"Scurrilous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... instructions which Mr. Gerard is receiving. Our present enemies have gone literally raving mad, and leave no stone unturned in order to put obstacles in Wilson's way. This explains the attacks against the President, as also the scurrilous attempt engineered by the Republicans to charge the Administration with Stock Exchange speculations. Without any justification, of course, my name also was mentioned in this regard. The German Embassy, as is well known, is held responsible ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... herd, seems rather a complimentary portrait of Jonson than a caricature. As to the personages actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His Humour," Carlo Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston, as he was described as "a public, scurrilous, and profane jester," and elsewhere as "the grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of the time." (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... eager for nothing but food and horse-races. They were grave and quiet in their sacrifices and listless in business, but in the theatre or in the stadium men, women, and children were alike heated into passion, and overcome with eagerness and warmth of feeling. A scurrilous song or a horse-race would so rouse them into a quarrel that they could not hear for their own noise, nor see for the dust raised by their own bustle in the hippodrome; while all those acts of their rulers, which in a more wholesome state of society would have called ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... that is a pretty dangerous business, because there is no telling who may be an operator. Dick growled at him savagely under his breath and told him to shut up. Nay! Nay! Mr. Hanigan wouldn't shut up worth a cent. Finally he made some scurrilous remark, and then another knife and fork came into play. Mr. Bridegroom was doing the talking now, and this is ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... and we were totally ignorant in regard to his position upon the question. We were not long left in doubt, for the fact that we had actually organized in a way which showed that we understood ourselves, and meant business, had the effect to elicit from his pen a scurrilous article, in which he called us "the three noble-hearted women," classed us with "free-lovers," called us "monstrosities, neither men nor women," and more of the same sort. Of course, the effect of this upon the community was to array all true friends of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... stage while the supreme power remained in the hands of the multitude, constitute the first of these; and it goes by the name of the old comedy. In those pieces no person whatever was spared. Though they were so modelled and represented as to deserve the name of regular comedy they were obscene, scurrilous, and defamatory. In them the most abominable falsehoods were fearlessly charged upon men and women of all conditions and characters; not under fictitious names, nor by innuendo, but directly and with the real name of the party, while the execrable calumniator, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... for our restoration came down from the Supreme Court, Turner refused to obey it; and wrote a scurrilous "Address to the Public" about us, which he published in one of the newspapers. We replied in a sharp and bitter article, signed by ourselves and five other gentlemen; and at the same time we published a petition to the Governor, signed by all the prominent ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... limbs, the most conspicuous of which are a pair of claws that resemble the handles of a jeweller's nippers. Only an 'alacran,' is it? Son of the tropics, it may sound mildly to thee in thy romantic dialect, but in the language of Miamo Darwin, let me tell you, it is nothing more nor less than a scurrilous scorpion, whose gentlest sting is worse than the stings of twenty wasps. If the brother of that now squashed brute should drop upon me, during my repose, from that roof (which I perceive is of 'guano' leaf, and admirably adapted for scorpion gymnastics), my appearance ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... character of the brothers Cheeryble. One amongst many anecdotes of a similar kind may be cited to show that the character was by no means exaggerated. A Manchester warehouseman published an exceedingly scurrilous pamphlet against the firm of Grant Brothers, holding up the elder partner to ridicule as "Billy Button." William was informed by some one of the nature of the pamphlet, and his observation was that the ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... not too blind to see the happy chance that interfered with his presence on that occasion, and was sensible enough to realize that, had he been implicated in the least degree (he scorned the possibility of his taking any active part in such scurrilous proceedings), he would probably have shared ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... fire laid, I smell the smoke: it was for you to find the spark, you who have had a free hand in Amboise. But you play nonsense games with Charles, hanging upon the skirts of the unscrupulous woman who tutors him to revolt, or drink in taverns with a scurrilous thief turned spy to save his neck from a deserved hanging. Do you think you serve the King by philandering in a rose garden, or playing at French and English in the Burnt Mill? Francois Villon! Ursula de Vesc! Stephen, you make yourself too much one with them—an unhung footpad who prostitutes ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... the satisfaction of not having lived in vain, and of having done something towards the improvement of our common nature; and this at no little expense of time and reputation. The little I have now written is my utmost effort; yet yesterday I thought it necessary to write an answer to a scurrilous libel in The Diary by one Scipio. On my own account he should have remained unnoticed, but our great cause must ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... his Journey, in news-papers[903], magazines, and other fugitive publications, I can speak from certain knowledge, only furnished him with sport. At last there came out a scurrilous volume, larger than Johnson's own, filled with malignant abuse, under a name, real or fictitious, of some low man in an obscure corner of Scotland, though supposed to be the work of another Scotchman, who has found means to make himself well known both in Scotland and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... dispute with a scurrilous fellow, who, in addition to obscene remarks and insolent abuse, reproached him with the misfortune of his mutilated person. "Look you," said {the Eunuch}, "this is the only point as to which I am effectually staggered, forasmuch as I want the evidences of integrity. But ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... disregard of truth, it is scarcely credible that Mrs. Manley's scurrilous charge was in no way countenanced by facts. At the close of the seventeenth century to keep a mistress was scarcely regarded as an offence against good morals; and living in accordance with the fashion of the time, it is probable that Somers did that which Lord Thurlow, after an interval ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... character of a prisoner, was the signal for a great yell of ferocious delight on the part of the outlaws, immediately followed by a brisk fusillade of scurrilous, ribald jests concerning the sport that they would have with me upon their return to their mountain stronghold; and so bloodcurdling were the suggestions thrown out by some of those fiends that I confess ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... allegation that Moses was a leper the Mosaic legislation about lepers. "How could it be supposed," he asks, "that Moses should ordain such laws against himself, to his own reproach and damage?" Chaeremon is unworthy of reply, because his account, though equally scurrilous, is inconsistent with that of Manetho. But the story of Lysimachus, a writer of the same genus, is more critically examined and found wanting, because it gives no explanation of the origin of the Hebrews. ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... morning of Swift's installation as Dean, the following scurrilous lines by Smedley, Dean of Clogher, were affixed to the ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... common to all colleges deal with (p. 065) carrying arms, unpunctuality, talking during the reading in Hall or disturbing the Chapel services, bringing strangers into College, sleeping out of College, absence without leave, negligence and idleness, scurrilous or offensive language, spilling water in upper rooms to the detriment of the inhabitants of the lower rooms, and failure to attend the regular "scrutinies" or the stated general meetings for College business. At these ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... answer to the Dialogue of Sir Thomas More, who was commissioned to combat the "pernicious and heretical" works of the "impious enemies of the Church." Tyndale wrote also a bitter Answer to the Dialogue, and this drew forth from More his abusive and scurrilous Confutation, which did little credit to the writer or to the cause for which he contended Tyndale's longest controversial work, entitled The Obedience of a Christian Man, and how Christian Rulers ought to govern, although it stirred up much hostility against ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... from the unaccountable influence he—and he alone—had with his chief, or whether the busy tongues of his private enemies received too ready credence, is hard to say. But so the fact was; and his elevation gave rise to scurrilous attacks, as well as grave forebodings. Both served equally to fix Mr. Davis in the reasons he had believed good ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... scene nearly in consecutive order, without the breaks and interruptions which took place whilst it proceeded, yet the reader should imagine to himself the outrage, the yelling, the clamor, the by-battles, and scurrilous contests in the lowest description of blackguardism with which it was garnished; thus causing it to occupy at least four times the period we have ascribed to it. The simple-minded priest, who could never have dreamt of such an exhibition, scarcely knew whether ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... abusiveness which was only too common in the theological controversies of the day. Waterland fell into neither of these snares; he always argues, never declaims; he is a hard hitter in controversy, but never condescends to scurrilous personalities. The very completeness of his defence of the doctrine of the Trinity against Arian assailants furnishes, perhaps, the reason why this part of his writings has not been so widely and practically useful as it deserves to be. He so effectually assailed ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... centuries on Paracelsus. In return for unmeasured abuse of his predecessors and contemporaries he has been held up to obloquy as the arch-charlatan of history. We have taken a cheap estimate of him from Fuller and Bacon, and from a host of scurrilous scribblers who debased or perverted his writings. Fuller(4) picked him out as exemplifying the drunken quack, whose body was a sea wherein the tide of drunkenness was ever ebbing and flowing—"He boasted that shortly he ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... womanish character, a stubborn character, bestial, childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, scurrilous, ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... thing lightly enough, partly because you were too persuasive, and mostly, I honestly think, because that scurrilous Gordon Hallock laughed so uproariously at the idea of my being able to manage an asylum. Between you all you hypnotized me. And then of course, after I began reading up on the subject and visiting all those seventeen institutions, I got excited over orphans, ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... from the Times are given in Harris, The Trent Affair, to show a violent, not to say scurrilous, anti-Americanism. Unfortunately dates are not cited, and an examination of the files of the paper shows that Harris' references are frequently to communications, not to editorials. Also his citations give but one side of these communications even, for as many argued caution and fair ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... I found him a busy talkative politician; a petit-maitre in his dress, and a ceremonious courtier in his manners. He has not gall enough in his constitution to be enflamed with the rancour of party, so as to deal in scurrilous invectives; but, since he obtained a place, he is become a warm partizan of the ministry, and sees every thing through such an exaggerating medium, as to me, who am happily of no party, is altogether incomprehensible ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... day Thomas was obliged to acknowledge that he had misjudged Judas, so simple, so gentle, and at the same time so serious was Iscariot. He neither grimaced nor made ill-natured jokes; he was neither obsequious nor scurrilous, but quietly and unobtrusively went about his work of catering. He was as active as formerly, as though he did not have two feet like other people, but a whole dozen of them, and ran noiselessly ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... autobiography, and to record his estimate of some of the heroes of the Commonwealth. Among various replies to his "Defensio," not deserving of notice here, appeared one of especial acrimony, "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum," published about August, 1652. It was a prodigy of scurrilous invective, bettering the bad example which Milton had set (but which hundreds in that age had set him) of ridiculing Salmasius's foibles when he should have been answering his arguments. Having been in Italy, he was taxed with Italian vices: he would ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... The scurrilous satire of Kenrick, however unmerited, may have checked Goldsmith's taste for masquerades. Sir Joshua Reynolds, calling on the poet one morning, found him walking about his room in somewhat of a reverie, kicking a bundle of clothes before him like a football. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... what kind of people, THEY admire. You will certainly be consoled." With these words he took Hyde's chair; and Hyde, casting his eyes a moment on this tall, loose-limbed man, whose cold blue eyes and red hair emphasized the stern anger of his whole appearance, was well disposed to leave the scurrilous Englishman to his power of reproof. Besides, the badge of mourning which Jefferson wore had reminded him of his own neglect. Probably, it was the want of this badge that had made the stranger believe he was speaking to one who ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... to St. Helena. But it was in 1821 that he first made a decided mark. For William Hone—a man who was in perpetual opposition to the powers that were—he drew on wood a remarkable series of illustrations to the scurrilous, but perhaps not undeserved, satires against King George IV., called, "The Political House that Jack Built," "The Green Bag," "A Slap at Slop," and the like,—all of them having direct and most caustic reference to the scandalous prosecution instituted against a woman of whom it is difficult ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... the seat of learning at the request of his enemies, had not our beloved provost routed the special cause of the whole trouble, who was himself contributing to a London society paper, by replying that it was not to be wondered at if the scurrilous rags of London found an echo in Oxford. Moreover, a set of "The Rattle" was ordered to be bound and placed in the college archives, where ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... by a meticulous orthodoxy that was only too eager to cast them forth. The bishop dwelt for a time upon the curious fierceness orthodoxy would sometimes display. Nowadays atheism can be civil, can be generous; it is orthodoxy that trails a scurrilous fringe. ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... another account darkly insinuated in some highly scurrilous and abusive verses, of which I have an original copy. They are docketed as being written "Upon the late Viscount Stair and his family, by Sir William Hamilton of Whitelaw. The marginals by William Dunlop, writer in Edinburgh, ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Tavern, under the Title of "The School of Shakespeare."' The lectures began January 19, 1774, and help to fix the date of the poem. Goldsmith had little reason for liking this versatile and unprincipled Ishmaelite of letters, who, only a year before, had penned a scurrilous attack upon him in 'The London Packet'. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... second, which is to inrich them by taking it away, I am dubious of, yet let them look to that. He looked over a Multitude of others. In the mean Time the Projectors quarrelled, each approving his own Scheme, and condemning the rest; and they grew so Scurrilous, they called one another Sons of Projectors instead of Sons of Whores. The Lord commanded Peace, and being tempted with their Offers, receiv'd and allow'd several of their Proposals: Whereupon they all swore they would stand by him in all Extremities. A few Days after, ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... black gown, a gray wig with a fox's tail dangling down his back. He bowed to those below, and began a mock oration. He called Samuel Adams, Doctor Warren, and John Hancock scoundrels, blackguards, knaves, and other vile names. His language was so scurrilous, profane, and indecent that Tom could not repeat it to his mother and Berinthia. Those who listened clapped their hands. Tom and Abraham came to the conclusion that most of the officers of the newly arrived regiments were too vile to be worthy the society ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... ha, ha!" (p. 73). Stern anti-sentimentalists sometimes point out that we react too squeamishly to the abuse of Pope's deformity. I doubt it myself. The eighteenth century was probably a coarser and more outspoken age than ours, but scurrilous attacks on the physical appearance of distinguished poets do not otherwise seem to have been a prominent feature of the Augustan ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... in hand, swear lies as readily as he would write them down for publication. He is a poor devil, as void of truth and honor as he has shown himself to be of courage and resentment. He edits a low, dirty, scurrilous sheet; and, like his master, Gov. Johnson, never could elevate himself above the level of a common blackguard. No epithet is too low, too degrading, or disgraceful to be applied to the members of the American party, by either of these Billingsgate graduates. ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... one scurrilous little journal among the newspapers at whose office Mr. Burchard neglected to call. In their next ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... children from his school; but as his means of living decreased, his opinion of his own deserts enlarged; he mistook the cravings of want for spiritual illumination, and so perplexed his mind by reading the scurrilous libels of the day, as to be firmly persuaded that the King was the Devil's bairn, and Archbishop Laud the personal antichrist. A description of church ceremonies thrilled him with horror, and in every prosecution of a contumacious ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... a large building, under the guard of a regiment of Parliament troops. Their imprisonment was not rigorous. They were fairly fed and allowed exercise in a large courtyard which adjoined the house. The more reckless spirits sang, jested, wrote scurrilous songs on the Roundheads, and passed the time as cheerfully as might be. Harry, however, with the restlessness of his age, longed for liberty. He knew that Prince Charles was in command of the army in the west, and he longed to join him and try once more the fortunes ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... and so on to the top. If at the head there were God, it would be well; but man is there, and consequently the whole society is a gigantic mistake. To be a sincere member of it, a man must be a half-witted fool, a religious fanatic, or a rogue for whom no duplicity is too scurrilous, even ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... Fell. He was for a few years schoolmaster at Kingston-on-Thames, but owing to his irregularities lost the appointment, and went to London, where he wrote satires, epigrams, and miscellaneous pieces, generally coarse and scurrilous. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... men formerly became eminent in learned societies by their parts and acquisitions, they now distinguish themselves by the warmth and violence with which they espouse their respective parties. Books are valued upon the like considerations: an abusive scurrilous style passes for satire, and a dull scheme of party- notions is called ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... bachelors in the world. Pat, too, was his most enthusiastic admirer, for he had encouraged his going to spend his evenings in the neat attic rather than crawl to his own miserable abode to be contaminated with the fumes of rum and tobacco, and the scurrilous example ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... styled Prasine, and a great friend of Caius, who used to harass the soldiery with building stables for the horses, and spent his time in ignominious labors, which occasioned Cherea to reproach them with him, and to abuse them with much other scurrilous language; and told them he would bring them the head of Claudius; and that it was an amazing thing, that, after their former madness, they should commit their government to a fool. Yet were not they moved with ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... to strike. And then, when you would think of calling the police, if not the undertaker, laughter, suddenly everywhere, as though the hens in a big hen coop had started cackling all at once! Some one of the combatants had scored with an unusually cutting or scurrilous phrase! ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sung, Coridon, this song was sung with mettle; and it was choicely fitted to the occasion: I shall love you for it as long as I know you. I would you were a brother of the angle; for a companion that is cheerful, and free from swearing and scurrilous discourse, is worth gold. I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning; nor men, that cannot well bear it, to repent the money they spend when they be warmed ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... substance of the article in the "Mirror" was, I do not know, but it was probably one of those scurrilous and defamatory attacks, from many of which he suffered in common with other persons of prominence, and which was called forth, perhaps, by his activity in the politics of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... that involves an indispensable knowledge of the forces to be met. The power of the press is no longer a monopoly of Christian lands. The Arya Somaj, of India, is now using it, both in the vernacular and in the English, in its bitter and often scurrilous attacks. One of its tracts recently sent to me contained an English epitome of the arguments of Thomas Paine. The secular papers of Japan present in almost every issue some discussion on the comparative ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... from these passages, had grown and grown the more he had brooded on it. What if in this Doctrine of Divorce he were to be the discoverer or restorer of a new liberty, not for England alone, but actually for all Christendom? Meanwhile what opposition he would have to face, what storms of scurrilous jest and severer calumny! Might it not have been better to have written his treatise in Latin? This thought had occurred to him. "It might perhaps more fitly have been written in another tongue; and I had done so, but that the esteem I have for my country's judgment, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... reception accorded Dr. Priestley met in due course with a cruel attack upon him by William Cobbett, known under the pen-name of Peter Porcupine, an Englishman, who after arrival in this country enjoyed a rather prosperous life by formulating scurrilous literature—attacks upon men of prominence, stars shining ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... man of mean capacity, and of little reputation for learning or virtue. He had been, during the reign of William, an outrageous Whig; but, finding his services disregarded, he became a violent Tory. By a sort of plausible effrontery and scurrilous rhetoric, he obtained the applause of the people, and the valuable living of St. Saviour, Southwark. The audacity of his railings against the late king and the revolution at last attracted the notice of government; and ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... any other side," exploded the artist. "She's worried to death. Not a day passes but some scurrilous penny-a-liner springs some yarn, some beastly innuendo. She's been dodging the fellow for months. In Paris last year she couldn't move without running into him. This year she changed her apartment, and gave orders at the Opera to refuse her address to all who asked ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... scurrilous tongues sir! My good nature ruins everybody about me. Make up your accounts. Pack your trunks—and never let me see your ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... unwelcomed, as it was thought it would put Chater too quickly out of his sufferings. Meanwhile, Chater was visited at various times, to receive kicks and severe blows, and to be sworn at in the vilest and most scurrilous language. ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... good: "Neither in youth nor riper years could the most fair or enticing woman draw him into unnecessary familiarity or dalliance. Wise and virtuous women he loved, and delighted in all pure and holy and unblameable conversation with them, but so as never to excite scandal or temptation. Scurrilous discourse even among men he abhorred; and though he sometimes took pleasure in wit and mirth, yet that which was mixed with impurity he never ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Lentulus Spinthur, in their daily quarrels about Caesar's priesthood, openly abused each other in the most scurrilous language. Lentulus urging the respect due to his age, Domitius boasting his interest in the city and his dignity, and Scipio presuming on his alliance with Pompey. Attius Rufus charged Lucius Afranius before Pompey with betraying the army in the ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... the by, I had nearly forgot. There is a long poem, an 'Anti-Byron,' coming out, to prove that I have formed a conspiracy to overthrow, by rhyme, all religion and government, and have already made great progress! It is not very scurrilous, but serious and ethereal. I never felt myself important, till I saw and heard of my being such a little Voltaire as to induce such a production. Murray would not publish it, for which he was a fool, and ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... her letter to the Duke of Argyll, and it disappoints every body. It is neither romantic, nor entertaining, nor abusive, but on the General and Mr. and Mrs. Bowen, and the General's groom. On the Bowens it is so immeasurably scurrilous, that I think they must prosecute her. She accuses them and her husband of a conspiracy to betray and ruin his own daughter, without, even attempting to assign a motive to them. Of the House of Argyll she says not a word. In ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Fremont, my boy, and the Union will go to pieces. Does the North suppose we will endure a sectional President? No, sir, it would mean secession—the death-knell of the Union. Sir, we may be driven to more practical arguments by the scurrilous speeches of the abolitionists. It is an attack on property, on the ownership of the inferior race by the supremely superior. That ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... was on private ground, and if Papists did not like it they could easily keep away, making a wry face and spitting out the abomination as they passed, after their liberal custom. This, however, was not enough. No sooner had the handbills been issued, than a most scurrilous placard appeared, calculated to inflame the passions of the ignorant, and to make them act after their kind. The Gospellers were accused of an attempt to poach on the Papal preserves, and it was mockingly stated that they had at last ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... VOMIT FULL OF BOOKES, etc. From 1570, when Pope Sixtus V issued his bull of deposition against Queen Elizabeth, to 1590, great numbers of scurrilous pamphlets attacking the Queen and the Reformed church had been ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... Society of the Temple, a group of wits, of all ages, who could take snuff and throw off an epigram on any subject. The bright young man, flashing, dashing and daring, made friends at once through his skill in writing scurrilous verse upon any one whose name might be mentioned. This habit had been begun in college, where it was much applauded by the underlings, who delighted to see their unpopular teachers done to a turn. The scribbling habit is a variant of that peculiar ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Don Rodrigo; "profane not with thy foul remarks and scurrilous rebukes, that tender sentiment which thine own gross and brutish disposition is neither ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... trust of him, and then but for a moment. How far had her love, and the sight of Peter's misery, led her blindly to renew that trust? And would it hold? She had seen how little people thought of that scurrilous article, and how the decent papers had passed it over without a word. But she had also seen, the scandal harped upon by partisans and noted that Peter failed to vindicate himself publicly, or vouchsafe an explanation to her. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... Minister of Police—to confer with the foreign Ministers accredited at Hamburg—to maintain active relations with the commanders of the French army—to interrogate my secret agents, and keep a strict surveillance over their proceedings; it was, besides, necessary to be unceasingly on the watch for scurrilous articles against Napoleon in the Hamburg 'Corespondent'. I shall frequently have occasion to speak of all these things, and especially of the most marked emigrants, in a manner less irregular, because what I have hitherto said may, in some sort, be considered merely as a summary of all the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... speeches, which is the chief cause of making plays odious to virtuous and modest persons; but he abhorred such writers and their works, and professed himself an enemy to all such as stuffed their scenes with ribaldry, and larded their lines with scurrilous taunts, and jests, so that whatsoever even in the spring of his years he presented upon the private and public theatre, in his autumn and declining age he needed not to to be ashamed of." He lived in friendship with the famous ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... streets, and the houses all decked with holly, the father smiled an indulgent smile and gave a ready assent. If Cuthbert would be careful where he took her, and not let her be witness of any of the vile pastimes of cock fighting, bull or bear baiting, or the hearer of scurrilous or blasphemous language, he might have her companionship and welcome; and it would doubtless amuse her to go into Lord Andover's kitchen, where messengers generally waited who had brought notes or messages for members of the family, being ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... by a ship going to Leghorn the only new books at all worth reading. The Abuse(938) of Parliaments is by Doddington and Waller, circumstantially scurrilous. The dedication of the Essay(939) to my father is fine; pray mind the quotation from Milton. There is Dr. Berkeley's mad book on tar-water, which has made every body ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... characteristic to the student of literature must always be the way in which it leads up to, without in the least foretelling, the bursts of eloquence already referred to. Even Milton's alternations of splendid imagery with dull and scurrilous invective, are hardly so strange as Raleigh's changes from jog-trot commonplace to almost inspired declamation, if only for the reason that they are much more intelligible. It must also be mentioned that Raleigh, like Milton, seems to have had ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... that not all are ignorant) are, indeed, well practised in abuse, and have long learned to call mathematicians and astronomers cheats and charlatans. They freely used their vocabulary for the benefit of De Morgan, whom they denounced as a scurrilous scribbler, a defamatory, dishonest, abusive, ungentlemanly, and ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... hideous with their riotous antics; or else we see the refuse of the people, fostered on our blood, becchini, as they call themselves, who for our torment go prancing about here and there and everywhere, making mock of our miseries in scurrilous songs. Nor hear we aught but:—Such and such are dead; or, Such and such art dying; and should hear dolorous wailing on every hand, were there but any to wail. Or go we home, what see we there? I know not if you are in like ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... salvation of wrecked political theories loomed far more important in their darkened minds than the salvation, by hook or crook, of the British Empire. The other faction, more patriotic in theory, cried aloud stinking fish, and by scurrilous over-statement defeated their own ends. In the general ignoble screech the pronouncements of the one or two dignified and thoughtful ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... scurrilous article by a Member of Parliament, urging rebellious natives in South Africa to take heart of grace and pursue with ever-increasing vigour their attacks upon the small and isolated white populace which upheld British rule in that part of the Continent. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... quickly replied Carmen. "Scurrilous attacks upon the Church but make it a martyr. Vilification returns upon the one who hurls the abuse. One can not fling mud without soiling one's hands. I oppose not men, but human systems of thought. Whatever is good will stand, and needs ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... wise and proper to notice only the more decent, respectable, and celebrated among the abolitionists of the North. Those scurrilous writers, who deal in wholesale abuse of Southern character, we have deemed unworthy of notice. Their writings are, no doubt, adapted to the taste of their readers; but as it is certain that no educated ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... all who supported the reigning family of Florence. Poggio had the art of making enemies, though he was a courtier by profession and had been secretary to eight Popes. He raged against Philelpho in a flood of scurrilous pamphlets; Valla, the great Latin scholar, was violently attacked for a mere word of criticism, and Niccolo Perotti, the grammarian, paid severely for supporting his friend. Poggio was always in extremes. His eulogies in praise ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... villanous lampoons, and libels began afresh. The relatives of the fallen statesman could not appear in the streets without being exposed to insult, and without hearing scurrilous and obscene verses against their father and themselves, in which neither sex nor age was spared, howled in their ears by all the ballad-mongers and broadsheet vendors of the town. The unsigned publication of the States-General, with its dark allusions to horrible discoveries ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hesitated a moment whether he should go after them; but Kennedy being a person in full confidence of the family, and with whom he himself had no delight in associating, "being that he was addicted unto profane and scurrilous jests," he continued his own walk at his own pace, till he reached the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... stem the tide of internal dissensions and crush out the hydra of internal treason; at a time when the mother country has gone to every length short of open war to aid and assist those who are striving for our downfall, and her press is exhausting every epithet of vituperation and scurrilous abuse of us, who are battling so earnestly in our own defence, and who are entitled by every truth of human nature to her warmest sympathy—a press which, adopting the phraseology of its Secession friends and allies, scruples not to place the civilization of the slaveholding States ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Protestant ministers had no "calling" to their office, and that recourse must be had to tradition to explain and supplement the Holy Scriptures. When Beza was about to reply, the floor was seized by a coarse Dominican friar, one Claude de Sainctes, who in a scurrilous speech went over much of the same ground, and, waxing more and more vehement, did not hesitate to assert that tradition stood on a firmer foundation than the Bible itself, which could be perverted to countenance the most opposite doctrines.[1151] ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... staid bibliographer Allibone, in his "Dictionary of English Literature," a place where one would think the most flagitious author safe from animosity, speaks of Godwin's private life in terms that are little less than scurrilous. Over against this persistent acrimony may be put the fine eulogy of Mr. C. Kegan Paul, his biographer, to represent the favourable judgment of our own time, whilst I will venture to quote one remarkable passage that voices the opinions of many ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... there are many of them that I think worth preservation as describing and identifying the individuals of whom Fountainhall wrote, although his silly party zeal makes him, like all such partizans of faction, unjust and scurrilous. ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... said Evan coolly. "It was merely scurrilous, and Mr. Deaves saw nothing to be gained in keeping it. The criminal intent is ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... demanded of a scholar some time ago, 'give me a definition of poetry.' 'Tresvolontiers;' and he proceeded to his library, brought me a Dr. Johnson, and overwhelmed me with a definition. Shade of the immortal Shakespeare! I imagine to myself the scowl of your spiritual eye upon the profanity of that scurrilous Ursa Major. Think of poetry, dear B-, think of poetry, and then think of Dr. Samuel Johnson! Think of all that is airy and fairy-like, and then of all that is hideous and unwieldy; think of his huge bulk, the Elephant! and then-and then think of the 'Tempest'—the 'Midsummer-Night's ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Scotland, and was warmly welcomed by his kinsman, the laird of Bonhill. In 1769, he published "The Adventures of an Atom," a stupid, foul, and scurrilous political satire, in which Lord Bute, having been his patron, was "lashed" in Smollett's usual style. In 1768, Smollett left England for ever. He desired a consulship, but no consulship was found for him, which is not surprising. He died at Monte Nova, near Leghorn, in September (others say October) ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... what; I found writ in a French book of one Monsieur Sorbiere, [Samuel Sorbiere, who, after studying divinity and medicine at Paris, travelled in different parts of Europe, and published his Voyage into England, described by Voltaire as a dull, scurrilous satyr upon a nation of which the author knew nothing.] that gives an account of his observations here in England; among other things he says, that it is reported that Cromwell did, in his life-time, transpose many of the ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... and either shut its doors against the members of the other. The publication of reports, forbidden by a standing order of 1762, had for some time been carried on under various disguises, and the reports, which were founded on scanty information, were often unfair and scurrilous. In February, 1771, Colonel Onslow complained of two newspapers which misrepresented his conduct in the house, and held him up to contempt by describing him as "little cocking George". Disregarding a warning from Burke as to the folly of entering into a quarrel with the press and attempting ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... vigorous English satire of this entire period was that which we owe to the scurrilous pen of Skelton and the provocative personality of Wolsey. With his work may be mentioned the rude and unpolished, yet vigorous, piece bearing the ...
— English Satires • Various
... with me," he said; "I can't stand this! Yes, yes, I know her well," he whispered, as they went round the screen which was the only partition between pipes and plates; "but let me see what that scurrilous rag has to say while you order. I'll do the rest, and you had better make it a bottle ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... therewith, seem bent, if possible, on the destruction of Britain, and their own aggrandisement. Are not the daily papers filled with treasonable resolves of American congresses and committees, extracts of letters, and other infamous pieces and scurrilous pamphlets, circulating with unusual industry throughout the kingdom, by the enemies of Britain, thereby poisoning the minds of our liege subjects with their detestable tenets?—And did you not this day see the procession, and that vile ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... grounds; and that the old answers to difficulties will do no longer. They shake their sage heads at such men as Clarke, Paley, Butler, and declare that such arguments as theirs will not satisfy them.,—We are glad to admit that all this vague pretension is now but rarely displayed with the scurrilous spirit of that elder unbelief against which the long series of British apologists for Christianity arose between 1700 and 1750; But there is often in it an arrogance as real, though not in so offensive a form. Sometimes the spirit of unbelief even ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... more than four or five lines in length and was a bitter and most scurrilous attack on Dr. Wise, signed ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... brothers, and that crab of a priest into the bargain; but I am grieved to the heart to hear what I do of you. They tell me you are the idlest boy in the school; that you are always beating your brother Gerald, and making a scurrilous jest of your mother ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the gallant bark of our choice is melancholy and vague, being marked chiefly to memory by the complicated curse bestowed upon me by a hideous old Irish-woman, whose oranges I accidentally upset in the crowd, and by whom I was subsequently derided with buffo song and scurrilous dance as long as the steamer ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... wonderfully taken with it, and asked his bishops why none of them could write with such feeling and unction.[4] There was, however, one religious Order in which this book was much censured, as if it had allowed of gallantry and scurrilous jests, and approved of balls and comedies, which was very far from the saint's doctrine. A preacher of that Order had the rashness and presumption to declaim bitterly against the book in a public sermon, to cut it in pieces, and bum it ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... attack him. To such depths as these has the Democratic party in this state fallen. Had there ever been the slightest doubt that the Hon. J. Woodworth-Granger will be the nominee for governor of this state, it is now dissipated by the scurrilous attack made upon him—an attack of desperation that must and shall inevitably bring its own reward. Verily a man is known by the ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... man whom, living and dead, Caesar evidently dreaded. The Dictator even assailed his memory in a brace of pamphlets entitled Anti-Cato, of the quality of which we have one or two specimens, in Plutarch, from which we should infer that they were scurrilous and slanderous to the last degree; a proof that even Caesar could feel fear, and that in Caesar, too, fear was mean. Dr Mommsen throws himself heartily into Caesar's antipathy, and can scarcely speak of Cato without ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... father, was monstrous presumption; but that a professor in the State university of a commonwealth largely Republican should avow free-trade opinions was akin to treason, and through twelve successive issues of his paper he lashed me in all the moods and tenses. As these attacks soon became scurrilous, I made no reply to any after the first; but his wrath was increased when he saw my reply quoted by the press throughout the State and his own diatribes neglected. Among his more serious charges I remember but one, and this was ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... 1678 it was at Mr. Blanchard's, the goldsmith's, next door to Temple Bar, that Dryden the poet, bruised and angry, deposited L50 as a reward for any one who would discover the bullies of Lord Rochester who had beaten him in Rose Alley for some scurrilous verses really written by the Earl of Dorset. The advertisement promises, if the discoverer be himself one of the actors, he shall still have the L50, without letting his name be known or receiving ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... estimates of our poet's worth have been as diversified as they have been in the main unfair. Alternately lauded as a master dramatic craftsman and vilified as a scurrilous purveyor of unsavory humor, he has been buffeted from the top to the bottom of the dramatic scale. More recent writers have been approaching a saner evaluation of his true worth, but never, we believe, has his real position in that dramatic scale ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... of Catholics Luther's greatest offense is what he has done to their Pope. This is Luther's unpardonable sin. Luther has done two things to the Pope: he has denied that the Pope exists by divine right, and he has in the most scurrilous manner spoken and written about the Pope and made his vaunted dignity the butt of universal ridicule. The indictment is true, but when the facts are stated, it will be seen to recoil on the heads of ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... so successful that Wells's testimony was not called for. The case was withdrawn. No apology was even asked from Gilbert, whose solicitor tells me that Messrs. Lever "behaved very reasonably when once it was made clear to them that Gilbert was not a scurrilous person making a vulgar and slanderous attack ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... has chosen: he has been detected in the attempt to pass bad circles. He complains bitterly that his geometry, instead of being read and understood by you, is handed over to me to be treated after my scurrilous fashion. It is clear enough that he would rather be handled in this way than not handled at all, or why does he go on writing? He must know by this time that it is a part of the institution that his "untruthful and absurd trash" shall ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... banter used at these festivals, namely, Iambus. All the wanton extravagance which was elsewhere repressed by law or custom, here, under the protection of religion, burst forth with boundless license, and these scurrilous effusions were at length reduced by Archilochus into the systematic form of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... expressions and was called to account, he thought it right to go out and stand a shot before he ate his words, but now-a-days that piece of chivalry is dispensed with, and politicians make nothing of being scurrilous one day and humble the next. Hyde Villiers has been appointed to succeed Sandon at the Board of Control as a Whig and a Reformer. He was in a hundred minds what line he should take, and had written a pamphlet to prove the necessity of giving Ministers seats ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... himself in the road of Postumius and, with a forward inclination, threw him down and soiled his clothing. At this an uproar arose from all the rest, who praised the fellow as if he had performed some remarkable deed, and they sang many scurrilous anapaests upon the Romans, accompanied by applause and capering steps. But Postumius cried: "Laugh, laugh while you may! For long will be the period of your weeping, when you shall wash this garment clean with your blood." (Ursinus, p.375. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... to come to business, and I do not want things to go easy. I believe you said some things of me in your newspaper that were very scurrilous." ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... was good that he penned the scurrilous article. For I had allowed happiness to lull my radical conscience asleep. It was now goaded awake. I held a ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... whence by order of the pope he was transferred with several other Scottish students to the papal seminary at Rome. Being soon forced by ill health to leave, he went to the English college at Douai, where he remained three years and took his M.A. degree. While at Douai he wrote a scurrilous attack on Queen Elizabeth, which caused a riot among the English students. But, if his truculent character was thus early displayed, his abilities were no less conspicuous; and, though still in his teens, he became lecturer on the Humanities at Tournai, whence, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... to a low and scurrilous translation, or rather imitation of the epigrams of Martial and others, purporting to be "by the Rev. Mr. Scott, M.A.," and published ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... Blackwood is still more scurrilous; the circumstance of Keats having been brought up a surgeon is the staple of the jokes of the piece. He is told 'it is a better and wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet.'"—Milnes' Life of Keats, vol. i. p. 200, and compare pp. 193, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... with her brother, the Count Sabatini. You see, I am private secretary now to a merchant prince, no longer a clerk in a wholesale provision merchant's office. We climb, my dear Ruth. Soon I am going to ask for a holiday, and then we'll make Isaac leave his beastly lecturing and scurrilous articles, and come away with us somewhere for a day or two. You would like a few days ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... be a party to any such scurrilous undertaking!" he declared when, he could trust his ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... you of insulting the classes whose powers most of you know as little as you do their sufferings. Yes; the Chartist poet is vain, conceited, ambitious, uneducated, shallow, inexperienced, envious, ferocious, scurrilous, seditious, traitorous.—Is your charitable vocabulary exhausted? Then ask yourselves, how often have you yourself honestly resisted and conquered the temptation to any one of these sins, when it has come across you just once in a way, and not ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... of his suggestions—something that he might twist and turn in his own fashion and repeat afterwards to all his and her acquaintances. She cared nothing for herself, but she was full of dread lest Walden's name should be bandied up and down on the scurrilous tongues of that 'upper class' throng, who, because they spend their lives in nothing nobler than political intrigue and sensual indulgence, are politely set aside as froth and scum by the saner, cleaner world, and classified as the ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Damia and Auxesia, and they brought them and set them up in the inland part of their country at a place called Oia, which is about twenty furlongs distant from their city. Having set them up in this spot they worshipped them with sacrifices and choruses of women accompanied with scurrilous jesting, ten men being appointed for each of the deities to provide the choruses: and the choruses spoke evil of no man, but only of the women of the place. Now the Epidaurians also had the same rites; and they have also rites which may ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... disposed to give it up without making an effort. And no resistance to this impending calamity was made until Anna Dickinson went into the State, and galvanized the desponding loyalists to life. She spent two weeks there, and completely turned the tide of popular sentiment. Democrats, in spite of the scurrilous attacks made on her by some of their leaders and editors, received her everywhere with the warmest welcome, tore off their party badges, substituted her likeness, and applauded whatever she said. The halls where she spoke were so densely ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... not the only "teller of tales," for all sorts of strange stories—some amusing, some scurrilous and malicious—were invented about the family at Vailima and ran current in the gossip "on the beach." One of the most fantastic of these inventions was that Mr. Stevenson had been married before to a native woman, and that Mrs. Strong[57] was his half-caste ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... Indeed, the method of Mutinelli (who I believe intends to tell the truth) in writing social history is altogether too credulous and incautious. It is well enough to study contemporary comedy for light upon past society, but satirical ballads and lampoons, and scurrilous letters, cannot be accepted as historical authority. Still there is no question but Venice was very corrupt. As you read of her people in the last century, one by one the ideas of family faith and domestic purity fade away; one by one the ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... and with a bitterness equal to his own. Thomas Jollie replied in A Vindication of the Surey Demoniack. "I will not foul my Paper," wrote the mild Jollie, "and offend my reader with those scurrilous and ridiculous Passages in this Page. O, the Eructations of an exulcerated Heart! How desperately wicked ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... understood that throughout the war the Japanese were in a position to blackmail the Allies, because their sympathies were with Germany, they believed Germany would win, and they filled their newspapers with scurrilous attacks on the British, accusing them ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... tracks;[1] Bright Phillis mending ragged smocks: And radiant Iris in the pox. These are the goddesses enroll'd In Curll's collection, new and old, Whose scoundrel fathers would not know 'em, If they should meet them in a poem. True poets can depress and raise, Are lords of infamy and praise; They are not scurrilous in satire, Nor will in panegyric flatter. Unjustly poets we asperse; Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true. Now, should my praises owe their truth To beauty, dress, or paint, ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... be suggested of me: and, therefore when I have brought in Britannia speaking of the king, I suppose her to be the representative or mouth of the nation, as a body. But if I say we are full of such who daily affront the king, and abuse his friends; who print scurrilous pamphlets, virulent lampoons, and reproachful public banters, against both the king's person and his government; I say nothing but what is too true; and that the Satire is directed at such, I freely own; and cannot say, but ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... reprinted the two Latin Poems that had originally formed part of the Regii Sanguinis Clamor, with their full titles as at first: to wit, the "Eucharistic Ode," to the great Salmasius for his Defensio Regia, and the set of scurrilous Iambics "To the Bestial Blackguard John Milton, Parricide and Advocate of the Parricide." With reference to the last there are several explanations for the reader in Latin prose at different points ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... Crates [328], however, in the year of the Samian war, the comic drama assumed a character either so personally scurrilous, or so politically dangerous, that a decree was passed interdicting its exhibitions (B. C. 440). The law was repealed three years afterward (B. C. 437) [329]. Viewing its temporary enforcement, and the date in which it was passed, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to tread strange paths, and the punishment for the elimination of natural wantonness is the appearance of hideous hypocrisy. Driven from the haunts of the Muses, expelled from the symposia of the wise and witty, the spirit of sexual irreverence takes refuge in the streets; and the scurrilous vulgarities of the tavern balance the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... seven thousand pounds, 'I will do him all the good I can,' says he. 'I thought he had never done any good; let me see him, and let him stand behind me where I sit:' I did so. At my first appearance, many of the young members affronted me highly, and demanded several scurrilous questions. Mr. Weston held a paper before his mouth; bade me answer nobody but Mr. Prinn; I obeyed his command, and saved myself much trouble thereby; and when Mr. Prinn put any difficult or doubtful query unto ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... Captain Clinton," went on the lawyer severely, "I accuse you of giving an untruthful version of this matter to two sensational newspapers in this city. These scurrilous sheets have tried this young man in their columns and found him guilty, thus prejudicing the whole community against him before he comes to trial. In no other country in the civilized world would this be tolerated, except in a ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... common enemy, and we need not tell our readers how successfully, nor how desperate the struggle, the very next year; which ended in the complete ascendancy of the Hanover rat, or reigning family, over the unlucky Jacobite native. Under his figure of a rat, this Jacobite is very scurrilous indeed upon the Hanoverian succession; and, continuing his polypian imitations, relates a few coarse experiments upon his subject illustrative of its destructive properties, voracity, and sagacity, which set at nought "all the contrivances ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... (who had likewise heard the Story) regarded her with a very grim and dissatisfied countenance, and murmured that she thought a little trailing up before the Council, and committing to the Gate-house, would do some popinjays some good, and cure them of telling tales as treasonable as they were scurrilous. ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... late. Debts of money, he said, can be paid to the heirs of a creditor, but men of honour are grieved at not being able to return a kindness during the lifetime of their benefactor. In Ambrakia once Pyrrhus was advised to banish a man who abused him in scurrilous terms. He answered, "I had rather he remained where he is and abused me there, than that he should wander through all the world doing so." Once some youths spoke ill of him over their wine, and being detected were asked by him whether they had used ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... Timothy Fielding had played at Drury Lane. But, on the whole, it is satisfactory to know that his early experiences did not, of necessity, include those of a strolling player. Some obscure and temporary connection with Bartholomew Fair he may have had, as Smollett, in the scurrilous pamphlet issued in 1742, makes him say that he blew a trumpet there in quality of herald to a collection of wild beasts; but this is probably no more than an earlier and uglier form of the apparition laid by Mr. Latreille. The only positive evidence ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... to sell, and ready at the first call made upon it to carry away and destroy half a dozen valuable lives. There was one coil of rope on board which the skipper had bought for cordage on the previous voyage from a homeward-bound English ship, and it was the butt of all the officers' scurrilous remarks about Britishers and their gear. It was never used but for rope-yarns, being cut up in lengths, and untwisted for the ignominious purpose of tying things up—"hardly good enough for that," was ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... will not avouch for my Brothers Intention) so the French Officer being of a suspicious and also a fiery Temper, wanted no body to exasperate him. He took it for granted the Thing was so, and taking Coach he came to his Kinswoman, and after having attack'd her with a great deal of scurrilous Language, he waited not for her Reply, but flung away to find my Brother in order to cut his Throat. My Brother was then at St. Germains receiving his last Orders from the Secretary for his departure for Ireland, but return'd that Night to Paris. His Landlady ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... the Ulstermen who had joined him, and for his dalliance with Queen Maev. Bricriu, who in other romances is a mere buffoon, here appears as a distinguished poet, and a chief ollave; his satire remains bitter, but by no means scurrilous, and the verses put into his mouth, although far beneath the standard of the verses given to Deirdre in the earlier part of the manuscript, show a certain amount of dignity and poetic power. As an example, the following satire on Fergus's ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... could so well have done yourself, sire. You have brought out poets as the sun brings out flowers. How many have we not seen—Moliere, Boileau, Racine, one greater than the other? And the others, too, the smaller ones—Scarron, so scurrilous and yet so witty—Oh, holy ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... After all, scurrilous denunciation never affected me. His life by Sir Wemyss Reid reveals how Mr. W.E. Forster flinched under the vituperation levelled at his head. But he was not an Irishman, least of all a Kerry man, and so he never felt the fun of the fray, the grim earnest ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... liberality was constructed wide enough to include him. Even the scouted Unitarian scouted Thomas. He was 'the infamous Paine,' 'the vulgar atheist.' Whenever mentioned in pious discourse it was but to be waved on one side as thus: 'No one of my hearers is likely to be led astray by the scurrilous blasphemies of Paine.' ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... other titles might be added to those given above, but the author has restricted the list to books in his possession. Some of them are scurrilous and obscene, deserving no further attention than a record of their existence. Yet the fundamental idea running through these works is identical, differing only in ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... barbarians.(8) They were patient when Marcus Favonius, Cato's Sancho, after the senate had adopted the resolution to charge the legions of Caesar on the state-chest, sprang to the door of the senate-house and proclaimed to the streets the danger of the country; when the same person in his scurrilous fashion called the white bandage, which Pompeius wore round his weak leg, a displaced diadem; when the consular Lentulus Marcellinus, on being applauded, called out to the assembly to make diligent use of this ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... all food was once called 'meat'; it is so in our Bible, and 'horse-meat' for fodder is still no unusual phrase; yet 'meat' is now a name given only to flesh. Any little book or writing was a 'libel' once; now only such a one as is scurrilous and injurious. Any leader was a 'duke' (dux); thus "duke Hannibal" (Sir Thomas Eylot), "duke Brennus" (Holland), "duke Theseus" (Shakespeare), "duke Amalek", with other 'dukes' (Gen. xxxvi.). Any ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... I tell you in confidence, one by itself would not pay; and I am a printer, sir, and it is on my conscience to tell you I have, in the course of business, been compelled this very morning to receive orders for the printing of various squibs and, I much fear, scurrilous things.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... principle is here laid down that every human action, word, and thought bears its appropriate fruit, good or evil. Out of the heart proceed three sins of thought, four sins of the tongue, and three of the body, namely, covetous, disobedient, and atheistic thoughts; scurrilous, false, frivolous, and unkind words; and actions of theft, bodily injury, and licentiousness. He who controls his thoughts, words, and actions is called a triple commander. There are three qualities ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... are puppet-shows, and the comedians ballad-singers; when fools lead the town, would a man think to thrive by his wit? If you must write, write nonsense, write operas, write Hurlothrumbos, set up an oratory and preach nonsense, and you may meet with encouragement enough. Be profane, be scurrilous, be immodest: if you would receive applause, deserve to receive sentence at the Old Bailey; and if you would ride in a coach, deserve to ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... the case, and, having dealt with the subject chiefly on behalf of the Close and the admirers of the Close, had made no allusion to the fact that Mrs. Peacocke was a very pretty woman. One or two other local papers had been more scurrilous, and had, with ambiguous and timid words, alluded to the Doctor's personal admiration for the lady. These, or the rumours created by them, had reached one of the funniest and lightest-handed of the ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... the old-fashioned style of exordium by an old-fashioned foreman, who believed that the best results could be obtained by the most scurrilous abuse of his men—and the immediate efforts of Vienna seemed ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day |
