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More "Erudition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by your compliment to my national erudition, a very scanty stock in my best of times, and now nearly used up, in 'furnishing forth' the pages of many an idle tale, worked out in the 'Irish Interest,' as the mouse nibbled at the lion's net,—the same presumption, if not with ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... fashion, seek out a victim, strike the blow, and then leave the weapon in the body which must be inevitably traced to me, is a deed of such madness that I can only wonder that a gentleman with the erudition of the counsel should have thought it worth while ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... Damocles of examinations, they thrive by living as far as possible among the things they ought to learn. They thus assimilate the object of instruction, which becomes a living and useful part of their personality, instead of becoming encysted in the brain in the form of dead erudition like a foreign body, and filling it with formulae learnt by heart. Such formulae are ill-understood by children, and later on it is difficult for them to clear their brains of this indigestible rubbish to make room for the realities of observation and induction. The only punishments at the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... native of Ferrara too were first collected the books that were earliest placed in the Ambrosian library at Milan, Barnardine Ferrarius, whose deep erudition and simple manners gained him the favour of Frederick Borromeo, who sent him to Spain to pick up literary rarities, which he bestowed with pleasure on the place where he had received his education. His treatise on the rites of sepulture used by the ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... soon arrived at another in which the bees and the birds are mathematicians of such genius and erudition, that they give daily instructions in the science of geometry to the wise men of the empire. The king of the place having offered a reward for the solution of two very difficult problems, they were solved ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... taste as well as classical erudition Ascham preferred Sophocles and Euripides to the oratorical and sententious Seneca, his view was not shared by the renaissance. Scaliger, preoccupied as he was with style, found his ideal of tragedy not in the plays of the great Greeks, but in the closet dramas ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... voices on either side of the Atlantic with regard to the literary merits of William H. Prescott. Truth, dignity, research, candor, erudition, chaste and simple elegance, mark all he has ever written. His noble powers were in perfect consonance with his noble soul. His strict sense of justice shines in all its brilliancy, in his evident desire to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, of every character appearing ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... those remarkable lines in which an old bard, doubtless seeing the Menai Bridge by means of second sight, says: 'I will pass to the land of Mona notwithstanding the waters of Menai, without waiting for the ebb'—and was feeling not a little proud of my erudition when the man in grey, after looking at me for a moment fixedly, asked me the name of the bard who ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... much erudition, "I deplore the poor workman's condition." When he learned what they earned, His profession he spurned, ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... thought more than anybody supposed, and had a pretty good stock of general learning and knowledge'—all conspire to shew that, if he had no more learning than what he could not help, James Boswell was altogether, as Dominie Sampson said of Mannering, 'a man of considerable erudition despite of his ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... sayings is not exactly new. You can't possibly mistake a man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I once read an introductory lecture that looked to me too learned for its latitude. On examination, I found all its erudition was taken ready-made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the little great man, who had once belabored me in his feeble way. But one can generally tell these wholesale thieves easily enough, and they are not worth ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... of Religion, continually disturbs their Opinion of themselves, and creates severe Misgivings and Distrust in their Minds, lest their Notions about Religion should not be true, when they observe, that many Persons of eminent Parts, superior Reason and Erudition, maintain with Zeal quite contrary Sentiments; or else it proceeds from their Hatred of Men of Vertue, founded in the Dissimilitude of Dispositions and Manners, and Disagreement in Interest, Employments and Designs; or from ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... established in Peru and it came to pass that a certain Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, a Spanish officer of unusual erudition in maritime and other matters, having collected and translated many historical documents, or guipus,* relating to the Incas, became aware that one of them, their wisest and greatest monarch, named Tupac Yupanqui, had made ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... something charming about it, and entertains the eye, satiated with chefs d'oeuvre. It has invention, fancy, originality; and tho I may be censured for the opinion, I confess I prefer this exuberance to the coldness of the Greek style imitated with more erudition than success in our modern public buildings. At each side stand great bronze horses pawing the ground, and held ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... Our great divines," and he stood upright, "were models; 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as King George the Third had once said of them to Dr. Johnson. They had that depth, and power, and gravity, and fulness, and erudition; and they were so racy, always racy, and what might be called English. They had that richness, too, such a mine of thought, such a world of opinion, such activity of mind, such inexhaustible resource, such diversity, too. Then they were so eloquent; the ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... golden age of letters as well as her age of military glory. Her libraries and archives are filled with unread, musty manuscripts, comprising treatises on philosophy and metaphysics, histories, biographies, and poems, rich in the classic erudition of the Orient. In 1336, Sultan Orkan found leisure from war and conquest to establish, at Brusa, a literary institution, which became so famous for its learning, that Persians and Arabians did not disdain to avail themselves of its instruction. But with the death ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... that both the material and the lines of thought that the book comprises, are useful, thoughtful, and enjoyable, taken for what they are worth. The book certainly is based on a formidable level of erudition, however cheerful the author's style ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... death's-heads and cross-bones, their leopards' paws, and Maltese crosses. There were inscriptions on the panels of the singing-gallery, telling of benefactions to the poor of Shepperton, with an involuted elegance of capitals and final flourishes, which my alphabetic erudition traced with ever-new delight. No benches in those days; but huge roomy pews, round which devout church-goers sat during 'lessons', trying to look anywhere else than into each other's eyes. No low partitions allowing you, with a dreary absence of contrast and mystery, to see ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... about birds," confessed Cai, reduced to helplessness by this erudition. "And I don't know anything about poetry, more's the pity—having been caught young and ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... call out Grampus again, he was mistaken. Everybody felt it too absurd that Merman should undertake to correct Grampus in matters of erudition, and an eminent man has something else to do than to refute a petty objector twice over. What was essential had been done: the public had been enabled to form a true judgment of Merman's incapacity, the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... struck up a warm friendship. He delighted in the galleries and scenery of Florence, though with Rome he was less impressed. "But for some beautiful palaces," he said, "it might just as well be any town in Germany." In an interview with Pope Gregory XVI, he took the opportunity of displaying his erudition. When the Pope observed that the Greeks had taken their art from the Etruscans, Albert replied that, on the contrary, in his opinion, they had borrowed from the Egyptians: his Holiness politely acquiesced. ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... of proem of the book called Caton, which book hath been translated into English by Master Benet Burgh, late Archdeacon of Cochester, and high canon of St. Stephen's at Westminster, which ful craftily hath made it in ballad royal for the erudition of my lord Bousher, son and heir at that time to my lord the Earl of Essex. And because of late came to my hand a book of the said Cato in French, which rehearseth many a fair learning and notable examples, I have translated it out of French into English, as all ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... an ancient notion that the music of the swan was produced by its wings, and inspired by the zephyr. See this subject, treated with his accustomed erudition, by Mr. Jodrell, in his Illustrations of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... he descended from his ladder to speak more at his ease. His eyes glistened, and the delight of gratified vanity beamed from them as he displayed his vast erudition. ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... Historical erudition and sacred learning supplied him with ample sources of argument. The boldness of his character and language inspired words which even avenge a defeat, and his fine countenance, his sonorous voice, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... first appearance, concluded he was mad; but, in the course of the conversation, found means to resign that opinion without adopting any other in lieu of it, and parted with him under all the impatience of curiosity. The knight, on his part, was very well entertained with the witty sarcasms and erudition of the doctor, who appeared to be a sort of cynic philosopher tinctured with misanthropy, and at open war with the whole body of apothecaries, whom however it was by no means his interest ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... inquired, "Wouldn't you like to walk home with me, Comrade Higgins?" He stammered, "Yes"; and they went out, the young goddess plying him with questions about conditions in the jail, and displaying most convincing erudition on the subject of the economic aspects of criminology—at the same time seeming entirely oblivious to the hoverings of the other moths, and the disgust of the unemancipated ladies of ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... who brings you this letter, is a young man of remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough erudition, with the widest learning, with the greatest penetration that I have ever known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he combines an energy of will and a capacity for action which astonish me. In no one have I found united so much ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... bumpy page crackles faintly; the big irregular print meets the eye with a pleasant and leisurely mellowness. But what do they tell one? Very little, alas! that one need know, very much which it would be a positive mistake to believe. That is the worst of erudition—that the next scholar sucks the few drops of honey that you have accumulated, sets right your blunders, and you are superseded. You have handed on the torch, perhaps, and even trimmed it. Your errors, ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... on these very subjects, and competition in this impersonal field is most keen. For while popular enthusiasm for philosophy for philosophy's sake might, among any people, eventually show symptoms of fatigue, it is not likely to flag where the outcome of it is so substantial. Erudition carries there all earthly emoluments in its train. For the man who can write the most scholastic essay on the classics is forthwith permitted to amass much honor and more wealth by wronging his less accomplished fellow-citizens. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... a—magnificent—Gothic—Monument and set me right as to the lie of the roads. He seemed pleased to find that I remembered very little of what I ought to have noticed on the way. It gave him an opportunity for the display of his local erudition. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... intellectual principle formed from scientifics, and as they are afraid of cultivating the intellectual faculties by worldly sciences, from this comes an influx of fear. They care nothing for scientifics which are of human erudition.' ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... concertos, those in A minor, in G, in D, and in E minor being the favourites, and to this day highly esteemed by Violinists of every school. His duos and trios are pleasing and effective, and, though long since superseded by works of greater erudition, they form a landmark in the history of the progress ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... Empress's robe, which consequently must be carried by Ladies of Honor or of the Palace." This remark displeased the Emperor, and many members of the council cited many examples to refute it, notably that of Maria de' Medici. Joseph, who had foreseen their arguments, displayed unexpected erudition: "Maria de' Medici," he said, "was accompanied only by Queen Margaret, the first wife of Henri IV., and by Madame (Catherine of Bourbon), the King's sister. The train was carried by a very distant relative. Queen ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... by youth, but by many men and women who would be offended at the charge of ignorance. No person can read it without some addition to his knowledge. It is got up with remarkable skill, and covers a very wide extent of erudition. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... Plato was instructed by Socrates, Aquinas was taught by Albertus Magnus; if Plato travelled into Italy, Greece, and Egypt, Aquinas went to Cologne, Naples, Bologna, and Rome; if Plato was famous for his erudition, Aquinas was no less noted for his universal knowledge. Both were naturally meek and gentle; both led lives of retirement and contemplation; both loved solitude; both were celebrated for self-control; both were brave; both held ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... salutary principle altogether, on account of its being liable to occasional abuse. When turned into the right direction, and applied to its true purposes, it prompts to every dignified and generous enterprise. It is erudition in the portico, skill in the lycaeum, eloquence in the senate, victory in the field. It forces indolence into activity, and extorts from vice itself the deeds of generosity and virtue. When once the soul is warmed by its ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... of self-advertisement. But at least the cheap-jack does advertise his wares, whereas the don or dear-jack advertises nothing except himself. His very silence, nay his very sterility, are supposed to be marks of the richness of his erudition. He is too learned to teach, and sometimes too wise even to talk. St. Thomas Aquinas said: "In auctore auctoritas." But there is more than one man at Oxford or Cambridge who is considered an authority because he ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... it be written? Such, in effect, are the questions which Mr. Gooch propounds in this very interesting volume. He wisely abstains from giving any dogmatic answers to these questions, but in a work which shows manifest signs of great erudition and far-reaching research he ranges over the whole field of European and American literature, and gives us a very complete summary both of how, as a matter of fact, history has been written, and of the spirit in which the leading ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator Rosa attained its reputation. It is the complete expression on canvas of the spirit of the time. Claude embodies the foolish pastoralism, Salvator the ignorant terror, and Gaspar the dull and affected erudition. ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... being admired for wit or erudition, I cannot exactly measure in a female mind; but state it to be as delightful as you can imagine it to be, there are evils attendant upon it, which, in the estimation of a prudent father, may over-balance the good. The intoxicating effect of wit upon the brain has been ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... with privation and poverty, where a want of all that is generous or merciful is blended with the most devoted heroic virtues, where the most cold-blooded cruelty is linked with the fiery passions of Africa, where ignorance and erudition stand ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... my sister nor myself brought any out of it but a little of our native English. By "mathematics," reader, must be understood "cyphering." It was, in fact, a humble day-school, at which reading and writing were taught to us boys in the morning, and the same slender erudition was communicated to the girls, our sisters, etc., in the evening. Now Starkey presided, under Bird, over both establishments. In my time, Mr. Cook, now or lately a respectable singer and performer at Drury-Lane Theatre, and nephew to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... well-furnished library of my new master, with every convenience for annotation and elucidation, the translation of the Vedas was commenced. Like my father, my employer was possessed of vast erudition; but, unlike him, he was also a man of the world, high in favor at court, wealthy, honored, and enjoying the friendship of all the most noted savans and other celebrities of the metropolis. During the progress of the work some of these would occasionally enter the study ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... mental mistiness, is not very unusual in ghost seers. The brother of a friend of my own, a man of letters and wide erudition, was, as a boy, employed in a shop in a town, say Wexington. The overseer was a dark, rather hectic-looking man, who died. Some months afterwards the boy was sent on an errand. He did his business, but, like a boy, returned by a longer and more interesting route. He stopped ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... He piqued himself upon being a Stoic, and gloried in being slovenly and disgusting in honour of his profession. In this he succeeded to admiration; for he was very fat, so that he perspired almost as much in winter as in summer. Erudition and brutality seemed to be the most conspicuous features of his character, and were displayed in his conversation, sometimes together, sometimes alternately, but always disagreeably: he was not jealous, and yet ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... or even contrary opinions, is surely a vague way of translating. It is also, in the present acceptation of the word, improper. Formerly the term wise men denoted philosophers, or men of science and erudition: it is hardly ever used so now, unless in burlesque. Some say Magi; but Magians is better, as having more the form of an English word." CAMPBELL'S Translation of the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... was an affluent fortune. A marriage took place; and, to turn his wife's money to the best advantage, he projected the scheme of an academy for education. Gilbert Walmsley, at that time, registrar of the ecclesiastical court of the bishop of Lichfield, was distinguished by his erudition, and the politeness of his manners. He was the friend of Johnson, and, by his weight and influence, endeavoured to promote his interest. The celebrated Garrick, whose father, captain Garrick, lived at Lichfield, was placed in the new seminary of education by that gentleman's ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... besides the accumulation of a great quantity of information, some not entirely inadequate or incorrect general standards of taste and criticism will have been arrived at. It is worth remembering that at least one eminently competent English critic has declared that while there may be less erudition in America, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... and conversation about business begins. If any outsider could at such times overhear Nikolay's free use of our terminology, he might perhaps imagine that he was a learned man disguised as a soldier. And, by the way, the rumours of the erudition of the University porters are greatly exaggerated. It is true that Nikolay knows more than a hundred Latin words, knows how to put the skeleton together, sometimes prepares the apparatus and amuses the students by some long, ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... not really concerned at this time of day with the improbabilities of so well-established a tragedy, but only with the most recent interpretation of it. And let me say at once that, for the best of reasons, I do not propose to compete with the erudition of my fellow-critics in the matter of previous interpreters, for I bring a virgin mind to my consideration of the merits ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... account of an interview with ex-President Adams, by a southern gentleman, in 1834, affords some just conceptions of the versatility of his genius, and the profoundness of his erudition:— ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... Indicates such profound erudition and ability in the discussion as leaves nothing to be desired.—Sen. Oscar de La ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... used not to be encouraged to guess at words, but to be punished for shirking work if they had not looked them out. It is to be hoped that English will be in the future increasingly taught in schools; but even so there is the danger of connecting it too much with erudition. The old Clarendon Press Shakespeare was an almost perfect example of how not to edit Shakespeare for boys; the introductions were learned and scholarly, the notes were crammed with philology, derivation, illustration. As a matter of fact ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... artistic erudition another stumbling-block to simplicity of style and unity of conception. Moreau began by imitating both Delacroix and Ingres. Now, such a precedure is manifestly dangerous. Huysmans speaks with contempt of promiscuity in the admiration of ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... dialecticians, MM. Hervieu and Brieux. In such a play as La Course du Flambeau, there is scarcely a scene that may not be called an obligatory deduction from the thesis duly enunciated, with no small parade of erudition, in the first ten minutes of the play. It is that, in handing on the vital lampada, as Plato and "le bon poete Lucrece" express it, the love of the parent for the child becomes a devouring mania, to which everything else is sacrificed, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... vast amount of erudition has been expended by historical students to establish the truth or falsity of this Pocahontas story. The author has refrained from entering the controversy, preferring to let the story stand as it was told by Captain Smith in his "General ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... seminaries in September last. A number of girls and boys, from three to five years of age, with a very few a little older, who had come in comparatively late, were subjected to the usual questioning in the various branches of their very elementary erudition. Some of the queries proved beyond the powers of the generality of the children; but this led to no expression of dejection or awkwardness. They evidently all endeavoured to do their very best. It was interesting to observe, that so far from ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... mention and his own intentional and unintentional admissions, is of an active-minded and agreeable-mannered man, a hard worker, very markedly prone to quips and whimsical sayings and plays upon words, and aware of a double reputation as a man of erudition and a wit. This latter quality it was that won him advancement at court, and it may have been his too clearly confessed reluctance to play the part of an informal table jester to his king that laid the grounds of that deepening royal resentment that ended only with his execution. But he was also ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... with the scholar who opens the store of old poetry to the public, than with him who uses his erudition simply for the benefit of erudite people. The diction of the Middle Ages was interesting to him only as it reflected the customs and emotions of its period. He used the romances as authorities on ancient manners. The Chronicles of Froissart, because they give "a knowledge of ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... the parish, amongst whom were the families of two or three farmers of substance, while the village and its neighbourhood contributed a portion of the poorest of the inhabitants. A year or two before I came, their minister died, and they had chosen another, a very worthy man, of considerable erudition, but of extreme views, as I heard, upon insignificant points, and moved by a great dislike to national churches and episcopacy. This, I say, is what I had made out about him from what I had heard; and my reader ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... BURIGNY hath executed his Plan with abundance of erudition, and an astonishing depth of enquiry. He has introduced nothing but facts well supported, or theological discussions delivered with the greatest conciseness and accuracy. Such readers as aim at amusement only, will ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... but with scarcely sufficient reason, the Niebuhr of ecclesiastical history. The only point in which he resembles the historian of Rome, is in that vast range of complete erudition which makes the Past in its minutest details as familiar as the Present, which is never content with derivative information, but traces back every tributary of the great stream of History to its remotest accessible source. In this respect the two eminent historians were alike, but with this point ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... addition. The authoress, already favourably known to the learned world by her excellent collection of 'Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies,' has executed her task with great skill and fidelity. Every page displays careful research and accuracy. There is a graceful combination of sound, historical erudition, with an air of romance and adventure that is highly pleasing, and renders the work at once an agreeable companion of the boudoir, and a valuable addition to the historical library. Mrs. Green has entered upon an untrodden path, and gives ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... basic distinction of this art-dualism is kept in mind. It is morally certain that the higher part is founded, as Sturt suggests, on something that has to do with those kinds of unselfish human interests which we call knowledge and morality—knowledge, not in the sense of erudition, but as a kind of creation or creative truth. This allows us to assume that the higher and more important value of this dualism is composed of what may be called reality, quality, spirit, or substance against the lower value of form, quantity, or manner. Of these terms "substance" seems ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... acquaintance, erudition, learning, recognition, apprehension, experience, light, scholarship, cognition, information, lore, science, cognizance, intelligence, perception, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... speech, composed for them by their father, and so stuffed with erudition that even the writer hardly understood it, they announced their wish to prove, by ocular demonstration, the truth of a science upon which their short-sighted rivals of Jayasthal had cast cold water, but which, ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... character who appears to have been infected with this disease was RICHARD DE BURY, one of the tutors of Edward III., and afterwards Bishop of Durham; a man who has been uniformly praised for the variety of his erudition, and the intenseness of his ardour in book-collecting.[18] I discover no other notorious example of the fatality of the BIBLIOMANIA until the time of Henry VII.; when the monarch himself may be considered as having added to the number. Although our venerable typographer, Caxton, lauds and magnifies, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... libraries, and then he was hardly satisfied. He had a library in his house at Hodnet. 'His residence in Pimlico, where he died, was filled, like Magliabecchi's at Florence, with books from the top to the bottom; every chair, every table, every passage containing piles of erudition.' He had a house in York Street which was crowded with books. He had a library in Oxford, one at Paris, one at Antwerp, one at Brussels, and one at Ghent. The most accurate estimate of his collections places the number at 146,827 volumes. Heber is believed to have spent ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... rendered was the cultivation of learning and knowledge. With wonderful assiduity they poured forth works of erudition, of history, of criticism, recorded the annals of their own times, and stored these priceless records in their libraries, which have done such good service to the historians of modern times. The monasteries ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... of these Handbooks is their exceeding simplicity, the excellent order with which they are arranged, the completeness of their details, and the remarkable accuracy and elaborate erudition which they exhibit in every page. They have this further advantage, which it is impossible to over-estimate—that they bring down their respective subjects to the very latest period, and present us with the results of the most recent investigations of the critics and antiquaries ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... scientific works written from that time to the third or fourth century B.C., when the language, having been progressively refined, became fixed in the writings of Kalidasa, Jayadeva, and other poets. A fourth period, including the tenth century A.D., may be added, distinguished by its erudition, grammatical, rhetorical, and scientific disquisitions, which, however, is not considered as belonging to the classical age. From the Hindu languages, originating in the Sanskrit, new literatures ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Dictionaries are both as ill-done as possible, and the author of the smaller one deserves to be put under the pump for taking the name of the illustrious Ducange, one of those megatheria of erudition and industry that we should look on as an extinct species, but for such men as the brothers Grimm. The larger book has the merit of including a bibliography of the subject, for which the author deserves our thanks, though in other respects showing no least qualification ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... too rigorous method of completing the process of mind-formation. Young Marrineal got a great deal out of that trip, though the result should perhaps be set down under the E of Experience rather than that of Erudition. The mentor also acquired experience, but it profited him little, as he died within the year after the completion of the trip, his health having been sacrificed in a too conscientious endeavor to keep even pace with his pupil. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... some theme furnished by the bishopric, some question of dogma, morality or religious history, which he reads aloud and discusses with his brethren under the presidency and direction of the oldest cure, who gives his final decision; this keeps theoretical knowledge and ecclesiastical erudition fresh in the minds of both reader and hearers. The other institution, almost universal nowadays, is the annual retreat which the priests in the diocese pass in the large seminary of the principal town. The plan of it was traced by Saint Ignatius; his Exercitia is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... used to publish as his guide to London, and which unhappily no one publishes now. It is a bulky volume of near six hundred pages, crammed with facts more delightful than any fancies, and its riches were supplemented for me by the specific erudition of my friend, the genealogist, Mr. Lothrop Withington, who accompanied my wanderings, and who endorses all my statements. The reader who doubts them (as I sometimes do) may recur to him at the British Museum with the proper ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... history, or tale of shipwreck, was sold by a peddler or wandering subscription-man, to some one in the village, and read through its owner's nose to a slumberous auditory. Like my brother fishermen, I grew into the belief that all human erudition was collected in our pedagogue, whose green spectacles and solemn phiz, as he passed to his little school- house, amid a waste of sand, might have gained him a diploma from any college in New England. In truth I dreaded him. When our ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Behind it could be plainly perceived a huge scaffolding of erudite labour, and the working of an intellect of abnormal power; but what was not so apparent, and is now only being slowly recognised, was that much of this erudition was hasty and inspired by preconceived opinions, and that Taine's genius was more philosophic than historic. Assuming the validity of the impressions he had formed when witnessing the agony of Paris in the spring of ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... the 'sleep well' of the ladies, and I sat with him much like his pipe-bowl, which burned bright a moment at one sturdy puff, but generally gave out smoke in fantastical wreaths. He told me frankly he had a poor idea of my erudition. My fancifulness he commended as something to be turned to use in writing stories. 'Give me time, and I'll do better things,' I groaned. He rarely spoke of the princess; with grave affection always when he did. He was evidently observing me comprehensively. The result ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... columns of the Edinburgh Review, Francis Jeffrey was "propounding heresies of all sorts against the ruling fancies of the day, whether political, poetical, or social." John Wilson, "Christopher North," that "monster of erudition," was acting as the animating soul of his celebrated magazine. Amid such a galaxy of brilliant constellations, Henry Bell graduated for a literary career, and he was not esteemed the least of the parhelions that shone around the fixed stars ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... which exhaustive study, the duties of a household tutor, a secretary, or a professor, service near a prince, deadly hostility and danger, enthusiastic admiration and extravagant scorn, excess and poverty, followed each other in confusion. The humanist needed to know how to carry a great erudition and to endure a succession of various positions and occupations. To these were added on occasion stupefying and disorderly enjoyment, and when the basest demands were made on him he had to be indifferent to all morals. Haughtiness was a certain consequence in character. The humanists needed it ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Kahnweiler's shop on the Boulevards with an extremely intelligent official from South Kensington, and I remember his admitting with excellent candour that, though the Picassos still puzzled him, he was a thorough convert to Derain. Naturally: how should a man of taste and erudition not appreciate the exquisite scholarship of an artist who can use the masters of painting as a very fine man of letters—Charles Lamb, for instance—uses the masters of literature? For Derain is one who has gone to the root of the matter and can remind you of the Siennese school ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... not only a splendid erudition that specially qualified him for proposing this toast, he had also what many of you may think an equally exceptional qualification—he was a native of Lichfield; he was born in this fine city. As a Londoner—like Boswell when charged with the crime of being a Scotsman I may say ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... contents of the libraries. There were then no short cuts to learning, no comprehensive lexicons, no dictionaries of antiquities, no carefully prepared thesauri of mythology and history. Each student had to hold in his brain the whole mass of classical erudition. The text and the canon of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the tragedians had to be decided. Greek type had to be struck. Florence, Venice, Basle, Lyons, and Paris groaned with printing presses. The ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... look up from the fleshless and skeleton perfection of the problemed forms, which start at your slightest touch from the formal squares of the chess board,—forms which confuse me with their complexity, bewilder me in the mazes of their ceaseless combinations, dazzle me with their chill erudition, and appal me with want of life,—and smile acceptance on the glowing gifts ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... acknowledged for the creations of the other. Like the author of NORMA, he was full of melodic feeling, yet he was ambitions of attaining the harmonic depth of the learned old master; desiring to unite, in a great and elevated style, the dreamy vagueness of spontaneous emotion with the erudition ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt
... a month or two after the receipt of the books Jude had grown callous to the shabby trick played him by the dead languages. In fact, his disappointment at the nature of those tongues had, after a while, been the means of still further glorifying the erudition of Christminster. To acquire languages, departed or living in spite of such obstinacies as he now knew them inherently to possess, was a herculean performance which gradually led him on to a greater interest in it than in the presupposed patent process. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... resembled her own chair in size and convenience, was one designed for her husband, Nicephorus Briennius. He was said to entertain or affect the greatest respect for his wife's erudition, though the courtiers were of opinion he would have liked to absent himself from her evening parties more frequently than was particularly agreeable to the Princess Anna and her imperial parents. This was partly explained by the private tattle of the court, which averred, that the Princess ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... nutrition and the Materiaux pour la dynamique du ciel, contain, side by side with very profound ideas, evident errors in mechanics. Thus it often happens that discoveries put forward in a somewhat vague manner by adventurous minds not overburdened by the heavy baggage of scientific erudition, who audaciously press forward in advance of their time, fall into quite intelligible oblivion until rediscovered, clarified, and put into shape by slower but surer seekers. This was the case with the ideas of Mayer. ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... there is an old crofter who, in his early years, worked at the loom with Alexander Bain, late Professor in the University of Aberdeen. Half a century ago, John Stuart Mill said that Bain's erudition was encyclopaedic. From long residence in France, I know that few British philosophers are better known than Bain (whose name the French amusingly pronounce to rhyme with vin). This old crofter tells how ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... respectability was broken down,—and he was rejected. In the meantime he was found to be of value by the party to which he had attached himself. It was discovered that he was not only a sound lawyer, but a man of great erudition, who had studied the experience of history as well as the wants of the present age. He was one who would disgrace no Government,—and he was invited to accept the office of Solicitor-General by a Minister who had never seen him out of the House of Commons. "He is as ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... law-study hours and his recreation-time in the courts. In those very days he was writing great plays, and needed all the time he could get. The horse-holding legend ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the historian's difficulty in accounting for the young Shakespeare's erudition—an erudition which he was acquiring, hunk by hunk and chunk by chunk every day in those strenuous times, and emptying each day's catch into next day's ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... "is one of those rare individuals who indulge in the most unbounded enthusiasm. At the present time I think, with all deference to his superior erudition, that he is running into a dead wall. We have seen something of the 'woman's rights' question in America. Let us take him over there and show ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... relative sizes of different countries. Malte Brun justly reckons Cluverius, Riccioli, and Varenius, as amongst the most celebrated geographers of this century. Cluverius was a man of extensive and accurate erudition, which he applied to the illustration of ancient geography. Riccioli, an Italian Jesuit, devoted his abilities and leisure to the study of mathematics, and the sciences dependent upon it, particularly astronomy; and was thus enabled ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... astonished at the detailed knowledge of Shakspere, touching the "Word of God;" and when he entered into a dissertation of the Hebrew, Greek and Latin philosophers and "divines" who concocted the history of the ancients, they marveled at his native erudition. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... That in the eleventh century Judah Halevi of Toledo and Nathan of Rome should have been familiar with Russian words cannot but be attributed to their contact with Russian Jews. However, in the case of these two scholars, it may possibly be ascribed to their great erudition or extensive travels. But the many Slavonic expressions occurring in the commentaries of Rashi (1040-1105), and employed by Joseph Caro (ab. 1140), Benjamin of Tudela (ab. 1160), and Isaac of Vienna (ab. 1250), lend ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... commutation broach, I'll pledge my aith in guid braid Scotch, He need na fear their foul reproach Nor erudition, Yon mixtie-maxtie queer hotch-potch, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... bruised and helpless, who are strewn along the highway of life; and those who penetrated beyond the polished surface of Dr. Grey's character, realized that no tinge of cynicism, no affectation of contempt for his country and countrymen lurked in his heart, while erudition and foreign sojourning seemed only to have warmed and intensified his sympathy with all noble aims—his compassion ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... permit. I am thus circumstantial, Mr. Somerset, to show you that I do not proceed without proof, She has repeatedly said in my presence that she would never marry any man unless he were not only well-looking, but of the profoundest erudition, united with an acquaintance with men and manners which none can dispute. 'Besides,' added she, 'he must not differ with me one tittle in politics, for on that head I hold myself second to no man or woman in Europe.' And then she has complimented me, by declaring that I ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... controverted point. Besides those who had the privilege of listening to his prelections from the professorial chair, there are many in the Churches on both sides of the Atlantic who have profited by his great erudition; and his published writings, which all bear the impress of a master-hand, will always be reckoned standard ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... revoltante, pour ne pas convenir que, juste appreciateur de tous les tresors bibliographiques qu'il a le bonheur d'avoir sous la main, M. Dibdin en a fait connoitre en detail toute la richesse dans de nombreux d'ouvrages, ou tres souvent le luxe d'erudition se trouve en harmonie avec le luxe typographique qu'il y ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... significance attaches in his mind to the term. No picture of a personality or his work arises in the imagination when the word "scientist" is pronounced. More or less indefinitely, I suppose, it is conceded by all that a scientist is a man of vast erudition (an impression by the way which is often strikingly incorrect) who leads a dreary life with his head buried in a book or his eye glued to telescope or microscope, or perfumed with those disagreeable ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... But appearances were well kept up at Brotherton, and no one was more anxious that things should be done in a seemly way than the Dean. Therefore, Mr. Groschut, who was a very low churchman and had once been a Jew, but who bore a very high character for theological erudition, was asked to the deanery. There was also one or two other clergymen there, with their wives, and Mr. and Mrs. Houghton. Mrs. Houghton, it will be remembered, was the beautiful woman who had refused to become the wife ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Mr. Louis Lumet, both of whom have already earned their laurels, the former as poet, novelist, playwright, historian and philosopher, and author of a definitive work upon Helvetius which deserves to become a classic, and the latter as publicist, art critic and scholar of rare and profound erudition. An acquaintance with the successive volumes in this series will give ample evidence of the ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... imagine I have not the highest respect for your friend Moore. I have written the review of his poems in a strain of panegyric to which I am not frequently accustomed. I am told he is a most worthy young man, and I am certain myself of his genius and erudition.' Dermody's own career was nearly at an end. He died of consumption in 1802, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... by Columbus, however idle and extravagant it may appear in the present day, was in unison with the temper of the times, and of the court to which it was proposed. The vein of mystic erudition by which it was enforced, likewise, was suited to an age when the reveries of the cloister still controlled the operations of the cabinet and the camp. The spirit of the crusades had not yet passed away. ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... was there, to a dead certainty, one tenth part as much amongst the canon-settlers. Yet all this marvellous learning fumes away in boyish impertinence. It confounds itself. And every Christian says, Oh, take away this superfluous weight of erudition, that, being so rare a thing, cannot be wanted in the broad highways of religion. What we do want is humility, docility, reverence for God, and love for man. These are sown broadcast amongst human hearts. Now, these apply themselves to the sense of Scripture, not to its grammatical ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... and the affecting thought of Bovary vaguely contributed to his pleasure by a kind of egotistic reflex upon himself. Then the presence of the doctor transported him. He displayed his erudition, cited pell-mell ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... mean in range of acquirement and the flavor that comes with it." Those words might have been written of himself. It is sixty-five years since Lowell was appointed to his professorship at Harvard, and during this long period erudition has not been idle here. It is quite possible that the University possesses to-day a better Dante scholar than Lowell, a better scholar in Old French, a better Chaucer scholar, a better Shakespeare scholar. ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... a larger sale. Scott himself regarded it as superior to both; but an author is not always the best judge of his own productions, and we do not accept his criticism. It probably cost him more labor; but it is an exhibition of his erudition rather than a revelation of himself or of Nature. It is certainly very learned; but learning does not make a book popular, nor is a work of fiction the place for a display of learning. If "The Antiquary" were published in these times, it would be pronounced ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... unremitting attention—which called upon me for every demonstration of a sense of the obligations I was under. It will not be easy for me to forget, either the kind-hearted attentions or the bibliographical erudition of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... good you have obtained from three perusals of the Commentaries on Scottish Criminal Jurisprudence?" said his companion. "I suppose the learned author very little thinks that the facts which his erudition and acuteness have accumulated for the illustration of legal doctrines, might be so arranged as to form a sort of appendix to the half-bound and slip-shod ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... The allusions in Butler are often dark and far-fetched; and though scarcely any author was ever able to express his thoughts in so few words, he often employs too many thoughts on one subject, and thereby becomes prolix after an unusual manner. It is surprising how much erudition Butler has introduced with so good a grace into a work of pleasantry and humor: Hudibras is perhaps one of the most learned compositions that is to be found in any language. The advantage which the royal cause received from this poem, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... of her companion's erudition to understand what had attracted him to the house. She noticed the fan-shaped tracery of the broken light above the door, the flutings of the paintless pilasters at the corners, and the round window set in ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... victim of this elective-study craze, and with the usual stupidity displayed by a child when left to decide what he shall do, I chose Latin as my principal study in this common district school, because I fancied it smacked of erudition. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... providentially equally rare, were scattered about. There were various bronzes, marbles, and casts, all requiring explanation, and so fulfilling their purpose of promoting conversation, and exhibiting the erudition of their owner. There were souvenirs of travel with a history, old bric-a-brac with a pedigree, but little or nothing that challenged attention for itself alone. In all cases the superiority of the owner ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... marvelous analysis the composite influences which helped to shape the apostolic histories in the interest of party or of piety. Renan reillumined the scene which his predecessors seemed to convert into a dreary waste, by reconceiving, with erudition illumined by genius and sympathy, the personality of Jesus of Nazareth as a human character, nowise infallible, but a sublime leader of the race. While Christianity has thus been brought to the level of a natural religion, its old-time adversaries, the other world-religions such ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... confused and often even perverted, and Galen's anatomy had suffered severely in the transmission. Our earliest knowledge of the teaching of medicine at Bologna is connected with a contemporary of Dante, Taddeo Alderotti, who combined Arabian erudition with the Greek spirit. He occupied a position of extraordinary prominence, was regarded as the first citizen of Bologna and a public benefactor exempt from the payment of taxes. That he should have acquired wealth is not surprising if his usual fees were at the rate at which he charged Pope ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... that the church has ruled the world long enough. People are beginning to see that no amount of eloquence, or faith, or erudition, or authority, can make the records of barbarism satisfactory to the heart and brain of this century. They have also found that a falsehood in Hebrew in no more credible than in plain English. People ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the only personal opinion I heard him express. It was based on no special erudition. He knew no more of the Romans than an average informed man of the world is expected to know. He argued from personal experience. He had suffered himself from a painful and dangerous rheumatic affection till he found relief in this particular ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... standing on one's head. I pointed it out to the Boy from a distance, on its jutting promontory, with the pride of the well-informed guide, and talked of the place with a superficial appearance of erudition. But after all, when he came to pin me down with questions, my bubble-reputation burst. Not a date could I pump up from the drained depths of my recollection, and in the end I had to accept ignominiously ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Muller really never conies to grips with his opponents, and his large volumes shine rather in erudition and style than in method and system. Anyone who attempts a reply must necessarily follow Mr. Max Muller up and down, collecting his scattered remarks on this or that point at issue. Hence my reply, much against my will, must ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... parade of erudition, No pretence of calm judicial tone, But the stimulating ebullition Of a sort of humanized cyclone; Unafraid of flagrant paradoxes, Unashamed of often seeing red, Here's a thinker who the compass boxes Standing most at ease upon ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 153, November 7, 1917 • Various
... knowledge, young Waverley drove through the sea of books like a vessel without a pilot or a rudder. Nothing perhaps increases by indulgence more than a desultory habit of reading, especially under such opportunities of gratifying it. I believe one reason why such numerous instances of erudition occur among the lower ranks is, that, with the same powers of mind, the poor student is limited to a narrow circle for indulging his passion for books, and must necessarily make himself master of the few he possesses ere he can acquire ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... with racy anecdotes of the keen wit and the varied erudition of my venerable friend. But let none of my readers think of Dr. Cox as a clerical jester, or a pedant. He was a powerful and intensely spiritual preacher of the living Gospel. In his New York congregation were many of the best brains and fervent hearts to be found in that city, and some of ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... August and December; a jolly, buxom, wanton, wishful, plethoric female of thirty odd, to an infirm, decrepit, consumptive, gouty, rheumatic, asthmatic, phlegmatic mortal of near seventy; ha, ha. Exquisitely droll and humourous, upon my erudition. It puts me in mind of a hot bed in a hard winter, surrounded with ice, and made verdant and flourishing only by ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... guessed; very likely few gave it any thought at all. In that rugged but munificent profession at whose outward gates he then proceeded to knock, it was altogether improbable that he would burden himself with much more of its erudition than was really necessary for a successful general practice in Virginia in his time, or that he would permanently content himself ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... was some years younger than I am at present, I used to employ myself in a more laborious diversion, which I learned from a Latin treatise of exercises that is written with great erudition: It is there called the skiomachia, or the fighting with a man's own shadow, and consists in the brandishing of two short sticks grasped in each hand, and loaden with plugs of lead at either end. This opens the chest, exercises ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... Background; Bully Bottom and his colleagues are straight from the wilds of Warwickshire; the Roman mob is made up of London prentices, cobblers and the like. Learned Ben, on the other hand, contrives in his Sejanus and his Catiline, by dint and sheer intellect and erudition, to give us correct waxwork and clockwork Romans; there are no anachronisms in Ben Johnson; never a pterodactyl walks down his Piccadilly. But Shakespeare rather liked to have them in his; with his small Latin and less Greek, he had ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... in modern times when Arnold lays down the law that the judges of an English version of Homer must be "scholars, because scholars alone have the means of really judging him," and Newman replies that "scholars are the tribunal of Erudition, but of Taste the educated but unlearned public must ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... Commencement dinner, a function which he discharged with extraordinary felicity. He had an alertness, as he stood lithe and graceful, derived perhaps from his strain of Huguenot blood. His wit was excelling, his learning comprehensive and well in hand. He was no more weighed down by his erudition than was David by his sling. Encomium, challenge, repartee,—all were quick and happy, and from time to time in soberer vein he passed over without shock into befitting dignity. I have sat at many a banquet, but for me that ruling of the feast by Winthrop is the masterpiece in that kind. He lived ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Zeller's excellent work on Greek philosophy, and, with more sparing comment, in Mullach's Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecorum. No one of those Pre-Socratic philosophers has [59] been the subject of a more enthusiastic erudition. For his mind's health however, if in doing so he is not making a disproportionate use of his time, inconsistent certainly with the essential temper of the doctrine he seeks for, and such as a true Pythagorean would instantly condemn, the young scholar ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... old. The place was very dark, and the man was turning over the leaves of a ledger. A stranger to city ways might probably have said that he was idle, but he was no doubt filling his mind with that erudition which would enable him to earn his bread. On the other side of the desk there was a little boy copying letters. These were Mr. Sextus Parker,—commonly called Sexty Parker,—and his clerk. Mr. Parker was a gentleman very well known and at the present moment favourably esteemed on the Stock ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... of surprise to the historical student," said the little man, "that with a people like yours, so conspicuous in many rare examples of erudition, that the history of Acadia has not merited a closer attention, throwing as it does so strong a reflective light upon your own. Such a task doubtless does not present many inviting features, especially to those who would preserve, at any sacrifice ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... can't possibly mistake a man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I once read an introductory lecture that looked to me too learned for its latitude. On examination, I found all its erudition was taken ready-made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the little great man, who had once belabored me in his feeble way. But one can generally tell these wholesale thieves easily enough, and they are not worth the trouble of putting them in the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Theatre Indien, pages 368-371. This is without competition the best work in which any part of the Sanskrit literature has been treated, combining erudition, imagination, and taste. The book is itself literature of a high order. The passage is unfortunately too long to ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... palaver about Sidonia and the Chosen Race. The Novels by Eminent Hands are all good: they are much more than parodies; they are real criticism, sound, wise, genial, and instructive. Nor are they in the least unfair. If the balderdash and cheap erudition of Bulwer and Disraeli are covered with inextinguishable mirth, no one is offended by the pleasant imitations of Lever, James, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... or a professor, service near a prince, deadly hostility and danger, enthusiastic admiration and extravagant scorn, excess and poverty, followed each other in confusion. The humanist needed to know how to carry a great erudition and to endure a succession of various positions and occupations. To these were added on occasion stupefying and disorderly enjoyment, and when the basest demands were made on him he had to be indifferent to all morals. Haughtiness was a certain consequence in character. The humanists needed ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... they accomplished but little. Two brilliant exceptions must, however, be noticed. Spinoza, in the seventeenth century, and Lessing, in the eighteenth, were men far in advance of their age. They are the fathers of modern historical criticism; and to Lessing in particular, with his enormous erudition and incomparable sagacity, belongs the honour of initiating that method of inquiry which, in the hands of the so-called Tubingen School, has led to such striking and valuable conclusions concerning, the age and character of all the New ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... you will think, by my delaying so long to write to you, that I am so drowned in the intovirarion of good fortune as to be indifferent to old, and once dear connections. The truth is, I was determined to write a good letter, full of argument, amplification, erudition, and, as Bayes says, all that. I thought of it, and thought of it, and, by my soul, I could not; and, lest you should mistake the cause of my silence, I just sit down to tell you so. Don't give yourself credit, though, that the strength of your logic scares ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Sophocles to his wondering court; and though, to be sure, there was no one there who understood the Greek tongue, yet all, without doubt, must be enraptured with the wonderful music of the Greek and the amazing erudition of ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... Raleigh; it is this, in part, which makes light the bulky and antiquated tomes of Hakluyt; and the grace of it is that which we often miss in coming from ancient to modern literature. Better it is, too, than much erudition and many "proprieties" of thought; and one may note it as curious, that Mr. Buckle, seeking to disparage imagination, should have written a book whose most winning and enduring charm is the appeal to imagination ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... faults, by trying to remove them, Ut olim vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur. And indeed, where mere conjecture is to be used, the emendations of Scaliger and Lipsius, notwithstanding their wonderful sagacity and erudition, are often vague and ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... circumstances required. He was presumed to have alluded to the order of Melchisedek, but he abstained from any mention of the name. He roamed very wide, and gave many of his hearers an idea that his erudition had carried him into regions in which it was impossible to follow him. The gist of his argument was to show that audacity in Reform was the very backbone of Conservatism. By a clearly pronounced disunion of Church and State the theocracy of Thomas a Becket would be restored, and the people of England ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... on the road of certainty, a summit from which we can overlook the field that our successors will clear. In the course of these lectures I shall attempt to give a summary of the essential results achieved by the erudition of the nineteenth century and to draw from them a few conclusions that will, possibly, be provisional. The invasion of the Oriental religions that destroyed the ancient religions and national ideals of the Romans also radically ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... remorseless dialecticians, MM. Hervieu and Brieux. In such a play as La Course du Flambeau, there is scarcely a scene that may not be called an obligatory deduction from the thesis duly enunciated, with no small parade of erudition, in the first ten minutes of the play. It is that, in handing on the vital lampada, as Plato and "le bon poete Lucrece" express it, the love of the parent for the child becomes a devouring mania, ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... views current in the fourth century regarding the punishment due to heresy. Very little was known of Priscillian until lately; and despite the publication of several of his works in 1889, he still remains an enigmatical personality.[1] His erudition and critical spirit were, however, so remarkable, that an historian of weight declares that henceforth we must rank him with St. Jerome.[2] But his writings were, in all probability, far from orthodox. We can easily find in them traces of Gnosticism and Manicheism. He ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... were still living who had committed those books to memory in boyhood. One such, Fu-seng by name, was noted for his erudition; and from his capacious memory a large portion of the sacred canon was reproduced, being written from his dictation. The copies thus obtained were of course not free from error. Happily a somewhat completer copy, engraved on bamboo tablets, was discovered in the ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... are insignificant enough. But even the worst work of such a man is notable in its way; and Fielding's contributions to the Journal are by no means to be despised. They are shrewd lay sermons, often exhibiting much out-of-the-way erudition, and nearly always distinguished by some of his personal qualities. In No. 33, on "Profanity," there is a character- sketch which, for vigour and vitality, is worthy of his best days; and there is also a very thoughtful paper on "Reading," containing a kindly reference to "the ingenious ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... take care of religion, and of those who instruct the people therein. These were searched and sought out through the whole nation, by the prince and his wisest counsellors, among such of the priesthood as were most deservedly distinguished by the sanctity of their lives, and the depth of their erudition; who were indeed the spiritual fathers of the clergy ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... of miscellanies of this kind has been sometimes called in question; nor are those wanting who condemn the whole tribe of light periodical productions, as detrimental to the advancement of solid science and erudition: yet, in the most learned and enlightened nations of Europe, magazines and periodical compilations have, for more than a century, been circulated with vast success, and, within the last twenty years, increased in price as well as number, to an extent that shows how essentially the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... he insisted that he had twice debated this point with the learned critic, Easley, (whom he styled the New York executioner of literature,) and beat him with ease; for though Easley was a man of profound knowledge and erudition, he was not a match for him ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... secretions and tested it for indecan. He knew trance and clairvoyance, auto-suggestion and telepathic hallucination, epilepsy and hysteria and ecstasy; and over the head of any disputatious person he would swing the steam-shovel of his erudition, and bury the unfortunate beneath a wagon-load of ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... gentlemen who were hovering on the door-step when we emerged, I inferred that Mrs. Amyot, at that period, did not often walk home alone; but I doubt whether any of my discomfited rivals, whatever his claims to favor, was ever treated to so ravishing a mixture of shyness and self-abandonment, of sham erudition and real teeth and hair, as it was my privilege to enjoy. Even at the opening of her public career Mrs. Amyot had a tender eye for strangers, as possible links with successive centres of culture to which in due course the torch of Greek art might be ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... bearer of this letter, is a young man of extraordinary talent. To the most profound erudition and the greatest insight and the richest ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... commingling of Semitic and Hellenic deities after the approved Italian recipe; nor do a few long words about geography or science disquiet us any more. Milton was not writing for an uncivilized mob, and his occasional displays of erudition will represent to a cultured person only those breathing spaces so refreshing in all epic poetry. That Milton's language is saturated with Latinisms and Italianisms is perfectly true. His English may not have been good enough for his contemporaries. But it is ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Merman expected to call out Grampus again, he was mistaken. Everybody felt it too absurd that Merman should undertake to correct Grampus in matters of erudition, and an eminent man has something else to do than to refute a petty objector twice over. What was essential had been done: the public had been enabled to form a true judgment of Merman's incapacity, the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis were but subsidiary elements in Grampus's system, and Merman ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the touch of a conscientious artist with great intellectual ability. His vast erudition is constantly apparent. He is the satiric historian of his time, and he exhibits the follies and the humors of the age under a powerful lens. He is also the author of dainty lyrics, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... fluency, but his speeches read better than they sounded. His knowledge was vast and various, and his style, tempered by foreign travel, was classical. He had mastered history, politics, law, jurisprudence, moral science, and almost every other branch of knowledge, which enabled him to display an erudition as marvelous in amount as it was ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... distinguished prophetism in the religion of Israel changed, after the return of the people from captivity, especially with the party of the Pharisees, to literalness and formalism. The prophets gave place to the synagogue, the living proclamation of the truth to scriptural erudition, the spirit of freedom to slavish subjection to Scripture and tradition. As the ancient productions of the Indian literature, originally the expression of the popular thought of India, were elevated by the Brahmins into Veda, holy, inspired scripture, ...
— A Comparative View of Religions • Johannes Henricus Scholten
... commonplace. I don't know which made me feel most dreary. The predominance of my countrymen gave the dinner the gayety of a funeral; the predominance of the Mossoo gave it the fatigue of got-up enthusiasm, of trivial expansiveness. To hear strangers imparting the scraps of erudition and connoisseurship which they had that morning gathered from their valets de place and guide-books, or describing the sights they had just seen, to you, who either saw them yesterday, or would see them to-morrow, could not be permanently attractive. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... was the age of manuscript recovery, commentary, and publication; the sixteenth, the century of translation, imitation, and ambitious attempt to rival the ancients on their own ground; the seventeenth and eighteenth, the centuries of critical erudition, with many commentaries and versions and much discussion of the theory of translation; and the nineteenth, the century of scientific revision and reconstruction. In the last movement, Italy had comparatively small part. Among her translators during these centuries must be ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... Christianity, where indulgence and luxury contend with privation and poverty, where a want of all that is generous or merciful is blended with the most devoted heroic virtues, where the most cold-blooded cruelty is linked with the fiery passions of Africa, where ignorance and erudition stand in violent and ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... in a manner, practically and theoretically, all things, and had published multifarious Books of his own. [List of them, Twenty-one in number, mostly on learned Antiquarian subjects,—in Forster, ii. 255, 256.] The sublime long-eared erudition of the man was not to be contested; manifest to everybody; thrice and four times manifest to himself, in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... already shows how prone we are to judge the ancients wrongly: the exaggerated sense of literature, for example, or, as Wolf, when speaking of the "inner history of ancient erudition," calls it, "the ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... clapped her little white hands with joy. "Bravo, bravo, my royal OEdipus!" cried she, gayly. "The sphinx is overcome; but she will not throw herself into the sea just yet. She is too happy to bend the knee before her husband's erudition." ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... his usual impatient stride, falling in with the slow, dignified step of his sire, who, though of broad build, would have been as tall as his son, had it not been for a slight stoop, of which he was proud, as it gave him an air of erudition. ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... Herr Lassalle, who brings you this letter, is a young man of remarkable intellectual gifts. With the most thorough erudition, with the widest learning, with the greatest penetration that I have ever known, and with the richest gift of exposition, he combines an energy of will and a capacity for action which astonish me. In no one have I found united so much ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... name of Tom Durfey, a poet of a vast comprehension, an universal genius, and most profound learning. There are also one Mr. Rymer and one Mr. Dennis, most profound critics. There is a person styled Dr. Bentley, who has wrote near a thousand pages of immense erudition, giving a full and true account of a certain squabble of wonderful importance between himself and a bookseller; he is a writer of infinite wit and humour, no man rallies with a better grace and in more sprightly turns. Further, I avow to your Highness that with these eyes I have ...
— English Satires • Various
... any remarkable erudition, indeed all opportunity to do so was carefully shut off. No University, I fancy, would have given him a chair of theology on the strength of his replies on that occasion. There was more than one premature ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... dinner we were miserably tired and worn—but we were posted. Yes, it is fair to claim that. In fact, erudition is a pale name for it. New Zealand was the only subject; and it was just beautiful to hear us ripple it out. And with such an air of unembarrassed ease, and unostentatious familiarity with detail, and trained and seasoned ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Flaccus, who succeeded him in the Augustan age, we owe directly or indirectly almost all the solid facts on which our knowledge of the Roman worship rests. But their works have come down to us in a most imperfect and fragmentary state, and what we have of them we owe mainly to the erudition of later grammarians and commentators, and the learning of the early Christian fathers, who drew upon them freely for illustrations of the absurdities of paganism. And it must be added that when Varro himself deals with the Roman gods ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... written frankly in imitation of Walter Scott's Waverley Novels. The romance contains many tiresome descriptions of scenery, and drags along tediously as most old-fashioned novels did. But Espronceda had none of Sir Walter's archaeological erudition, none of his ability to seize the characteristics of an epoch, and above all none of his skill as a creator of interesting characters. The personages in "Sancho Saldaa" fail to interest. The most that can be said ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... that Mr. Steele lived several years in London. He was Vice-president of the London Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, and a person of talent and erudition. He was the proprietor of three estates in Barbadoes. His agent there used to send him accounts annually of his concerns; but these were latterly so ruinous, not only in a pecuniary point of view, but as they related to ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... the popularity attained by his Commentaries, that they have been translated into no fewer than six languages within ten years. It exhibits a favorable aspect of the author's mind, and gives a very high idea of his erudition. One cause which tended greatly to its universal acceptability, was its singular freedom from sectarian bitterness. Protestants as well as Romanists may use it with equal satisfaction; and accordingly, it ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... makes vague and fearful insinuations about my grammar and my erudition. Now, as regards grammar, I hold that, in prose at any rate, correctness should always be subordinate to artistic effect and musical cadence; and any peculiarities of syntax that may occur in Dorian Gray are deliberately intended, and are ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... a brilliantly successful application of Flaubert's theory; he pronounced L'Education Sentimentale "elaborately and massively dreary"; and he briefly dismissed Salammbo as an accomplished work of erudition. Salammbo is indeed a work of erudition; years were spent in getting up its archaeological details. But Madame Bovary is also a work of erudition, and Bouvard and Pecuchet is a work of enormous ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... tuition of one Mr. Belpene, an Anabaptist. This schoolmaster, so far from encouraging young Banks to make a great progress in classical learning, exerted his influence with his relations to have him taken from school, and represented him as incapable of receiving much erudition. This conduct in Mr. Belpene proceeded from an early jealousy imbibed against this young man, who, so far from being dull, as the school-master represented him, possessed extraordinary parts, of which he gave very ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... our students gave evidence of their intelligence and application, on the occasion of the safe arrival at Manila of the most reverend archbishop and suffragans, whom they entertained in their schools with two ingenious dialogues, and other proofs of erudition. In that season arrived also some of the gentlemen of the royal Audiencia who were visiting our schools for the purpose of showing them favor and honor. They greatly enjoyed a third literary exercise which had been prepared for them and were thus encouraged to carry out ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... examinations on these very subjects, and competition in this impersonal field is most keen. For while popular enthusiasm for philosophy for philosophy's sake might, among any people, eventually show symptoms of fatigue, it is not likely to flag where the outcome of it is so substantial. Erudition carries there all earthly emoluments in its train. For the man who can write the most scholastic essay on the classics is forthwith permitted to amass much honor and more wealth by wronging his less accomplished fellow-citizens. China is ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... the customs and dispositions of the natives of Filipinas, some years ago. But I read it as I am wont to read other letters, for diversion and amusement, without thinking much about its artfulness, and I was delighted with its erudition. However, when I afterward considered its contents with some degree of thought, I saw that it brought forward, in its whole length, no solid proof of what it tries to make one believe; and it appeared to me a hyperbolical criticism ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... that swarms of literary blow flies will pounce upon the errors with delight, and, buzzing with the ecstasy of infernal joy, endeavour to hum their readers into a belief of the profundity of their critic erudition;—I shall nevertheless, with Churchill, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Introduction to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, by James Macpherson, Esq., London 1773, in 4to., third edit. Dr. Macpherson was a minister in the Isle of Sky: and it is a circumstance honorable for the present age, that a work, replete with erudition and criticism, should have been composed in the most ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... high-spirited boy. A letter is extant from him to Wolsey, written when he was nine years old, begging the cardinal to intercede with the king, "for an harness to exercise myself in arms according to my erudition in the Commentaries of Caesar."—Ibid. ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... to a matter of 'erudition,' which you greatly love to hear me 'start' and 'dwell upon.' Dr. Lewen once, in 'your' presence, (as you, 'my good patron,' cannot but remember,) in a 'smartish' kind of debate between 'him' and 'me,' ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... useless, and nothing but an encumbrance. We are forced by circumstances to become familiar with it, but the time expended on it is lost. No physical ideal—far less any soul- ideal—will ever be reached by it. In a recent generation erudition in the text of the classics was considered the most honourable of pursuits; certainly nothing could be less valuable. In our own generation, another species of erudition is lauded—erudition in the laws of matter—which, ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... comic mingled with what my mother felt to be paramount tragedy. Far different was Mr. Clowes: holy, visionary, apostolic, he could not be treated disrespectfully. No man could deny him a qualified homage. But for any polemic service he wanted the taste, the training, and the particular sort of erudition required. Neither would such advantages, if he had happened to possess them, have at all availed him in a case like this. Horror, blank horror, seized him upon seeing a woman, a young woman, a woman of captivating beauty, whom God ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... from a diligent comparison of the words in question with forms of expression used in Scripture, and especially by Christ upon other occasions. No writer would arbitrarily and unnecessarily have thus cast in his reader's way a difficulty which, to say the least, it required research and erudition to clear up. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... general head of "The Introductory Portion" come the new Lectionary and the new Tables for finding Easter. Of these, the former is law already, except so far as respects the Lessons appointed for the proposed Feast of the Transfiguration. The Easter Tables are a monument to the erudition and accuracy of the late Dr. Francis Harison. The Tables in our present Standard run to the year 1899. Perhaps a "wholesome conservatism" ought to discover a tincture of impiety in any proposal to disturb them before the ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... forcibly in considering the biography of the subject of this sketch. Closing his life at an age when most professional men are but beginning theirs, he had already studied broadly, had traveled widely over two continents, had gained credit and fame by the sword and the pen, and had amassed a fund of erudition and experience which the more lethargic lives of most men fail to approach after twice his length of days. It is eminently appropriate that a record of his busy career should be attached to the works on which his celebrity is chiefly bound, and in which he most conspicuously displays that ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... grew into the belief that all human erudition was collected in our pedagogue, whose green spectacles and solemn phiz as he passed to his little schoolhouse amid a waste of sand might have gained him a diploma from any college in New England. In truth, I dreaded him.—When our ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... these fifty men and women one true and sublime poet,—the dying "Grammarian," who applies the alchemy of a lofty imagination to the dry business of verbal erudition. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... brought any out of it but a little of our native English. By "mathematics," reader, must be understood "cyphering." It was, in fact, a humble day-school, at which reading and writing were taught to us boys in the morning, and the same slender erudition was communicated to the girls, our sisters, etc., in the evening. Now Starkey presided, under Bird, over both establishments. In my time, Mr. Cook, now or lately a respectable singer and performer at Drury-Lane Theatre, and nephew to Mr. Bird, had succeeded to him. I well remember ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... are both as ill-done as possible, and the author of the smaller one deserves to be put under the pump for taking the name of the illustrious Ducange, one of those megatheria of erudition and industry that we should look on as an extinct species, but for such men as the brothers Grimm. The larger book has the merit of including a bibliography of the subject, for which the author deserves our thanks, though in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... himself together, a comforting little sense of flattery came to soothe his bruises and to clear his eyes. Yes, she believed in him. This brilliant and learned young woman had impetuously placed her boundless stores of erudition at his disposal; she had loaded the work of twenty men on his shoulders and was confidently expecting him to carry off the whole vast undertaking with jaunty ease. He must not fail. Fortunately, she was willing to admit the co-operation of a ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... is something flattering in this simple faith in my accomplishment as a linguist and my erudition as a philosopher. But I cannot tolerate the assumption that life and literature is so poor in these islands that we must go abroad for all dramatic material that is not common and all ideas that are not superficial. I therefore venture to put my critics ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... Geschichte des Franz. Romans im XVII. Jahrh. (Oppeln u. Leipzig, 1891, i. 133 note) would rule Rabelais out of the history of the novel altogether. This book, which will be quoted again with gratitude later, displays a painstaking erudition not necessitating any make-weight of sympathy for its author's early death after great suffering. It is extremely useful; but it does not escape, in this and other places, the censure which, ten years before the war of 1914, the present writer felt it his duty to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... eschatology, which may be true; but unfortunately the book is too polemical. Both books partake of the poetry, if not the confusion, of the subject; but not for a world of dust would one clip their wings of fancy and suggestion. Indeed, their union of scholarship and poetry is unique. When the pains of erudition fail to track a fact to its lair, they do not scruple to use the divining rod; and the result often passes out of the realm of pedestrian chronicle into the world ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... that thirty there is probably but one who has not failed, who is not called on to submit to the inward grief of having been beaten. The youth who is second, who has thus shown himself to be possessed of a mass of erudition sufficient to crush an ordinary mind to the earth, is ready to eat his heart with true bitterness of spirit. After all his labour, his midnight oil, his many sleepless nights, his deserted pleasures, his racking headaches, Amaryllis ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... kind of thing the knowledge of some of our friends, you will not find here a well studied repast, but will meet with many incongruities of good eating and some barbarisms against good taste. If our good friend Damis had ordered it, all would be according to rule; there would be elegance and erudition everywhere; and he would not fail to exaggerate to you the excellence of every dish, and to make you acknowledge his high capacity in the science of good eating. He would speak to you of a loaf with golden sides, crusty ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... to make me vain and silly. He made much of me to every chance caller, boasting of my progress at school, and of my exalted friends, the teachers. For a school-teacher was no ordinary mortal in his eyes; she was a superior being, set above the common run of men by her erudition and devotion to higher things. That a school-teacher could be shallow or petty, or greedy for pay, was a thing that he could not have been brought to believe, at this time. And he was right, if he could only have stuck to it in later years, when a new-born ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... the comfort, luxury, and culture which came with Lovegrove's retirement on a fortune. They had mellowed on the sunny shelves of prosperity, like every good thing which has an astringent skin when it is green. They would greatly have liked to see Daniel shine in society. Of his erudition they were proud, even to worship. The young man never had any business, and his father never seemed to think of giving him any; knowing, as Billy would say, that he had stamps enough to "see him through." If Daniel liked, his father would have endowed a professorship ...
— A Brace Of Boys - 1867, From "Little Brother" • Fitz Hugh Ludlow
... misses nothing, happily in his place, listening with eager hand at ear whilst TOMMY spoke familiarly of Asiatic rivers and mountains, not one with name of less than five syllables. DICKY TEMPLE, who really knows something about this mysterious region, looked on in blank amazement at TOMMY'S erudition. EDWARD GREY, who would presently have to answer this damaging attack, tried to seem indifferent. But his young cheek paled when TOMMY put his ruthless finger on that Foreign Office dispatch, out of which a line of print had been dropped. This a Machiavellian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... remembered less for his verse than for his prose work, Illustrations de Gaule et Singularitez de Troie, in which the Trojan origin of the French people is set forth with some feeling for beauty and a mass of crude erudition. Clement Marot, born at Cahors in 1495 or 1496, a poet's son, was for a time in the service of Francis I. as valet de chambre, and accompanied his master to the battle of Pavia, where he was wounded and made prisoner. Pursued by the Catholics as a heretic, and afterwards by the Genevan Calvinists ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... above a whaleman, in that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on. but what is a gam? you might wear out your index-finger running up and down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr. Johnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster's ark does not hold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years been in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees. Certainly it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... England in a state of panic, which is very nearly as appropriate as a disquisition on the Primary Rocks, or an inquiry into the origin of the Cabala would be, but which is so palpably introduced for the purpose of displaying the author's financial erudition, that he feels himself called upon to apologize in a brief preface for its intrusion. In the concluding chapters, too, the various threads of interest are gathered together with very little artistic compactness. The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... sorry to get out of the government house—palazzo, as some of the simple people of Elba called the unambitious dwelling. He had been well badgered by the persevering erudition of the vice-governatore; and, stored as he was with nautical anecdotes and a tolerable personal acquaintance with sundry seaports, for any expected occasion of this sort, he had never anticipated a conversation which would aspire as high as the institutions, religion, and laws of his adopted country. ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... trained discretion? The Professor would invite me to his room after the 'sleep well' of the ladies, and I sat with him much like his pipe-bowl, which burned bright a moment at one sturdy puff, but generally gave out smoke in fantastical wreaths. He told me frankly he had a poor idea of my erudition. My fancifulness he commended as something to be turned to use in writing stories. 'Give me time, and I'll do better things,' I groaned. He rarely spoke of the princess; with grave affection always when he did. He was evidently observing me comprehensively. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Lives, which Dr. Birkbeck Hill prepared for publication before his death, and which has been issued by the Clarendon Press, with a brief Memoir of the editor, would probably have astonished Dr. Johnson. But, though the elaborate erudition of the notes and appendices might have surprised him, it would not have put him to shame. One can imagine his growling scorn of the scientific conscientiousness of the present day. And indeed, the three tomes of Dr. Hill's edition, with all their solid wealth ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... been disingenuous and unjust to me, by wresting and forcing my meaning in the preface to another book, as if I condemned and exposed all learning, though they knew I declared that I greatly honoured and esteemed all men of superiour literature and erudition; and that I only undervalued false or superficial learning, that signifies nothing for the service of mankind; and that, as to physick, I expressly affirmed that learning must be joined with native genius, to make a physician of the first rank; but ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... asking all sorts of questions which attested his care for minute information—the most of which might be utilized by his brother-in-law-and the Marquis had replied by evoking, with his habitual erudition, several of the souvenirs which peopled that vast country, strewn with tombs, aqueducts, ruined villas, with the line of the Monts Albains enclosing ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... extensive knowledge of German officers, to the superior training of their soldiers, and to their more scientific military strategy, that all impartial Judges, and even the French nation, in the end, ascribed the victory. Hence, if it be intended to regard German erudition as a thing apart, in what sense can German culture be said to have conquered? In none whatsoever; for the moral qualities of severe discipline, of more placid obedience, have nothing in common with culture: these were characteristic ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... that American scholarship was entirely absorbed in the counting of accents, and the like mechanical details; while it seems to run counter to the above suggestion that the university system tends to raise the level of culture while lowering the standard of erudition. At the same time there can be no doubt that the immense width of the field covered by university teaching in America must, in some measure, make for "superficial omniscience" rather than for concentration and research. The truth probably is that the system cuts both ways. The ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... proposal, and then, when it is, in spite of his advice, made a party resolve, he goes to the House of Commons and speaks in its favor; nay, even it may be, proposes it. Pulteney made a long and what would now be called an exhaustive speech. It was stuffed full of portentous erudition about the early history of the eldest sons of English kings. The speech was said to have been delivered with much less than Pulteney's usual force and fire; and indeed, so far as one can judge by the accounts—they can hardly be ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... being the pirate, than I have of your wearing spurs, and being called sir Hector. The two things are equally established in my mind: but it is needful that we proceed in the matter with caution. I understand you to say, that no one else has been enlightened by your erudition in ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... title), supposed that the Brevia Parliamentaria of Prynne stood for "short parliaments.'' Lord Lansdowne told Moore that he was with Lord Holland when the letter containing this precious bit of erudition arrived. Another story of Lord Lansdowne's is equally good. His French servant announced Dr. Mansell, the Master of Trinity, when he called, as "Matre des Crmonies de ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... distorted, and ought to be expressed in a less stringent and narrow manner, yet great stress is to be laid on the opinions of those men who have a peculiarly bold and manly turn of thought and sentiment. For our friends the Peripatetics, notwithstanding all their erudition, gravity, and fluency of language, do not satisfy me about the moderation of these disorders and diseases of the soul which they insist upon; for every evil, though moderate, is in its nature great. But our object is to make out ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... in the reconciliation of ideas. The geographical centre of this movement of fusion and reconciliation was, however, in Alexandria. After having been the town of the museum and the library, of criticism and literary erudition, Alexandria became once again the meeting-place of philosophical schools and religious sects; communication had become easier, and various fundamentally different inhabitants belonging to distinct social ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... broach, I'll pledge my aith in guid braid Scotch, He need na fear their foul reproach Nor erudition, Yon ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... command. He knew the Greek alphabet, had picked up a bit of Hindostani on Indian service, and a little bit of French and Turkish in the Crimea. All these he aired upon me in a very natural manner, and I was much impressed with his erudition, until a grinning depot man got me into a corner and told me that 'the sergeant had shown me the whole bag o' thricks at wonst,' He paid every well-dressed recruit that compliment, it seemed; and the depot man warned me that he ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... at the head of whom stood Erasmus of Rotterdam, combined with frequent travels in the imperial service, had extended the sphere of his information and experience, and in many points raised him in his principles and opinions above his contemporaries. The fame of his erudition filled the whole century in which he lived, and has handed his name down to posterity. When, in the year 1548, the connection of the Netherlands with the German empire was to be settled at the Diet of Augsburg, Charles V. ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... writer of this kind worthy our regard; and, whilst there is no other branch of history (for this is history) which hath not exercised the greatest pens, why this alone should be overlooked by all men of great genius and erudition, and delivered up to the Goths and Vandals as their lawful property, is altogether as difficult to determine. And yet that this is the case, with some very few exceptions, is most manifest. Of these I shall willingly admit Burnet ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... much; but as you seem to think the title fits, you may call me by it if you like." So from that time forth John always addressed me as "Professor," and from hearing him constantly using the term, M'Allister soon acquired the same habit. I am afraid they both credited me with rather more erudition than I really possessed; but although I should never attempt to talk at large on matters with which I was not fully acquainted, I have lived long enough to know that it is not always wise to go very far in disillusioning ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... this plentiful discharge of poets' tears should rob the young nobleman of his claim to be regarded as a fine example of the great learning, accomplishments, and high spirits of the age. We can still produce the thirty-three poets, but what young nobleman is there who can boast such erudition as had rewarded the scorned delights and the laborious days of this Lord Hastings? We have at least the satisfaction of knowing that did such a one exist he probably would not die of the smallpox. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... shown. She had a certain appealing meekness at times—a sweet deference that was a marked contrast to the aggressiveness with which she had met Dumaresque in the morning. The Countess Helene, observing the deprecating manner with which she received the implied praise for erudition, found herself watching with a keener interest the girl who had seemed to ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... well-digested erudition exhibited in this work are eminently creditable to the learning and scholarship of the author, its literary execution amply attests the excellence of his taste, and his judgment and skill in the art of composition. His work is one of the most important ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... notice me only to begin a clamorous exhibition of their distinctive skill. The erudite for the most part are rapt in an impervious and apoplectic complacency, from which only a denial of their erudition can rouse them. Usually they are led about by little watchers and attendants, and often there are small and active-looking creatures, small females usually, that I am inclined to think are a sort of wife to them; but some of the profounder scholars are altogether ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... excellent articles On Hebraical points, or the force of Greek particles; 200 They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for, And nobody read that which nobody cared for; If any old book reached a fiftieth edition, He could fill forty pages with safe erudition: He could gauge the old books by the old set of rules, And his very old nothings pleased very old fools; But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart, And you put him at sea without compass or chart,— His blunders aspired to the rank of an art; For his lore was engraft, something ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... then, in a cool and calculated fashion, seek out a victim, strike the blow, and then leave the weapon in the body which must be inevitably traced to me, is a deed of such madness that I can only wonder that a gentleman with the erudition of the counsel should have thought it worth while ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... prevailed with learned men to change their names. They showed at once their contempt for vulgar denominations and their ingenious erudition. They christened themselves with Latin and Greek. This disguising of names came, at length, to be considered to have a political tendency, and so much alarmed Pope Paul the Second, that he imprisoned ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... to leave her for years at a stretch. Of her loyalty he had had no doubt, but for the first time in his marital life the professor's profound knowledge of human nature was shot like a spot-light on to his own affairs. Yet his erudition did not in the least relieve him from the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... town to the lower end of the bay; where the miserable little village of Akshi-koi now stands. In 1788 a new idea was started; Lechevalier in his account of his journey in Troas claims to have recognized the site of Troy at Bunarbashi. At that time erudition was not very profound, and Lechevalier's site was accepted; indeed it was long maintained, and quite recently it has been defended by Perrot. But the nineteenth century is more exacting; the most plausible hypotheses are not enough without facts to support them, and excavations ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... only personal opinion I heard him express. It was based on no special erudition. He knew no more of the Romans than an average informed man of the world is expected to know. He argued from personal experience. He had suffered himself from a painful and dangerous rheumatic affection till he found relief in this particular spot ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Governor for thirty-seven years, was a man of remarkable erudition. Cotton Mather says of him: "The Dutch tongue was become almost as vernacular to him as the English; the French tongue he could also manage; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered; but the Hebrew he most of all studied." Therefore if the curious spelling of his history strikes us as unscholarly, ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... pretensions of ecclesiastical authority, as developed in the history of modern science. No previous writer has treated the subject from this point of view, and the present monograph will be found to possess no less originality of conception than vigor of reasoning and wealth of erudition."—New York Tribune. ...
— The Story of the Living Machine • H. W. Conn
... diploma's within reach, Eighty-four. On Commencement Day you'll hear my maiden-speech; I will soar! I got through without condition; I'm a mass of erudition; Do ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... advocates of phonics to learn that the name of Darby (whence Darbytown) was thus pronounced, while it was spelt and written Enroughty. A German philologist might have discovered, unaided, the connection between the sound and the letters; but it would hardly have occurred to mortals of less erudition. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... mind. The line between true and false science, however, had not yet been drawn. The age was pedantic, and appealed too much to the authority of antiquity. Hence we have such monuments of perverse and curious erudition as Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621; and Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica, or Inquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors, 1646. The former of these was the work of an Oxford scholar, an astrologer, who cast his own horoscope, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... distinction was John Tibetot, earl of Worcester. This accomplished person, born in an age and nation where the nobility valued themselves on ignorance as their privilege, and left learning to monks and schoolmasters, for whom indeed the spurious erudition that prevailed was best fitted, had been struck with the first rays of true science, which began to penetrate from the south, and had been zealous, by his exhortation and example, to propagate the love of letters among ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... Brittany is played by the bazvalan or village tailor, is in our part of the country acted by the flaxdresser or woolcomber—two professions which are often united. He is present at all solemnities, gay or grave, being essentially a man of erudition and a good speaker; and on these occasions he has always to act as spokesman, and to execute well and worthily certain formularies of speech, in use from time immemorial. His wandering profession, which introduces the man into so many family circles, without allowing him to fix himself in his own, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... that he would be compelled to depend upon his own exertions for a livelihood. He devoted himself with assiduity to studying the literature pertaining to the equity branch of the law. By the time he reached manhood he had acquired considerable erudition, and it was predicted of him that he would make a mark in his profession. He did his utmost to justify the prediction, for he had no sooner been called to the bar than he came before the world as an author. His first publication was a work bearing upon the law of Evidence. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Mr. George Jones, R.A., in his present undertaking, seems to have been to exhibit his own vast erudition and his great command of the hard words of his native tongue. Indeed, he quotes so much Greek and Latin, and talks so finely, that it is only to be regretted that he does not now and then come down from his stilts in order to gratify himself with a little intelligible ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... the word Rom itself, the most interesting in Romany is Zingan, or Tchenkan, which is used in twenty or thirty different forms by the people of every country, except England, to indicate the Gipsy. An incredible amount of far-fetched erudition has been wasted in pursuing this philological ignis-fatuus. That there are leather-working and saddle-working Gipsies in Persia who call themselves Zingan is a fair basis for an origin of the word; but then there are Tchangar ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... and Serpent Worship" (London, 1868), is not quite free from this defect, the learned author having displayed more erudition and ingenuity ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... history of George II., Smollett condescends to give a short chapter on Literature and Manners. He speaks of Glover's "Leonidas," Cibber's "Careless Husband," the poems of Mason, Gray, the two Whiteheads, "the nervous style, extensive erudition, and superior sense of a Corke; the delicate taste, the polished muse, and tender feeling of a Lyttelton." "King," he says, "shone unrivalled in Roman eloquence, the female sex distinguished themselves by their taste and ingenuity. Miss Carter rivalled ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... put you up there. One advantage of membership is that its roster includes experts in every known line of erudition, from scarabs to skeeing. For example, I am now going to telegraph for aid from old Millington, who seldom misses a book auction and is a human bibliography of the wanderings of all rare volumes. I'm going to find out from him what British ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Greek and Roman lore. In this respect, he is apt to remind one of his fellow-dramatist, Thomas Lodge, whose Rosalynd contributed so much to the Poet's As You Like It: for it was then much the fashion for authors to prank up their matter with superfluous erudition. Like all the surviving works of Greene, Pandosto is greatly charged with learned impertinence, and in the annoyance thence resulting one is apt to overlook the real merit of the performance. It is better than Lodge's Rosalynd for this reason, if for no other, that it is shorter. I must ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... about this time to Dr. Vicesimus Knox, full of high-flown sentiments, reading indeed like a romance of Scudery, and entreating the learned critic to receive him in his family, and give him the advantage of his wisdom, his taste, and his erudition. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... man a "scientist" may be. No especial significance attaches in his mind to the term. No picture of a personality or his work arises in the imagination when the word "scientist" is pronounced. More or less indefinitely, I suppose, it is conceded by all that a scientist is a man of vast erudition (an impression by the way which is often strikingly incorrect) who leads a dreary life with his head buried in a book or his eye glued to telescope or microscope, or perfumed with those disagreeable odors which, as everybody knows, are inseparably associated with chemicals. The purpose of ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... de Breves, had served as ambassador both at Constantinople and Rome, and was a man of great erudition. Well versed in history, an able diplomatist, and possessed of considerable antiquarian lore, he had travelled in Greece, Asia Minor, and the Holy Land. His pupil, at the period of his appointment, being still a mere infant, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... character is a great incentive to act with propriety and spirit. But I should be sorry to contribute in any degree to your acquiring an excess of self-sufficiency ... I own indeed that when ... to display my extensive erudition, I have quoted Greek, Latin and French sentences one after another with astonishing celerity; or have got into my Old-hock humour and fallen a-raving about princes and lords, knights and geniuses, ladies of quality and harpsichords; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... fount the streamlets flow, That widen in their course. Hero and sage arise to show Science the mighty source, And laud the land whose talents rock The cradle of her power, And wreaths are twined round Plymouth Rock, From erudition's bower. ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... for it. Jones talking with me once on this subject, and about agape as against gnosis in art, said, "Oh that men should put an enemy into their brains to steal away their hearts." At any rate he and I have written "Narcissus" on these principles, and are not without hope that what it has lost in erudition it may have gained in freshness. I have, however, dealt with the question of how to study painting more at length in the chapter on the Decline of Italian art in ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... established writers," that is, with Shakespeare and Otway, and could present to his countrymen an exacter and, so, more lifelike picture of the Venetian Republic. It is plain, too, that he was bitten with the love of study for its own sake, with a premature passion for erudition, and that he sought and found relief from physical and intellectual excitement in the intricacies of research. If his history is at fault, it was not from any lack of diligence on his part, but because the materials at his disposal or within his cognizance were inaccurate and misleading. He makes ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... introducing the allocation of the hours, alluded to before, to which the planetary names of the days of the week were absolutely necessary. But in the fifty weeks appointed by Theseus, the very same love of a little display of erudition would lead Chaucer to choose the hebdomas lunae, or lunar quarter, which the Athenian youth were wont to mark out by the celebration of a feast to Apollo on every seventh day of the moon. But after the first twenty-eight days of every lunar month, the weekly reckoning must have been discontinued ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... talked about other kinds of faience, the Hispano-Arabian, the Dutch, the English, and the Italian, and having dazzled them with his erudition: ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... for your friend Moore. I have written the review of his poems in a strain of panegyric to which I am not frequently accustomed. I am told he is a most worthy young man, and I am certain myself of his genius and erudition.' Dermody's own career was nearly at an end. He died of consumption in ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... one of the gentlemen, who appeared to be the president. "But ours is a feast of reason and the flow of soul, and we are met here to discuss works of art, to hear read the practical effusions of our members, and to enjoy the society of men of intellect and erudition." ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... 1660; the younger Rudbeck,[91] in 1733, and Celsius,[92] in 1745, have displayed much erudition and research in their inquiries; but the first of these writers arrived at the conclusion that nothing certain could be come to on the subject; while the second proposed raspberries as the Dudaïm; and the third maintained that they were ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... learning," thought the boy to himself, and in this wish he was at last gratified; for the Lion, after asking him whether he was acquainted at all with the Sclavonian languages, and being informed that he was not, absolutely dumb-foundered him by a display of Sclavonian erudition. ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... within bounds, he gives many examples from good authors, some of which are the following: "a most profound silence"; "a most just idea"; "a most complete orator"; "this was most extraordinary"; "an object of most perfect esteem"; "a most extensive erudition"; "he gave it most liberally away"; "it is, most assuredly, not because I value his services least"; "would most seriously affect us"; "that such a system must most widely and most powerfully," etc.; "it is most effectually ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... with them, and understand them, rather better than last season, and, Persian-like, they ply me mercilessly with questions. Often, when some one asks a question of me, Mirza Hassan, as becomes a telegraphies, and a person of profound erudition, thoughtfully saves me the trouble of replying by undertaking to furnish the desired information himself. One old mollah wants to know how many farsakhs it is from Aivan-i-Kaif to Yenghi Donia (New World-America); ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... a man of extensive and exact classical erudition; he was a solid scholar in the Greek and Roman literatures, in the works of the philosophers, poets, and historians. He was also a man of uncommon attainments in all the literary knowledge of his time. In some of his tragedies his classic ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... aside, and (in pursuance of my old determination) betook myself wholly to this work. Nor am I discouraged from it because I see signs in the times of the decline and overthrow of that knowledge and erudition which is now in use. Not that I apprehend any more barbarian invasions (unless possibly the Spanish empire should recover its strength, and having crushed other nations by arms should itself sink under its own weight); but the civil wars which may ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... Sforza, Duke of Milan, to form a league for the defence of Italy; but Leo X. persisted in his desire of remaining or appearing neutral, as the common father of the faithful. Meanwhile the French ambassador at Rome, William Bude, "a man," says Guicciardini, "of probably unique erudition amongst the men of our day," and, besides, a man of keen and sagacious intellect, was unfolding the secret working of Italian diplomacy, and sending to Paris demands for his recall, saying, "Withdraw me from this court full of falsehoods; this is a residence too much out of my ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the thin and conventional sprinkling of classical erudition which makes these poems of the Goliardi pagan, and reminds the student of Renaissance art. Conversely, the scholastic plays on words which they contain do not stamp them out as medieval. Both of these qualities are rococo ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... expenditure of human muscle upon these rude masses, with a gentle melancholy that is not altogether called for. There was a spirit in the work that made it noble. And here it is well that the visitor shall see the opinion of a man whose conclusions were based upon profound erudition in his art, on the subject of ancient Egyptian art, artistically viewed. In his lectures on sculpture, Flaxman says, "Their (the Egyptian) statues are divided into seven heads and a half, the whole weight of the figure is divided into two equal parts at the ospubis, ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... were confusedly mixed up with them,—boys' exercises, probably, and examination papers—but all littering untidily about. The room in fact was as depressing from its slatternliness as from its atmosphere of erudition. Theobald and Ernest as they entered it, stumbled over a large hole in the Turkey carpet, and the dust that rose showed how long it was since it had been taken up and beaten. This, I should say, was no fault of Mrs Skinner's but was due to the Doctor himself, who declared that if his papers were ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... narrative has been of the greatest use to all geographers and writers upon Greece and the Peloponnesus, and an author of the sixteenth century has truly said that this book is "a most ancient and rare specimen of erudition." ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... fishers to study carefully all the chapters on fishing for salmon, loch trout, sea trout, and yellow trout, whatever may be their experience or erudition. They will find general hints of immense use which they can apply to that local knowledge of their own river or 'water' which no books can teach, and which Mr Colquhoun himself would equally have to learn. But no chapter ought to be skipped, even by a reader ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... battles and lacerations of the gods, and many other such symbols of the truth about divine natures which this theology conceals;—this mode he rejects, and asserts that it is in every respect most foreign from erudition. But he considers those mythological discourses about the gods as more persuasive and more adapted to truth, which assert that a divine nature is the cause of all good, but of no evil, and that it is ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... succession of halls or monastic foundations, some of which were famed through the land for their theological teaching of the principles of the Jo[u]do[u] sect. Conspicuous among these were the Tenjingatani and the Mushigatani, seminaries widely sought for the erudition of the professors. In all nearly three thousand students attended the halls, with an eye to ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... her father to a fashionable musician, whose pavanes and sonatas were composed with that lack of matter and excess of erudition which delight the amateur and irritate the artist, and he walked down the rooms looking for seats where they could talk undisturbed for a few minutes. He was nervous lest Georgina should find him sitting with this girl in an intimate corner, but he did not expect her for another half-hour, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... best repair what is deficient, and best elucidate what is obscure in the scanty authorities bequeathed to us, all the light of a profound and disciplined intellect, applying the acutest comprehension to the richest erudition, and arriving at its conclusions according to the true spirit of inductive reasoning, which proportions the completeness of the final discovery to the caution of the intermediate process. My obligations to that learning and to those gifts which you have exhibited to the world are shared by all ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... amaze: they share like stains—this, Urban, the other, Formian,—which stay deep-marked nor can they be got rid of. Both morbidly diseased through pathic vice, the pair of twins lie in one bed, alike in erudition, one not more than other the greater greedier adulterer, allied rivals of the girls. A ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... oriental antiquity, an interpreter may permit some beautiful allusions to slip through his hands unperceived; but, on the other hand, it ought to be frankly conceded, and, if necessary, firmly maintained, that the profitable use of our Lord's parables does not depend on rare and difficult erudition. If a deficiency in this department infers the risk of baldness in the exposition, a redundance supplies a temptation to pedantic display. It is one thing to place some ancient eastern custom in such a position that a ray of light from its surface shall pleasantly illumine a feature of the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
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