"Scurrilous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interest at the time, and met with a rapid and extensive circulation. But his exposure of kidnapping gave very great offence to the magistrates, who dragged him before their tribunal as having "published a scurrilous and infamous libel on the corporation," and he was sentenced to be imprisoned until he should sign a denial of the truth of his statements. He brought an action against the corporation for their proceedings, and obtained a verdict and damages; ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... I inclose. So I put your letter and his together, and told them all who you both are. Thus, old man, you have become a factor in the determination of international policy. Several members of the Cabinet have spoken with the warmest admiration of your letter, one scurrilous individual remarking that he was astonished to learn that I had such a learned literary gent ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... prejudiced that even the staid bibliographer Allibone, in his "Dictionary of English Literature," a place where one would think the most flagitious author safe from animosity, speaks of Godwin's private life in terms that are little less than scurrilous. Over against this persistent acrimony may be put the fine eulogy of Mr. C. Kegan Paul, his biographer, to represent the favourable judgment of our own time, whilst I will venture to quote one remarkable passage that voices the opinions ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... "rhetoricians." With infinitely less Attic salt, but with as much heartiness as Aristophanes could have done, the popular rhymers gave the minister ample opportunity to understand the position which he occupied in the Netherlands. One day a petitioner placed a paper in his hand and vanished. It contained some scurrilous verses upon himself, together with a caricature of his person. In this he was represented as a hen seated upon a pile of eggs, out of which he was hatching a brood of bishops. Some of these were clipping the shell, some thrusting ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... as a legitimate English classic. His highest flights were indeed far below those of 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 of intellectual exertion which is a pleasure. His style is not brilliant; ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Burnett. By the kindness of the Earl of Dalhousie I was permitted to see this epitaph, and, if I chose, to print it in this edition. I am, however, unwilling to stain my pages with such an ungenerous and, indeed, I may say, so scurrilous a representation of the character of one who, in the just opinion of our Lyon King-at-Arms, himself a Burnett of the Kemnay branch, has characterised the Bishop of Salisbury as "true and honest, and far beyond the standard of his times as a Clergyman and as a Bishop." But the epitaph found ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... my sight, Then slowly homeward turned my lingering steps. I wrote my kinsman on the morrow morn, And broached my project to a worthy man Who kept an office and a case of books— An honest lawyer. People called him learn'd, But wanting tact and ready speech he failed. The rest were pettifoggers—scurrilous rogues Who plied the village justice with their lies, And garbled law to suit the case in hand— Mean, querulous, small-brained delvers in the mire Of men's misfortunes—crafty, cunning knaves, Versed in chicane ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... ballad-singers; when fools lead the town, would a man think to thrive by his wit? If you must write, write nonsense, write operas, write Hurlothrumbos, set up an oratory and preach nonsense, and you may meet with encouragement enough. Be profane, be scurrilous, be immodest: if you would receive applause, deserve to receive sentence at the Old Bailey; and if you would ride in a coach, deserve to ride ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... notice in 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 ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... the scurrilous document, with all the outward calm his strength of will could command. He would have liked to rise from his seat then and there, at once, and in mad, purely animal fury have, with a blow of his fist, quashed the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... but proud, and contemptuous of the common herd, seems rather a complimentary portrait of Jonson than a caricature. As to the personages actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His Humour," Carlo Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston, as he was described as "a public, scurrilous, and profane jester," and elsewhere as the grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of the time (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... very next day Thomas was obliged to acknowledge that he had misjudged Judas, so simple, so gentle, and at the same time so serious was Iscariot. He neither grimaced nor made ill-natured jokes; he was neither obsequious nor scurrilous, but quietly and unobtrusively went about his work of catering. He was as active as formerly, as though he did not have two feet like other people, but a whole dozen of them, and ran noiselessly without that squeaking, sobbing, ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... 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 ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... 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 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... soliloquizes MONTGOMERY PENDRAGON, "that even a scalawag Northern spoon-thief, like our scurrilous contemporary, would get so mad at being reminded that he ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... the fragments of an expostulatory letter to the Editor, and the 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
... disposed to give it up without making an effort. And no resistance to this impending calamity was made until Anna Dickinson went into the State, and galvanized the desponding loyalists to life. She spent two weeks there, and completely turned the tide of popular sentiment. Democrats, in spite of the scurrilous attacks made on her by some of their leaders and editors, received her everywhere with the warmest welcome, tore off their party badges, substituted her likeness, and applauded whatever she said. The halls where she spoke were so densely packed, that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... contained in these stories that fanned Guillaume's irritation. In spite of his contempt for Sagnier he could not keep from buying the "Voix du Peuple." Quivering with indignation, growing more and more exasperated, he was somehow attracted by the mire which he found in that scurrilous journal. Moreover, the other newspapers, including even the "Globe," which was usually so dignified, published all sorts of statements for which no proof could be supplied, and drew from them remarks and conclusions ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... declared she would maintain the second, and that she looked upon the third as the most glorious event of her reign. He affirmed that nothing could be more plain than the doctor's reflecting upon her majesty's ministers; and that he had so well marked out a noble peer there present, by an ugly and scurrilous epithet which he would not repeat, that it was not possible to mistake his meaning. Some of the younger peers could not help laughing at this undesigned sarcasm upon the lord-treasurer, whom Sacheverel had reviled under the name ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... kinds of religious 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. ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... was a violation of law for which they would be held answerable. In reply to this proclamation, which was duly laid before the Congress by the Moderator, Mr. Johnston, it was formally resolved that the proclamation was a false, scandalous, scurrilous and seditious libel, tending to disunite the good people of the province; "and further, that the said paper be burnt by the ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... either shut its doors against the members of the other. The publication of reports, forbidden by a standing order of 1762, had for some time been carried on under various disguises, and the reports, which were founded on scanty information, were often unfair and scurrilous. In February, 1771, Colonel Onslow complained of two newspapers which misrepresented his conduct in the house, and held him up to contempt by describing him as "little cocking George". Disregarding a warning from Burke as to the folly of entering into a quarrel with ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... 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, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... on the man's lips. He stared past the constable with bulging eyes. From the rocks three figures had come. Two of them carried rifles. All three of them he recognized. His astonishment paralyzed the scurrilous tongue. What was McRae's girl doing at the ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... her husband, "you are for a battle now. Harry, you don't know her. If she lets loose that scurrilous tongue of hers I have no chance; upon my soul, I'd encounter another half dozen of thunder-storms, and as many showers of blood, sooner than come under it for ten minutes; a West India hurricane is a ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... 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 ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... years later, on the prosecution of a liberal minister, Doctor McGill of Ayr, for the publication of A Practical Essay on the Death of Jesus Christ, which was charged with teaching Unitarianism, Burns took up the theme again. The Kirk's Alarm is a rattling "ballad," full of energy and scurrilous wit, but, like many of its kind, it has lost much of its interest through the great amount of personal detail. A few stanzas will show that, even after his absence from local politics during his Edinburgh sojourn, he had lost none of his gusto ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... and ready at the first call made upon it to 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 Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... a curious old story," said Monsieur Crapaud, "about Chenonceaux having been given to Diane to soothe her vanity, which had been wounded by the publication of some scurrilous verses, said to have been instigated by her enemy, Madame d'Etampes. Naturally, the petted beauty, whose charms were already on the wane, resented satirical allusion to her painted face, false teeth and hair, especially as ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... 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
... as I invite the former to break forth into being and become good for something, so I allow the latter a state of resuscitation, which I chiefly mention for the sake of a person who has lately published an advertisement, with several scurrilous terms in it, that do by no means become a dead man to give. It is my departed friend, John Partridge, who concludes the advertisement of his next year's almanack ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... 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 ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... benefit of his disciples, an account of the chief things he has seen and 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 once to the more serious ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... melancholy 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 for liberty. All I could do was to take ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... portion of caricature," said Mincingait. "You are downright scurrilous, and ought not to be tolerated in civilized society. Sink me, if you 239are not quite a bore, and not fit company for a Gentleman. so I shall wish you a ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... national independence. They were eager for nothing but food and horse-races. They were grave and quiet in their sacrifices and listless in business, but in the theatre or in the stadium men, women, and children were alike heated into passion, and overcome with eagerness and warmth of feeling. A scurrilous song or a horse-race would so rouse them into a quarrel that they could not hear for their own noise, nor see for the dust raised by their own bustle in the hippodrome; while all those acts of their rulers, which ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... ridiculing religion, because the Catholics want to ridicule Christian Science, Mormonism, and the "Holy Ghost and Us" Society! The Judge thinks the purpose of the Papal plotters will be accomplished if they can slip into the present law the words "scurrilous and slanderous"; he hopes that this much can be done without the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... restoration came down from the Supreme Court, Turner refused to obey it; and wrote a scurrilous "Address to the Public" about us, which he published in one of the newspapers. We replied in a sharp and bitter article, signed by ourselves and five other gentlemen; and at the same time we published a petition to the Governor, ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... Torvald. It is for your own sake. This fellow writes in the most scurrilous newspapers; you have told me so yourself. He can do you an unspeakable amount of harm. I am frightened to death ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... scurrilous little journal among the newspapers at whose office Mr. Burchard neglected to call. In their next issue ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... let the occasion of your being in town pass," he wrote, "without acknowledging the gratuitous zeal with which you have done your best to further the circulation of one of the most malignant innuendos, in the way of scurrilous half-assertions, it has been my fate hitherto to meet. Mr. Brown very properly sent on to me the pamphlet you had promptly posted to him. Mr. Pennell, also, I find, you had carefully supplied with a copy—and I have no doubt that, with the untiring energy of the 'busy' one, you have ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... a-jar, By riding this morning too long in your car: And I wish your few friends, when they next see your cargo, For the sake of your senses would lay an embargo. You threaten the stocks; I say you are scurrilous And you durst not talk thus, if I saw you at our ale-house. But as for your threats, you may do what you can I despise any poet that truckled to Dan But keep a good tongue, or you'll find to your smart ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... think he feels these things more than any other person I ever yet met with. I am sincerely sorry to see them." How utterly insincere appears the last clause of this paragraph, compared with the one next preceding it! The most scurrilous of the attacks alluded to proceeded from Freneau, a clerk in Mr. ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... own risk, and allow the author to have a few copies to give to his friends. Johnson read the poems, approved of them, and accordingly published them. Soon after they had appeared, there was scarcely a reviewer who did not load them with the most scurrilous abuse, and condemn them to the butter shops; and the public taste being thus terrified or misled, these charming effusions stood in the corner of the publisher's shop as an unsaleable pile ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... afterward the popular editor of the Boston Atlas, as its Congressional reporter. In 1825 the paper was purchased by Peter Force and became the "hand-organ" of all the elements of opposition to General Jackson. Such abusive articles and scurrilous remarks as the dignified National Intelligencer would not publish appeared in the National Journal. Some of these articles reflected upon Mrs. Jackson and gave great offense to her husband, who was persuaded that they were inspired ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... scribbler, of whom I have learned no more than that, after having disgraced and deserted the clerical character, he picks up in London a scanty livelihood by scurrilous lampoons under a feigned name, has impudently and falsely asserted that the passages omitted were defamatory, and that the omission was not voluntary, but compulsory. The last insinuation I took the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... have described this scene nearly in consecutive order, without the breaks and interruptions which took place whilst it proceeded, yet the reader should imagine to himself the outrage, the yelling, the clamor, the by-battles, and scurrilous contests in the lowest description of blackguardism with which it was garnished; thus causing it to occupy at least four times the period we have ascribed to it. The simple-minded priest, who could never have dreamt of such an exhibition, scarcely knew whether he was asleep or ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... was issued in 1704, entitled, "The Superiority and Dominion of the Crown of England over the Crown of Scotland," by William Attwood. The Scottish Parliament had the publication under consideration, and pronounced it scurrilous and full of falsehoods, and finally commanded the public hangman of Edinburgh ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... the wharf to the gallant bark of our choice is melancholy and vague, being marked chiefly to memory by the complicated curse bestowed upon me by a hideous old Irish-woman, whose oranges I accidentally upset in the crowd, and by whom I was subsequently derided with buffo song and scurrilous dance as long as the steamer remained within ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... parts capable of the 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 ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... preparation in all missionaries, and that involves an indispensable knowledge of the forces to be met. The power of the press is no longer a monopoly of Christian lands. The Arya Somaj, of India, is now using it, both in the vernacular and in the English, in its bitter and often scurrilous attacks. One of its tracts recently sent to me contained an English epitome of the arguments of Thomas Paine. The secular papers of Japan present in almost every issue some discussion on the comparative merits of Christianity, Buddhism, Evolution, and Theosophy, and many of the young ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... 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 article ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... indeed, been conjectured that Horace, in the fifth Satire of his first Book, v. 51, has preserved a scene of this nature between two practised buffoons in the "Pugnam Sarmenti Scurrae," who challenges his brother Cicerrus, equally ludicrous and scurrilous. But surely these were rather the low humour of the Mimes, than ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to come to business, and I do not want things to go easy. I believe you said some things of me in your newspaper that were very scurrilous." ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... 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 published ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... 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 in 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 he had fortified a castle near Bisanthe in Thrace, for a safe ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... composition in rhyme, sung by the Clown, accompanied by his pipe and tabor. In these jigs there were sometimes more actors than one, and the most unbounded license of tongue was allowed; the pith of the matter being usually some scurrilous exposure of persons among, or well known to the audience. Here again history repeats itself in this once more, and in imitation of the satirical interludes of the Grecian stage and the Atellans and Mimis of the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... A curious feature of a triumph were the disrespectful and often scurrilous verses chanted by the soldiers at the expense of ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... 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 ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the 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
... they are much more dangerous, for being adorned with all the charms of style, and because the persons represented are made to speak and act in a much more luring manner than they do in reality. They devour with avidity those dangerous, and sometimes scurrilous pages; but while they chain their attention to the matter they are reading, their imagination gains the ascendancy over all the senses, and under their united action images are formed which leave a lasting impression ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi
... bitter enemy of Poggio, and 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, ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... 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 in the light of the glad young autumn day. But, reverting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the most conspicuous of which are a pair of claws that resemble the handles of a jeweller's nippers. Only an 'alacran,' is it? Son of the tropics, it may sound mildly to thee in thy romantic dialect, but in the language of Miamo Darwin, let me tell you, it is nothing more nor less than a scurrilous scorpion, whose gentlest sting is worse than the stings of twenty wasps. If the brother of that now squashed brute should drop upon me, during my repose, from that roof (which I perceive is of 'guano' leaf, and admirably adapted for scorpion gymnastics), my appearance at the breakfast-table ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... materials from Alexander Hay, Clerk of the Privy Council, and heard of the publication of Buchanan's scurrilous "Detection" of Queen Mary, in December ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... dove-cotes of Toryism under the regime of Lord Liverpool, and provoked Wilson Croker, the "Rigby" of Lord Beaconsfield's "Coningsby," to fall upon it tooth and nail. Lady Morgan revenged herself by putting her scurrilous attache into her next novel, "Florence Macarthy," where he figures as Crawley. In 1819 the book-making couple repaired to Italy, and, of course, a sojourn in Italy meant a book upon Italy, which Lord Byron declared ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... 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 of a contumacious ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... people, THEY admire. You will certainly be consoled." With these words he took Hyde's chair; and Hyde, casting his eyes a moment on this tall, loose-limbed man, whose cold blue eyes and red hair emphasized the stern anger of his whole appearance, was well disposed to leave the scurrilous Englishman to his power of reproof. Besides, the badge of mourning which Jefferson wore had reminded him of his own neglect. Probably, it was the want of this badge that had made the stranger believe he was speaking to one who would sympathize ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... 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 ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... Iris in the pox. These are the goddesses enroll'd In Curll's collection, new and old, Whose scoundrel fathers would not know 'em, If they should meet them in a poem. True poets can depress and raise, Are lords of infamy and praise; They are not scurrilous in satire, Nor will in panegyric flatter. Unjustly poets we asperse; Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true. Now, should my praises owe their truth ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... fire laid, I 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 ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... It was concluded in these words—"For Englishmen are no more to be slaves to parliaments than to kings-our name is Legion, and we are many." The commons were equally provoked and intimidated by this libel, which was the production of one Daniel de Foe, a scurrilous party-writer in very little estimation. They would not, however, deign to take notice of it in the house; but a complaint being made of endeavours to raise tumults and seditions, a committee was appointed to draw up an address to his majesty, informing him ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... '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 'Tempest'—the ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... still another account 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, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... This is 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 to be influenced by the Government, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... on, 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 ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... book, Jack,—that scurrilous attack on the industries of the South? My dear fellow! I'm astounded that a man of yo' gifts should not—Here—just do me the favor to look through my baggage on the upper deck, and bring me a couple of books lyin' ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... pages of four columns each. Nearly every line of it was fresh news. Quotations from other papers were scarce. Originality was then, as now, the motto of the establishment. Small as it was, the paper was attractive. The story that its first numbers were scurrilous and indecent is not true, as a reference to the old files of the journal will prove. They were of a character similar to that of "The Herald" of to-day, and were marked by the same industry, tact, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... 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 ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... 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
... that the best lesson would be completely poisoned, and it was deemed prudent to suspend the tuition for at least a day and a night. Even in Egypt, dogs are now as much avoided as they were venerated. In every Mohammedan and Hindoo country, the most scurrilous epithet bestowed on a European or a ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... (530) has been so interpreted. It appears, however, that in that passage the author is comparing his comedy with that of others. He has admitted, he says, no low tricks appealing to vulgar tastes, no phallus which would make the boys laugh, no lascivious dance, no scurrilous stories, and no "knock-down business." This is not a criticism of the phallus on grounds of obscenity, but on grounds of buffoonery. In the Acharnians (243 and 259) are matter-of-fact references to the phallus worn by the actor, as he might have referred to his mantle. Other cases occur ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of 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
... which were in the pay of the Castle vomited out daily the most gross, the most malignant, and irritating calumnies; and even the senate itself, now really forgetting its dignity, condescended to become the scurrilous aggressor not merely of the society at large, but of particular, and, in many ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous
... which sounds out of key with these mouthfuls of melody, though 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 I did, I fear, with unseemly haste. It will be noticed that the story ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... show the assault in this case was aggravated by the scurrilous language which preceded it. Such words of reproach stimulate in the veins and exasperate the mind, and no doubt if an assault and battery succeeds them, killing under such provocation is softened to manslaughter, but killing without such provocation ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Coridon, this Song was sung with mettle, and it was choicely fitted to the occasion; I shall love you for it as long as I know you: I would you were a brother of the Angle, for a companion that is cheerful and free from swearing and scurrilous discourse, is worth gold. I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning; nor men (that cannot wel bear it) to repent the money they spend when they be warmed with drink: and take this for a rule, you may pick out ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... a fresh 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 ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... in your country and in Ireland he has nine literary pensioners. Though the names of your principal authors and men of letters are not unknown to me, I have never read nor heard of any of those I saw in the list, except two or three as editors of some newspapers, magazines, or trifling and scurrilous party pamphlets. I made this observation to Fontanes, who replied that these men, though obscure, had, during the last peace, been very useful, and would be still more so after another pacification; and that Bonaparte ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Aristophanes. Some people might have been, and no doubt were, scandalized to think that so pious a father of the church should have made a bosom companion of so profane and virulent a wit: but says Milton, the holy father was quite right in poring over Aristophanes, for "he had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence into the style of a rousing sermon." Put that into verse and it would ring well. We thank Miss Barrett for the graphic touch of Virgil's "brown bees," which certainly are better than his gods. "Lucretius" is very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... 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 ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... under the 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 ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... letter of the most abject and extravagant penitence. This, however, Mr. and Mrs. Riddel did not think fit to accept. Stung by this rebuff, Burns recoiled at once to the opposite extreme of feeling, and penned a grossly scurrilous monody on "a lady famed for her caprice." This he followed up by other lampoons, full of "coarse rancour against a lady, who had showed him many kindnesses." The Laird of Friars Carse and his lady naturally sided with ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... that sagacity which we 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
... 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 politics ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... which he could not understand seemed to be pleading with him. All the same, his heart remained adamant. The shadow of the gallows was still upon him, the weary weeks he had been lying in a dark cell, covered with ignominy and shame. His portrait had appeared in almost every scurrilous rag in the country. His name and history had been debated among those who always fastened upon every foul bit of garbage they could find. And in a way Paul traced everything to this man, Judge Bolitho; why, he did not know, but he could ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... than four or five lines in length and was a bitter and most scurrilous attack on Dr. Wise, signed ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... bad an equal value sets The stupid mob. From me the worst it gets, And never fails to praise," With vile pretense, The scurrilous author thus his trash excused. A poet shrewd, hearing the lame defense, Indignant, thus exposed the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... Had Miss Caroline suddenly changed her manner toward Clem, showing regret, however belated, for her previous abuse of him, I should have understood. That would have been a simple case of awakened sensibility. But she continued to disparage him to his face and to me. She was venomous—scurrilous in her abuse. Yet only with the greatest difficulty could I persuade her to let me share the watch that must be kept over him. She called him an infamous black wretch, in tones befitting her words, but I could not ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... itself to the clerical and highly moral views of the case, and, 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 he had concocted an ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... was fully constituted in December 1583, and proceeded by methods which Burghley himself held to be too inquisitorial. A good deal of indignation was aroused, and the Puritans were in effect made more aggressive, their attacks on the existing system culminating in 1589 in the distinctly scurrilous "Martin Mar-prelate" tracts, which were so violent as to produce a marked reaction. This on the one side, coupled with the partly genuine and partly mythical plots of the ultra-Catholics on the other, brought about sharp legislation in 1593, resulting ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... not 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 have ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... &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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 is assured that, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Ireland; when we see every man of rank and fortune who relinquishes the pleasures of the capital, and the enjoyments of society, for the purpose of settling on his estates, and performing his duties, subjected to the abuse of every scurrilous priest, and the insults of every penniless agitator. Landlords naturally wish to reside at home where their possessions, in a wholesome state of society, would secure them local influence and respect; but unless the Irish gentleman bows to the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... both of injury and of kindness. Its eyes are small, but move solemnly. There is a sort of kingly dignity in its appearance, and while it recognises with pleasure all that is honourable, it seems to despise scurrilous jests. Its skin is furrowed by deep channels, like that of the victims of the foreign disease named after it[697], elephantiasis. It is on account of the impenetrability of this hide that the Persian Kings used the ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... with you, Monsignor," quickly replied Carmen. "Scurrilous attacks upon the Church but make it a martyr. Vilification returns upon the one who hurls the abuse. One can not fling mud without soiling one's hands. I oppose not men, but human systems of thought. Whatever ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... hounding out of the Company by his friend Clive: nominal: I made more outside; to scurrilous abuse in public and private: mere words; say fifty rupees; to threat to hang me: mere words again: say fifty rupees. Total credit, say ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... advice, calculations of majorities and prophecies of victory, written at the last moment in unquenchable faith, to be read now with a weary smile of irony. Here too were honest, admiring condolences. "Better luck next time"—"Never despair," and so forth—side by side with anonymous and scurrilous gloatings over his fall. Once he laughed out loud: a zealous student compared him at length and in detail to Cleon, and ended with an ode of triumph which, he said, would appear in the press the next day or so. Medland pushed the heap away with an impatient sigh, but ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... ran he recalled the events of the night before; their meeting with Gard and Nance; Tom's scurrilous insults. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... with which they were treated, they themselves grew steadily more rancorous, more extreme in their feelings. They denounced and opposed every measure of the government, harangued vehemently against the war and against all that was done to prosecute it, reviled with scurrilous and passionate abuse every prominent Republican, filled the air with disheartening forecasts of defeat, ruin, and woe, and triumphed whenever the miserable prophecies seemed in the way of fulfillment. General Grant truly described them as auxiliaries ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... would be well; but man is there, and consequently the whole society is a gigantic mistake. To be a sincere member of it, a man must be a half-witted fool, a religious fanatic, or a rogue for whom no duplicity is too scurrilous, even ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... exceedingly unpopular with the masses. Whether this arose from the unaccountable influence he—and he alone—had with his chief, or whether the busy tongues of his private enemies received too ready credence, is hard to say. But so the fact was; and his elevation gave rise to scurrilous attacks, as well as grave forebodings. Both served equally to fix Mr. Davis in the reasons he had believed good enough for ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... religion, their social and criminal statistics, the progress of invention and of art, the revolutions of empires, and the latest results of science. Grant that newspapers are prejudiced, superficial, unfair; so also are books. Grant that the journals often give place to things scurrilous and base; but can there be anything baser or more scurrilous than are suffered to run riot in books? There is to be found hidden away in the pages of some books such filth as no man would dare to print in a newspaper, from fear of the ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... Dr. John Milner, entitled Merlin's Strictures. Southey retaliated in his Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 1826. In the latter work he addresses Butler as 'an honourable and courteous opponent'—and contrasts his 'habitual urbanity' with the malignant and scurrilous attacks of that 'ill-mannered man', Dr. Milner. In the 'Dialogue' the poet reminds his 'Friend' Southey that Rome is Rome, a 'brazen serpent', charm she never so wisely. In the Vindiciae Southey devotes pp. 470-506 to an excursus ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Hooker. But its most interesting 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
... nearly forgot. There is a long poem—an 'Anti-Byron'—coming out, to prove that I have formed a conspiracy to overthrow by rhyme all religion and government, and have already made great progress! It is not very scurrilous, but serious and ethereal. I never felt myself important till I saw and heard of my being such a little Voltaire as to induce ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... Pat, 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
... arrested and tried, but was acquitted, and his friends struck off a medal in commemoration. In 1682, therefore, came Dryden's second satire, the Medal. These two political satires called forth in the fevered state of the times a host of replies, two of the most scurrilous from the pens of Shadwell and Settle. Of these two poor Whigs the first was drawn and quartered in MacFlecnoe, while the two were yoked for castigation in Part II. of Absalom and Achitophel, which appeared in 1682. Dryden possessed preminently ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... pocket. And now 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 ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Defoe's True-Born Englishman. King 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 ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... Cicero was now habituated to that fear, and was willing to face it. But not on that account are we to imagine that, with his eyes open, he was to be supposed always ready to rush into immediate destruction. To write a scurrilous attack, such as the second Philippic, is a bad exercise for the ingenuity of a great man; but so is any anonymous satire. It is so in regard to our own times, which have received the benefit of all ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... Catholics Luther's greatest offense is what he has done to their Pope. This is Luther's unpardonable sin. Luther has done two things to the Pope: he has denied that the Pope exists by divine right, and he has in the most scurrilous manner spoken and written about the Pope and made his vaunted dignity the butt of universal ridicule. The indictment is true, but when the facts are stated, it will be seen to recoil on the heads of those who have ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... his apprentice also, both of whom stood upon their dignity, refusing to answer some of the questions put. Benjamin was dismissed, because it was found that he was only an apprentice. But James was put on trial and pelted with questions. The legislators were determined to find out who wrote the "scurrilous article aforesaid," as they called it, but James refused to tell. He placed himself squarely upon his personal rights as a citizen, and heroically stood by his guns. Come what might, he resolved to defend his ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... not the only "teller of tales," for all sorts of strange stories—some amusing, some scurrilous and malicious—were invented about the family at Vailima and ran current in the gossip "on the beach." One of the most fantastic of these inventions was that Mr. Stevenson had been married before to a native woman, and that Mrs. Strong[57] was his half-caste ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... and Davis leading, arm-in-arm. Just as we got outside the gates, the Lancashire Fencibles appeared, coming to strengthen the garrison. As soon as the seamen got near the soldiers, they began to abuse them in so scurrilous a manner, that the officer in command halted his men, and seeing the admiral and superintendent, close to whom I at the time was standing opposite the gates, he came, and, complaining of the insults offered to himself and men, asked permission to surround ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... money, he said, can be paid to the heirs of a creditor, but men of honour are grieved at not being able to return a kindness during the lifetime of their benefactor. In Ambrakia once Pyrrhus was advised to banish a man who abused him in scurrilous terms. He answered, "I had rather he remained where he is and abused me there, than that he should wander through all the world doing so." Once some youths spoke ill of him over their wine, and being detected ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... profound respect I bear to the persons who have spoken before me, I could not forbear complaining of their not crying out against such a scurrilous, satirical paper, which was just now read, contrary to all forms of proceeding, and written in the same style as lately profaned the sacred name of the King, to encourage false witnesses by letters-patent. ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... Brat your scurrilous vein began, Where saucily you traduced a nobleman; Who for that crime rebuked you on the head, And you had been expelled, had ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Sorrow on your red wig, and you!—It is certain La Beaumelle, soon after this, left Berlin: not in love with Voltaire. And there soon appeared, at Franfurt-on-Mayn, a Pirate Edition of our brand-new SIECLE DE LOUIS QUATORZE (with Annotations scurrilous and flimsy);—La Beaumelle the professed Perpetrator; 'who received for the job 7 pounds 10s. net!' [Ib. xx.] asseverates the well-informed Voltaire. Oh, M. de Voltaire, and why not leave it to him, then? Poor devil, he got put into the Bastille too, by and by; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... your brothers, and that crab of a priest into the bargain; but I am grieved to the heart to hear what I do of you. They tell me you are the idlest boy in the school; that you are always beating your brother Gerald, and making a scurrilous jest of your mother ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... political enemies now seek by ridicule and innuendo to attack him. To such depths as these has 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
... seen the infamous libel in that scurrilous sheet of the gutters the Herald?" he demanded immediately ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... to Rochester and Dryden more—between a mere insolent twaddler and a man of real and transcendent genius. The particulars of the struggle are too humiliating and contemptible to deserve a minute record. Suffice it, that Dryden, assisted by his future foe, Shadwell, wrote a scurrilous attack on Settle, and his successful play, "The Empress of Morocco;" to which Settle, nothing daunted, replied in terms of equal coarseness, and that Rochester, the patron of Settle, became mixed up in the fray, till, having been severely ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... French 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 by ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... certain repetition of this name the virtue of a charm, and others have had the boldness to assert that our blessed Savior wrought all his miracles (for they do not deny them to be such) by that mystical use of this venerable name. See the Toldoth Jeschu, an infamously scurrilous life of Jesus, written by a Jew not later than the thirteenth century. On p. 7, edition of Wagenseilius, 1681, is a succinct detail of the manner in which our Savior is said to have entered the ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... "It is highly 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, and then, wrapping myself in my great ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... of the scurrilous Character of an ingenious Blunderer, Dr. South says[128], "He must here return upon him the just Charge of an impious Blasphemer, and that upon more Accounts than one; telling him withal, that had he liv'd in the former Times of the Church, his Gown would have ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... Lambeth Church and disappeared in the direction of the meadows behind Essex House. Anthony checked his horse, doubtful whether to follow or not, but decided to see what it was that the man had left pinned to the door. He rode up and detached it, and found it was a violent and scurrilous attack upon the Archbishop for his supposed share in the death of the two Papists. It denounced him as a "bloody pseudo-minister," compared him to Pilate, and bade him "look to his congregation of lewd ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... 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 Ancient ...
— English literary criticism • Various |
