who does not remember the scutcheon with the coronet with two balls, that flamed over No. 36? Her son was at Eton then, and has subsequently taken an honorary degree at Oxford, and been an ornament of Platt's and the "Oswestry Club." ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray |
