Quotes4study

"Aigle de Meaux, down with your paws. You produce on me no effect with your gesture of Hippocrates refusing Artaxerxes' bric-a-brac. I excuse you from the task of soothing me. Moreover, I am sad. What do you wish me to say to you? Man is evil, man is deformed; the butterfly is a success, man is a failure. God made a mistake with that animal. A crowd offers a choice of ugliness. The first comer is a wretch, Femme--woman--rhymes with infame,--infamous. Yes, I have the spleen, complicated with melancholy, with homesickness, plus hypochondria, and I am vexed and I rage, and I yawn, and I am bored, and I am tired to death, and I am stupid! Let God go to the devil!"

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

Popular leaflet sold in the streets just after the Bolshevik insurrection, containing rhymes and jokes about the defeated bourgeoisie and the “moderate” Socialist leaders, Called, “How THE BOORZHUI (BOURGEOISIE) LOST THE POWER.”

John Reed     Ten Days That Shook the World

How long did they remain thus? One month, two months, six months sometimes; one stayed a year. It was the antechamber of the galleys. Men were put there for stealing a hare from the king. In this sepulchre-hell, what did they do? What man can do in a sepulchre, they went through the agonies of death, and what can man do in hell, they sang; for song lingers where there is no longer any hope. In the waters of Malta, when a galley was approaching, the song could be heard before the sound of the oars. Poor Survincent, the poacher, who had gone through the prison-cellar of the Chatelet, said: "It was the rhymes that kept me up." Uselessness of poetry. What is the good of rhyme?

Victor Hugo     Les Miserables

The extant lives of Homer (edited in Westermann's _Vitarum Scriptores Graeci minores_) are eight in number, including the piece called the _Contest of Hesiod and Homer_. The longest is written in the Ionic dialect, and bears the name of Herodotus, but is certainly spurious. In all probability it belongs to the time which was fruitful beyond all others in literary forgeries, viz. the 2nd century of our era.[2] The other lives are certainly not more ancient. Their chief value consists in the curious short poems or fragments of verse which they have preserved--the so-called _Epigrams_, which used to be printed at the end of editions of Homer. These are easily recognized as "Popular Rhymes," a form of folk-lore to be met with in most countries, treasured by the people as a kind of proverbs.[3] In the Homeric _epigrams_ the interest turns sometimes on the characteristics of particular localities--Smyrna and Cyme (_Epigr._ iv.), Erythrae (_Epigr._ vi., vii.), Mt Ida (_Epigr._ x.). Neon Teichos (_Epigr._ i.); others relate to certain trades or occupations--potters (Epigr. xiv.), sailors, fishermen, goat herds, &c. Some may be fragments of longer poems, but evidently they are not the work of any one poet. The fact that they were all ascribed to Homer merely means that they belong to a period in the history of the Ionian and Aeolian colonies when "Homer" was a name which drew to itself all ancient and popular verse. Entry: HOMER

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 13, Slice 6 "Home, Daniel" to "Hortensius, Quintus"     1910-1911

BALLADS. The word "ballad" is derived from the O. Fr. _baller_, to dance, and originally meant a song sung to the rhythmic movement of a dancing chorus. Later, the word, in the form of _ballade_ (_q.v._), became the technical term for a particular form of old-fashioned French poetry, remarkable for its involved and [v.03 p.0265] recurring rhymes. "Laisse moi aux Jeux Floraux de Toulouse toutes ces vieux poésies Françoises comme _ballades_," says Joachim du Bellay in 1550; and Philaminte, the lady pedant of Molière's _Femmes Savantes_, observes-- Entry: BALLADS

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy"     1910-1911

DAVIES, SIR JOHN (1569-1626), English philosophical poet, was baptized on the 16th of April 1569, at Tisbury, Wiltshire, where his parents lived at the manor-house of Chicksgrove. He was educated at Winchester College, and became a commoner of Queen's College, Oxford, in 1585. In 1588 he entered the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1595. In his general onslaught on literature in 1599 the archbishop of Canterbury ordered to be burnt the notorious and now excessively rare volume, _All Ovid's Elegies, 3 Bookes, by C. M. Epigrams by J. D._ (Middleburgh, 1598?), which contained posthumous work by Marlowe. The epigrams by Davies, although not devoid of wit, were coarse enough to deserve their fate. It is probable that they were earlier in date of composition than the charming fragment entitled _Orchestra_ (1596), written in praise of dancing. The poet, in the person of Antinoüs, tries to induce Penelope to dance by arguing that all harmonious natural processes partake of the nature of a conscious and well-ordered dance. He closes his argument by foreshadowing in a magic mirror the revels of the court of Cynthia (Elizabeth). _Orchestra_ was dedicated to the author's "very friend, Master Richard Martin," but in the next year the friends quarrelled, and Davies was expelled from the society for having struck Martin with a cudgel in the hall of the Middle Temple. He spent the year after his expulsion at Oxford in the composition of his philosophical poem on the nature of the soul and its immortality--_Nosce teipsum_ (1599). The style of the work was entirely novel; and the stanza in which it was written--the decasyllabic quatrain with alternate rhymes--had never been so effectively handled. Its force, eloquence and ingenuity, the orderly and lucid arrangement of its matter, place it among the finest of English didactic poems. In 1599 he also published a volume of twenty-six graceful acrostics on the words _Elisabetha Regina_, entitled _Hymns to Astraea_. He produced no more poetry except his contributions to Francis Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_ (1608). These were two dialogues which had been written as entertainments for the queen, and "Yet other Twelve Wonders of the World," satirical epigrams on the courtier, the divine, the maid, &c., and "A Hymn in praise of Music." Ten sonnets to Philomel are signed J. D., and are assigned to Davies (_Poetical Rhapsody_, ed. A. H. Bullen, 1890). In 1601 Davies was restored to his position at the bar, after making his apologies to Martin, and in the same year he sat for Corfe Castle in parliament. James I. received the author of _Nosce teipsum_ with great favour, and sent him (1603) to Ireland as solicitor-general, conferring the honour of knighthood upon him in the same year. In 1606 he was promoted to be attorney-general for Ireland, and created serjeant-at-arms. Of the difficulties in the way of the prosecution of his work, and his untiring industry in overcoming them, there is abundant evidence in his letters to Cecil preserved in the _State Papers on Ireland_. One of his chief aims was to establish the Protestant religion firmly in Ireland, and he took strict measures to enforce the law for attendance at church. With the same end in view he took an active part in the "plantation" of Ulster. In 1612 he published his prose _Discoverie of the true causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued untill the beginning of his Majestie's happie raigne_.[1] In the same year he entered the Irish parliament as member for Fermanagh, and was elected speaker after a scene of disorder in which the Catholic nominee, Sir John Everard, who had been installed, was forcibly ejected. In the capacity of speaker he delivered an excellent address reviewing previous Irish parliaments. He resigned his Irish offices in 1619, and sat in the English parliament of 1621 for Newcastle-under-Lyme. With Sir Robert Cotton he was one of the founders of the Society of Antiquaries. He was appointed lord chief justice in 1626, but died suddenly (December 8th) before he could enter on the office. He had married (1609) Eleanor Touchet, daughter of George, Baron Audley. She developed eccentricity, verging on madness, and wrote several fanatical books on prophecy. Entry: DAVIES

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 10 "David, St" to "Demidov"     1910-1911

Among men more or less eminent who were born in Dundee may be named Hector Boece (1465-1536), the historian; George Dempster of Dunnichen (1732-1818), the agriculturist, a former owner of Skibo; Thomas Dick (1774-1857), the author of _The Christian Philosopher_; Admiral Lord Duncan (1731-1804); Viscount Dundee (1643-1689); James Halyburton (1518-1589), the Scottish Reformer, who was provost of the town for thirty-three years; Sir James Ivory (1765-1842), the mathematician, who bequeathed his science library to the town, and his nephew Lord Ivory (1792-1866), the judge; Sir George Mackenzie (1636-1691), the celebrated lawyer; Sir Alexander Scrymgeour (d. 1310), Wallace's standard-bearer, and many of the Scrymgeours, his successors, who were constables of the town; James (1495-1553), John (1500-1556) and Robert Wedderburn (1510-1557), the poets, who were all concerned in the authorship or collection of the book of _Gude and Godlie Ballatis_ published in 1578; Sir John Wedderburn (1599-1679), the physician; and Sir Peter Wedderburn (1616-1679), the judge. Many well-known persons lived for longer or shorter periods in the town. James Chalmers (1782-1853), the inventor of the adhesive postage stamp (1834), was a bookseller in Castle Street. George Constable of Wallace Craigie, the prototype of Jonathan Oldbuck in Sir Walter Scott's _Antiquary_, had a residence in the east end of Seagate, the house standing until about 1820. Thomas Hood's father was a native and the poet spent part of his youth in the town, his first literary effort appearing in the _Dundee Advertiser_ about 1816. James Bowman Lindsay (1799-1862), electrician and philologist, carried on his experiments for many years in Dundee, where he died. Robert Nicoll (1814-1837), the poet, kept a circulating library in Castle Street; and William Thom (1798-1848), the writer of _The Rhymes of a Handloom Weaver_, was buried in the Western Cemetery. Entry: DUNDEE

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 8 "Dubner" to "Dyeing"     1910-1911

CRAMBO, an old rhyming game which, according to Strutt (_Sports and Pastimes_), was played as early as the 14th century under the name of the _ABC of Aristotle_. In the days of the Stuarts it was very popular, and is frequently mentioned in the writings of the time. Thus Congreve's _Love for Love_, i. 1, contains the passage, "Get the Maids to Crambo in an Evening, and learn the knack of Rhiming." Crambo, or capping the rhyme, is now played by one player thinking of a word and telling the others what it rhymes with, the others not naming the actual word they guess but its meaning. Thus one says "I know a word that rhymes with _bird_." A second asks "Is it ridiculous?" "No, it is not absurd." "Is it a part of speech?" "No, it is not a word." This proceeds until the right word is guessed. Entry: CRAMBO

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 6 "Coucy-le-Château" to "Crocodile"     1910-1911

First among the poets of the period falls to be mentioned the shadowy personality of Olivier Basselin. Modern criticism has attacked the identity of the jovial miller, who was once supposed to have written and perhaps invented the songs called _vaux de vire_, and to have also carried on a patriotic warfare against the English. But though Jean le Houx may have written the poems published under Basselin's name two centuries later, it is taken as certain that an actual Olivier wrote actual vaux de vire at the beginning of the 15th century. About Christine de Pisan (1363-1430) and Alain Chartier (1392-c. 1430) there is no such doubt. Christine was the daughter of an Italian astrologer who was patronized by Charles V. She was born in Italy but brought up in France, and she enriched the literature of her adopted country with much learning, good sense and patriotism. She wrote history, devotional works and poetry; and though her literary merit is not of the highest, it is very far from despicable. Alain Chartier, best known to modern readers by the story of _Margaret of Scotland's Kiss_, was a writer of a somewhat similar character. In both Christine and Chartier there is a great deal of rather heavy moralizing, and a great deal of rather pedantic erudition. But it is only fair to remember that the intolerable political and social evils of the day called for a good deal of moralizing, and that it was the function of the writers of this time to fill up as well as they could the scantily filled vessels of medieval science and learning. A very different person is Charles d'Orléans (1391-1465), one of the greatest of _grands seigneurs_, for he was the father of a king of France, and heir to the duchies of Orléans and Milan. Charles, indeed, if not a Roland or a Bayard, was an admirable poet. He is the best-known and perhaps the best writer of the graceful poems in which an artificial versification is strictly observed, and helps by its recurrent lines and modulated rhymes to give to poetry something of a musical accompaniment even without the addition of music properly so called. His ballades are certainly inferior to those of Villon, but his rondels are unequalled. For fully a century and a half these forms engrossed the attention of French lyrical poets. Exercises in them were produced in enormous numbers, and of an excellence which has only recently obtained full recognition even in France. Charles d'Orléans is himself sufficient proof of what can be done in them in the way of elegance, sweetness, and grace which some have unjustly called effeminacy. But that this effeminacy was no natural or inevitable fault of the ballades and the rondeaux was fully proved by the most remarkable literary figure of the 15th century in France. To François Villon (1431-1463?), as to other great single writers, no attempt can be made to do justice in this place. His remarkable life and character especially lie outside our subject. But he is universally recognized as the most important single figure of French literature before the Renaissance. His work is very strange in form, the undoubtedly genuine part of it consisting merely of two compositions, known as the great and little Testament, written in stanzas of eight lines of eight syllables each, with lyrical compositions in ballade and rondeau form interspersed. Nothing in old French literature can compare with the best of these, such as the "Ballade des dames du temps jadis," the "Ballade pour sa mère," "La Grosse Margot," "Les Regrets de la belle Heaulmière," and others; while the whole composition is full of poetical traits of the most extraordinary vigour, picturesqueness and pathos. Towards the end of the century the poetical production of the time became very large. The artificial measures already alluded to, and others far more artificial and infinitely less beautiful, were largely practised. The typical poet of the end of the 15th century is Guillaume Crétin (d. 1525), who distinguished himself by writing verses with punning rhymes, verses ending with double or treble repetitions of the same sound, and many other tasteless absurdities, in which, as Pasquier remarks, "il perdit toute la grâce et la liberté de la composition." The other favourite direction of the poetry of the time was a vein of allegorical moralizing drawn from the _Roman de la rose_ through the medium of Chartier and Christine, which produced "Castles of Love," "Temples of Honour," and such like. The combination of these drifts in verse-writing produced a school known in literary history, from a happy phrase of the satirist Coquillart (_v. inf._), as the "Grands Rhétoriqueurs." The chief of these besides Crétin were Jean Molinet (d. 1507); Jean Meschinot (c. 1420-1491), author of the _Lunettes des princes_; Florimond Robertet (d. 1522); Georges Chastellain (1404-1475), to be mentioned again; and Octavien de Saint-Gelais (1466-1502), father of a better poet than himself. Yet some of the minor poets of the time are not to be despised. Such are Henri Baude (1430-1490), a less pedantic writer than most, Martial d'Auvergne (1440-1508), whose principal work is _L'Amant rendu cordelier au service de l'amour_, and others, many of whom formed part of the poetical court which Charles d'Orléans kept up at Blois after his release. Entry: FRENCH

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 11, Slice 2 "French Literature" to "Frost, William"     1910-1911

Thurneysen had edited from BB., Laud 610 and a TCD. MS. three treatises on metric which give an account of the countless metres practised by the _filid_. It is impossible for us here to enter into the question of Irish prosody in any great detail. We have seen that there is some reason for believing that the primitive form of Irish verse was a kind of rhythmical alliterative prose as contained in the oldest versions of the sagas. The _filid_ early became acquainted with the metres of the Latin church hymns, whence rhyme was introduced into Ireland. (This is the view of Thurneysen and Windisch. Others like Zeuss have maintained that rhyme was an invention of the Irish.) In any case the _filid_ evolved an intricate system of rhymes for which it is difficult to find a parallel. The medieval metres are called by the general name of _Dán Dírech_, "Direct Metre." Some of the more general principles were as follows. The verses are grouped in stanzas of four lines, each stanza being complete in itself. Each line must contain a fixed number of syllables, whilst the different metres vary as to the employment of internal and end rhyme, assonance and alliteration. The Irish elaborated a peculiar system of consonantal correspondence which counted as rhyme. The consonants were divided with a considerable degree of phonetic accuracy into six groups, so that a voiceless stop (c) rhymes with another voiceless stop (t, p), a voiced stop (b) with another voiced stop (d, g), and so forth. The commonest form of verse is the four-line stanza of seven syllables. Such a verse with rhymes _abab_ and monosyllabic or dissyllabic finals belongs to the class _rannaigecht_. A similar stanza with _aabb_ rhymes is the basis of the so-called _debide_ (cut in two) metres. A peculiarity of the latter is that the rhyming word ending the second line must contain at least one syllable more than the rhyming word which ends the first. Another frequently employed metre is the _rindard_, consisting of lines of six syllables with dissyllabic endings. In the metrical treatises examples are given of some 200 odd metres. The result of the complicated technique evolved in Ireland was an inclination to sacrifice sense to musical harmony. See K. Meyer, _A Primer of Irish Metrics_ (Dublin,1909). Entry: A

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 5 "Cat" to "Celt"     1910-1911

It is difficult to form an estimate of Gottfried's independence of his French source; but it seems clear that he followed closely the narrative of events he found in Thomas. He has, however, introduced into the story an astounding fineness of psychological motive, which, to judge from a general comparison of the Arthurian epic in both lands, is German rather than French; he has spiritualized and deepened the narrative; he has, above all, depicted with a variety and insight, unusual in medieval literature, the effects of an overpowering passion. Yet, glowing and seductive as Gottfried's love-scenes are, they are never for a moment disfigured by frivolous hints or innuendo; the tragedy is unrolled with an earnestness that admits of no touch of humour, and also, it may be added, with a freedom from moralizing which was easier to attain in the 13th than in later centuries. The mastery of style is no less conspicuous. Gottfried had learned his best lessons from Hartmann von Aue, but he was a more original and daring artificer of rhymes and rhythms than that master; he delighted in the sheer music of words, and indulged in antitheses and allegorical conceits to an extent that proved fatal to his imitators. As far as beauty of expression is concerned, Gottfried's _Tristan_ is the masterpiece of the German court epic. Entry: GOTTFRIED

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 12, Slice 3 "Gordon, Lord George" to "Grasses"     1910-1911

A maker of odes in all their elaborate pomp of strophe and antistrophe, a master of new and complex rhythms, a coiner of ambitious words and composite epithets, an employer of audacious transpositions and inversions, and the inventor of a new system of poetic diction,--it is not surprising that Chiabrera should have been compared with Ronsard. Both were destined to suffer eclipse as great and sudden as had been their glory. Ronsard was succeeded by Malherbe and by French literature, properly so-called; Chiabrera was the last of the great Italians, and after him literature languished till the second renaissance under Manzoni. Chiabrera, however, was a man of merit, apart from that of the mere innovator. Setting aside his epics and dramas (one of the latter received the honours of translation at the hands of Nicolas Chrétien, a sort of scenic du Bartas), much of his work remains yet readable and pleasant. His grand Pindarics are dull, it is true, but some of his _Canzonette_, like the anacreontics of Ronsard, are exceedingly elegant and graceful. His autobiographical sketch is also extremely interesting. The simple old poet, with his adoration of Greek (when a thing pleased him greatly he was wont to talk of it as "Greek Verse"), his delight in journeys and sight-seeing, his dislike for literary talk save with intimates and equals, his vanities and vengeances, his pride in the memory of favours bestowed on him by popes and princes, his "_infinita maraviglia_" over Virgil's versification and metaphor, his fondness for masculine rhymes and blank verse, his quiet Christianity, is a figure deserving perhaps of more study than is likely to be bestowed on that "new world" of art which it was his glory to fancy his own, by discovery and by conquest. Entry: A

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 "Châtelet" to "Chicago"     1910-1911

Details may be found in the periodical publications of the Folk-lore Society, and particularly in the following works:--A.B. Gomme's _Traditional Games of Great Britain_ (2 vols., Nutt, 1894-1898); Gomme's _Children's Singing Games_ (Nutt, 1904.); Eckenstein's _Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes_ (Duckworth, 1906); Maclagan, _Games of Argyllshire_, Folk-lore Society (1900); Newell's _Games of American Children_ (Harper Bros., New York, 1884). In Mrs Gomme's _Traditional Games_, several versions of each game, together with a short account of the suggested origin and of the custom or belief indicated, are given for each game. In vol. ii. (pp. 458-531) a memoir of the history of games is given, and the customs and beliefs which originated them, reviewing the whole subject from the anthropological point of view, and showing the place which games occupy among the evidences of early man. In Miss Eckenstein's comparative study of nursery rhymes suggested origins are given for many of these, and an attempt made to localize certain of the customs and events. In several of the publications of the Folk-lore Society local collections of games are given, all of which may be studied with advantage. Stubbes and other early writers give many instances of boys' games in their days, many of which still exist. Tylor and other writers on anthropology, in dealing with savage custom, confirm the views here expressed. For nursery rhymes see Halliwell, _Nursery Rhymes_ (1845), and Chambers's _Popular Rhymes_ (first printed 1841, reprinted in 1870). The recently collected _Morris Dances_ by Mr Cecil Sharp should also be consulted. One of the morris dances, bean-setting, evidently dealing with planting or harvest, is danced in circle form, while others indicating fighting or rivalry are danced in line form, each line dancing in circle before crossing over to the opposite, side, and thus conforming to the laws already shown to exist in the more ordinary game. (A. B. G.*) Entry: CHILDREN

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton"     1910-1911