"Black letter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mrs. Grainger with her charities, Mrs. Littleton Pryor with her good works, Miss Godfrey with her virtue—all swallowed it as gracefully as possible. Noblesse oblige. Honora had read French and English memoirs, and knew that history repeats itself. And a biography that is printed in black letter and illuminated in gold is attractive in spite of its contents. The contents, indeed, our heroine had not found uninteresting, and she turned now to the subject with a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... (W.) Monasticon Anglicanum, by Bandinel, Caley, and Ellis, 8 vols., a fine subscription copy, in blue morocco; the Baronage of England, and other of his works; Duchesne (A.) Historiae Normannorum Scriptores Antiqui; Guillim (J.) Display of Heraldry, best edition; Hidgdon (R.) Polychronicon, black letter, a rare edition, fine copy; Hollinshed (R.) Chronicles, 3 vols, best edition; Works of Homer, translated by Chapman, in old blue morocco; Horsley (J.) Britannia Romana, scarce, Rerum Britannicarum Scriptores, very scarce; Rymeri Foedera, 10 vols.; Sandford (F.) Genealogical ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various
... that design called 'The Elector,' in which the Prince, emerging from his palace gate, with a cloud of courtiers behind, is met by a poor woman, her little child by the hand, appealing to his compassion, despising whom, he turns away with a serene disdain. Beneath, in black letter, is inscribed the text 'Princeps induetur maerore et quiescere faciam superbiam potentium'—and gigantic Death lays his fingers on the great man's ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... idea of covering sheet after sheet of paper with rapid writing. The strip of parchment was about fourteen inches by four. He laid it lengthwise before him, and the letters grew slowly on it, in the old black letter hand, which took some time to form. Thus ran ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... Coletae vita, Paris, in 8vo, black letter, undated, leaf 8 on the reverse side. Bollandistes, Acta sanctorum, March, vol. i, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... the churchwardens of St. Benet's, Gracechurch Street, Erasmus' Commentary on the Gospels in English, with the chains annexed, by which they were fastened in the church. There are two volumes, in good preservation, and black letter. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... vertical bands of red (hoist side), yellow, and green; uses the popular pan-African colors of Ethiopia; similar to the flag of Rwanda which has a large black letter R ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Turner, and the patience of Lingard. The pages of these writers, however, accurate and luminous as they generally are, as well as those of Brady, Tyrrell, Carte, Rapin, and others, not to mention those in black letter, still require correction from the "Saxon Chronicle"; without which no person, however learned, can possess anything beyond a superficial acquaintance with the elements of English History, and of the ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... seal in a tin box, attached by a tape. Ruth, I am perfectly convinced beforehand that those charters are grants of land of the fourteenth or fifteenth century. Sir Charles mentions that they are in black letter, and only a few lines on each, but he says he won't describe them in full, as I must come and see them for myself. Dear me! how I shall enjoy arranging them for him, which he asked me to do. I had really become so anxious about them that a few days ago I determined ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... readers. Latinism, like every new craze, became a passion, and ran through the less intelligent kinds of writing in a wild excess. Not much of the literature of this time remains in common knowledge, and for examples of these affectations one must turn over the black letter pages of forgotten books. There high-sounding and familiar words are handled and bandied about with delight, and you can see in volume after volume these minor and forgotten authors gloating over the new found treasure which placed them in their time in the ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... to the antique style, quaintness, and typographical excellence of the work, its red-letter "initials" and black letter type, and old-fashioned paragraphic arrangement of pages. The antique paper, uncut edges, and illustrations are in accord with the other features of this unique ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... fifteenth century go by the name of incunabula. [7] Of the seven or eight million volumes which appeared before 1500 A.D., about thirty thousand are believed to be still in existence. Many of these earliest books were printed in heavy, "black letter" type, an imitation of the characters used in monkish manuscripts. It is still retained for most books printed in Germany. The clearer and neater "Roman" characters, resembling the letters employed for ancient Roman inscriptions, came into use in southern Europe ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... look for Rocco, rather than for Roch, when he is seeking for the account of the Scuola di San Rocco. So also I have altered the character in which the titles of the plates are printed, from the black letter in the first volume, to the plain Roman in the second and third; finding experimentally that the former character was not easily legible, and conceiving that the book would be none the worse for this practical illustration ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... inspection. In fact, I have no great opinion of the Cid as an historical character or a poetic fiction. His epic, or his long ballad, formed no part of my young study in Spanish, and when four or five years ago a friend gave me a copy of it, beautifully printed in black letter, with the prayer that I should read it sometime within the twelvemonth, I found the time far too short. As a matter of fact I have never read the poem to this day, though. I have often tried, and I doubt if ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... vertical bands of red (hoist side), yellow, and green; uses the popular pan-African colors of Ethiopia; similar to the flag of Rwanda, which has a large black letter R centered in the ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and neglected to a degree scarcely imaginable. They have no pavement, and the earth is full of holes. The seats are rude benches; the Altars have no rails. One of them has a breach in the roof. On the desk, I think, of each lay a folio Welsh Bible of the black letter, which the curate ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... dog's ears of the great bible ... in the black letter in which our bibles are printed.'—'Memoirs of a Parish Clerk,' Pope's ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Cardinall's death; and then "The Accusation" of Wishart, which Foxe incorporates in his Martyrology, from whence Knox's copy is taken, as well as the abridged copy inserted in Pitscottie's Chronicle. The volume extends to signature F vi. in eights, black letter, without date, "Imprinted at London, by John Day and William Seres." Lyndesay's poem, under the title of "The Tragedy," &c., is included in all the subsequent editions of his poems. See it ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... Westminster he printed at least thirty books. In 1479 he recast type 2 (cited in its new form by Blades as type 2*), and this he continued to use until 1481. But about the same time he cast two other founts, Nos. 3 and 4. The first of these was a large black letter of Missal character, used chiefly for printing service books, but appearing in the books printed with type 2* for headlines. With it he printed Cordyale, or the Four Last Things, a folio of 78 leaves, the work being a translation by Earl Rivers of Les Quatre Derrenieres Choses ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... by an Irish Catholic of the name of O'Neil. From this expurgated French edition the Spanish copy now before me was translated. From this Spanish edition I had made the several translations that are found in this, and the following chapters. I have since found a black letter copy of the original, printed at London, in 1677; but I have concluded to use the translations, as furnishing a more official character to the picture therein drawn of the grossly immoral state of the clergy, and ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... Alcuin of York, the friend and preceptor of Charlemagne. This was the parent of the Roman alphabet, in which our books are now printed. Among other deteriorations, there crept in, in the fourteenth century, the Gothic or black letter character, and these barbarous forms are still essentially retained by the Teutonic nations though discarded by the English and Latin races; but from its superior excellences the Roman alphabet is constantly extending its range and bids fair to become the sole alphabet ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... rhetoric to style, and of the absorption of poetic by rhetoric is afforded by Lydgate in his Court of Sapyence. The passages which refer to rhetoric are given in full because they can otherwise be consulted only in the Caxton edition of 1481 or in the black letter copy printed by Wynkyn de Worde ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... and perhaps producing a supernatural chuckle, if such an expression of feeling is possible in the spiritual region where old Trevor might be supposed to be) would be henceforward like a testament in black letter, voided by good sense and better knowledge and time, the most certain agency of all. And his conviction had been more than carried out in the first years of his married life. Lucy forgot what was required of her. She thought no more of her ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... Gentlewoman, a great admirer of the BLACK LETTER, (as many old Gentlewomen are) presented the Author of these Tales with the Original MS. of this Sonnet; advising the publication of a facsimile of the Knight's hand-writing. It is painful, after this, to advance, that the ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... sunbeams were searching out all the beauty there was in the land, and winning it into view. It was one of those illuminated hours, that are to the common day as an old painted and jewelled missal to an ordinary black letter. ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... collation of all the Folios and of all the Quartos known to exist at that time. Capell's own conjectures, not always very happy, which he has introduced into his text, are distinguished by being printed in black letter. ...
— The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] - Introduction and Publisher's Advertising • William Shakespeare
... by Adrien de Montalembert, almoner to Francis I. {110c} The Bibliography of this very rare tract is curious and deserves attention. When Lenglet Dufresnoy was compiling, in 1751, his Dissertations sur les Apparitions he reprinted the tract from the Paris quarto of 1528, in black letter. This example had been in the Tellier collection, and Dufresnoy seems to have borrowed it from the Royal Convent of St. Genevieve. Knowing that Cardinal Tencin had some acquaintance with the subject, Dufresnoy wrote to him, and publishes (vol. i. cxli.) his answer, dated October 18, 1751, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... poison Shane O'Neill. The first State Paper notice of this enterprise is in a letter, dated February, 8, 1572, from Captain Piers to the Lord Deputy, stating that the country is in an uproar "at Mr. Smith coming over to plant in the north." There is a rare black letter still extant, entitled, ["Letter by F.B. on the Peopling of the Ardes"] which Smith wrote to induce English adventurers to join him in his speculation. It is composed with considerable ability. He condemns severely the degeneracy of the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... fifteen years. The last mass burning in Germany was said to have taken place in 1678, when 97 persons were burned together. The earliest recorded burning of a witch in England is in Walter Mapes' De Nugis Curialium, in the reign of Henry II. An old black letter tract gloats over the execution at Northampton, 1612, of a number of persons convicted of witchcraft.[32] The last judicial sentence was in 1736, when one Jane Wenham was found guilty of conversing familiarly with the devil in the form of ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... until, at the end of a long succession of revisions, the pages came to be cobwebbed over with a wonderfully intricate network of blots and lines in the way of correction or of obliteration. Several of the leaves in this way, what with the black letter-press on the white paper, being scored out or interwoven with a tracery in red ink and blue ink alternately, present to view a curiously parti-coloured or tesselated appearance. As a specimen page, however, will afford a more vivid illustration upon ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... 1572, are inserted, in opposite columns, "the translation according to the Ebrewe," which differs but little from the former, in Roman letter, and "the translation used in common prayer," or that of the Great Bible, printed by Whitchurch, 1553, in black letter. ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... excellent Maiestie: wherin are manye fine Conceites with great delight. At London, Printed by E.A. for Edward White, and are to be solde at the little North doore of S. Paules Church at the signe of the Gunne. 1589. 4 deg.. Black letter. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... Rupert's malignant She-Monkey, a great Delinquent, and has a comical woodcut upon the title page of the animal, in a cap and petticoat and with a sword by its side. This pamphlet is printed partly in ordinary modern type and partly in black letter. Another pamphlet in the form of dialogue is directed against the abuses of the laws, especially at one of the infamous 'comptoirs' of the time. It is called Wonderfull Strange Newes from Wood Street Countor—yet ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... coffins of lead over the Holy Hole. At the rebuilding of the choir, as it was necessary again to remove them, Bishop Fox had them deposited in these chests, and placed in this situation. The chests are carved, gilt, and surmounted with crowns, with the names and epitaphs, in Latin verse and black letter, inscribed upon them. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... are sorry to say, is equally doubtful in point of both ornament and use. The good gossips slyly peep into the covers of Matthew Henry, and regard their retiring pastor as a more learned man than they had suspected, while the black letter-press of Lorenzo Dow, and John Bunyan, and Fox's "Book of Martyrs" touches them like so much necromancy. The faithful old clock, whose disorders are crises in our humdrum pastoral year, is stopped and disjointed, much to our marvel, and all the spare straw in the barn is brought to protect ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... adventurous and accomplished ruffler, at present captain of this district, under the new appellation of Lovett, is in reality no other than the obscure and surnameless Paul of the Mug. Now you and I, Augustus, have read human nature, though in the black letter; and I know well that were I to make my appearance in Thames Court, and were the old lady (as she certainly would, not from unkindness, but insobriety,—not that she loves me less, but heavy wet more) to divulge ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
