"Conjectural" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Venus, in the fifth conversation, the story of Cupid and Psyche was told with fitting beauty, by Margaret; and many fine conjectural interpretations suggested from all parts of the room. The ninth conversation turned on the distinctive qualities of poetry, discriminating it from the other fine arts. Rhythm and Imagery, it was agreed, were distinctive. An episode to dancing, which the ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... must assert this point of superiority for Coleridge, that, whilst he never was what may be called a well-mounted scholar in any department of verbal scholarship, he yet displayed sometimes a brilliancy of conjectural sagacity, and a felicity of philosophic investigation, even in this path, such as better scholars do not often attain, and of a kind which cannot be learned from books. But, as respects his accuracy, again we must recall to the reader the ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... conjectural science is divided into natural and judicial. The first is confined to the study of exploring natural effects, as change of weather, winds and storms—hurricanes, thunder, floods, earthquakes, and the like. In this sense it is admitted to be a part of ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... blowing with a steadiness that they had not experienced before that night. Paul suspected this change, though he had no certain means of knowing it; for as soon as the wind baffled, his course had got to be conjectural again. As the breeze freshened, the speed of the boat necessarily augmented, though she was kept always on a wind; and after half an hour's progress, the gentlemen became once more ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the labour of getting them. If it cost twice as much labour to kill a beaver as to kill a deer, one beaver would be worth two deer. In accepting this bit of what Smith's commentator, Dugald Stewart,[332] calls 'theoretical' or 'conjectural' history, Ricardo did not mean to state a historical fact. He was not thinking of actual Choctaws or Cherokees. The beaver was exchanged for the deer about the time when the primitive man signed the 'social contract.' He is a hypothetical ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... data I have collected about the Matterhorn, I am at this moment in doubt which is its top. For as, in order to examine the beds on its flanks, I walked up the Zmutt glacier, I saw that the line a b in Fig. 31 gradually lost its steepness; and about half-way up the glacier, the conjectural summit a then bearing nearly S. E. (forty degrees east of south), I found the contour was as in Fig. 32. In Fig. 33, I have given the contour as seen from Zermatt; and in all three, the same letters indicate ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... a venture, only conjectural to us at this distance, he knew well; but in him there was nothing that shrank from danger, though he did not court it after the rash manner of many of his compeers. Neither reckless nor riotous, Boone was never ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... and the stiff folds of the tunic, the cold demeanor of the goddess, recall the masters whom Pheidias was destined to supersede. No copy of this statue survives, and hence a description of it must be largely conjectural, made up from hints gleaned from ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... critical sagacity of which he has left us few examples. Now it is remarkable that the majority of the changes proposed by Mr. Collier in the notes to this edition of Shakespeare (8 vols., 8vo., 1842-3) evince a capacity for the apprehension of figurative language and for conjectural emendation of the very calibre indicated by this proposed change of "pregnant hinges" to "begging hinges." He has throughout his literary career, which began, we believe, with the publication of the "Poetical Decameron," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... scarcely expected that even the British Museum would not have possessed a copy of the first issue of Miss Edgeworth's book. Such, however, seems to be the case. According to the catalogue, there is nothing earlier at Bloomsbury than a portion of the second edition; and from the inexplicit and conjectural manner in which most of the author's biographers speak of the work, it can scarcely—outside private collections—be very easily accessible. Fortunately the old Monthly Review for September, 1796, with most exemplary ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... and I had hoped that the discussion in the newspapers would have ceased, at all events, until the appearance of the promised book. It has not been so; and at this distance from Guiana I was not aware of how much conjectural matter was being printed week by week in the local press, some of which must have been painful reading to Mr. Abel's friends. A darkened chamber, the existence of which had never been suspected in that familiar house in Main Street, furnished only with an ebony stand on which stood a ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... was because the project of building a hotel was abandoned. I have taken the liberty to give as a title for it "The Plaint of the Merrimac." As it was written in almost undecipherable hieroglyphics, some of the words are conjectural:— ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... live stock of all descriptions, which they drive over the mountains and sell for cash. This extensive trade, which, from its peculiar character, more easily overcomes the difficulties of transportation than any that can be substituted in its place, is about to be put in jeopardy for the conjectural benefits of this measure. When I say this trade is about to be put in jeopardy, I do not speak unadvisedly. I am perfectly convinced that, if this bill passes, it will have the effect of inducing the people of the South, partly from the feeling and partly from the necessity growing out ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... to the final overthrow of the stern old pile. As he proceeded, the lecturer pointed with his finger at the various features appertaining to the date of his story, which he told with splendid vigour when he had warmed to his work, till his narrative, particularly in the conjectural and romantic parts, where it became coloured rather by the speaker's imagination than by the pigments of history, gathered together the wandering thoughts of all. It was easy for him then to meet those fair concentred eyes, when the sunshades were thrown back, and complexions ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... educational and philosophical. Of the creative arts, there is one part purer or more akin to knowledge than the other. There is an element of guess-work and an element of number and measure in them. In music, for example, especially in flute-playing, the conjectural element prevails; while in carpentering there is more application of rule and measure. Of the creative arts, then, we may make two classes—the less exact and the more exact. And the exacter part of all ...
— Philebus • Plato
... insubstantial and reflected phantasms with some activity and mimic play, a theory of the association of Ideas has been erected, without having previously established that they are capable of such confederation. A wearisome catalogue of faculties, many of which are conjectural, has been enumerated; Abstraction, Conception, Contemplation, Consciousness, Comparison, Imagination, Judgment, Memory, Recollection, Reminiscence, Retention, Perception, Sensation, Reflection, Thought, ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam
... original, but of an abridgment which some one had made for his own improvement. On one point all philological critics are unanimous: namely, that the text is very much corrupted, and they have endeavoured to restore it by conjectural emendations. Its great obscurity is either expressly complained of by commentators, or substantiated by the fact, that all in turn reject the interpretations of their predecessors, while they cannot approve their own to those ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... had partially covered their fronts with light parapet; but Hooker's whole corps fought in open ground, and lost about fifteen hundred men. He reported four hundred rebel dead left on the ground, and that the rebel wounded would number four thousand; but this was conjectural, for most of them got back within their own lines. We had, however, met successfully a bold sally, had repelled it handsomely, and were also put on our guard; and the event illustrated the future tactics of our enemy. This sally came from the Peach-Tree line, which General Johnston ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... certainty that if the citations from that play are correctly credited to Fletcher, he never wrote a line of "Henry VIII." Professor Thorndike is not consistent with himself. On one page he calls his theory conjectural, on another, a "reasonable conclusion." The play itself ought to convince any fair mind that Shakspere had no share in it, for it contains an obvious imitation of Ophelia's madness in "Hamlet," which in some points ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... dates of Michael Angelo's compositions are conjectural, it may be assumed that the two sonnets on Dante were written when he was himself in exile. We know that, while sojourning in the house of Gian Francesco Aldovrandini at Bologna, he used to spend a portion of ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... not, By Heaven that hears I tell you the clean truth, As clean as blood of babes, as white as milk: O Merlin, may this earth, if ever I, If these unwitty wandering wits of mine, Even in the jumbled rubbish of a dream, Have tript on such conjectural treachery— May this hard earth cleave to the Nadir hell Down, down, and close again, and nip me flat, If I be such a traitress. Yield my boon, Till which I scarce can yield you all I am; And grant my re-reiterated wish, The great proof of your love: because ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... scale. On the contrary, the predaceous cephalopods and the highly organized crustaceous are among the oldest fossils. Such appears to be the order of nature as evidenced by facts, and it must be admitted, however repugnant to preconceived notions or mere mortal conjectural amendments. ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... company was ever brought to trial. As each leader kept to himself the names of his proselytes, and as Monday Gell was the only one of these who turned traitor, any opinion as to the numbers actually engaged must appear altogether conjectural. One witness said nine thousand; another, six thousand six hundred. These statements were probably extravagant, though not more so than Governor Bennett's assertion, on the other side, that "all who were actually concerned had been brought to justice,"—unless by this phrase he designates ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... at that conjectural solution of his perplexities when a voice was heard singing, or rather modulated to that kind of chant between recitative and song, which is so pleasingly effective where the intonations are pure and musical. They were so in this instance, and ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... communication between the learned and the unlearned, and, as it were, throw a bridge between those two great divisions of the public. Literary Miscellanies are classed among philological studies. The studies of philology formerly consisted rather of the labours of arid grammarians and conjectural critics, than of that more elegant philosophy which has, within our own time, been introduced into literature, and which, by its graces and investigation, augment the beauties of original genius. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the chief difficulty was overcome, and it was possible to sketch the probable series of our ancestors. It must be well understood that not only is the whole series conjectural, but no living animal must be regarded as an ancestral form. The parental types have long been extinct, and we may, at the most, use very conservative living types to illustrate their nature, just as, in the matter of languages, German is not the parent, but the cousin of Anglo-Saxon, or Greek ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo had raised it to a position of lofty eminence, though the law of gravitation, which accounts for the form and permanency of the planetary orbits, still remained undiscovered. Theories formerly obscure or conjectural were either rejected or elucidated with accuracy and precision, and the solar system, having the Sun as its centre, with his attendant family of planets and their satellites revolving in majestic orbits ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... kingdom and to primitive times. There is no evidence to prove whether the original edifice had, or had not, a third story; since the chamber seen by the Arabs was no doubt a late Babylonian work. The third story of the accompanying sketch must therefore be regarded as conjectural. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 1. (of 7): Chaldaea • George Rawlinson
... however, that some or most of the snakes in which no rattles appear, are nevertheless intended for rattlers. It may have been that the figures were so well understood that the addition of rattles in the drawings was quite unnecessary. This, however, is quite conjectural. The species of rattlesnake is probably Crotalus basiliscus or C. terrificus of southern Mexico and adjacent regions, not C. horridus or adamanteus as supposed by Stempell since these two species are confined to the United States. Among the figures shown on ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... cost, the estimates of the majority are very much more indefinite and conjectural than the more carefully prepared estimates of the minority of the Board of Consulting Engineers. Upon this point the majority of the Senate ...
— The American Type of Isthmian Canal - Speech by Hon. John Fairfield Dryden in the Senate of the - United States, June 14, 1906 • John Fairfield Dryden
... Shakespeare have his way alone. But at the same time he puts aside with just indignation Pope's supercilious talk about the "dull duty of an editor"; and after giving an admirable summary of what that dull duty is, declares that one part of it alone, the business of conjectural criticism, "demands more than humanity possesses." Yet it is that part of his functions, the part which appeals most to vanity, that he exercised with the most sparing caution. He saw that it was not ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... other solemnities, may possibly have refined upon those moresque divertisements, and produced this delightful entertainment, by leaving out the warlike part of the carousals, and forming a poetical design for the use of the machines, the songs, and dances. But however it began, (for this is only conjectural,) we know, that, for some centuries, the knowledge of music has flourished principally in Italy, the mother of learning and of arts[2]; that poetry and painting have been there restored, and so cultivated by Italian masters, that all ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... got my morning paper early enough to be able to send down to the office a correction of any error in my conjectural notice of the last act, and reception of the play, or even a report of the speech at the end; and if the theatre had been burnt down, or the leading player had fallen in a fit, I would have sent an account of it, so as not to lose my berth for apparent inattention to business. There are editors ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... dashed the odours of Araby here and there to discourage the herrings. A large velvet cloak, the worse for wear, disguised the rents of the sofa, whereon sat Mrs Gunning, majestic in another of faded purple satin, beneath which her dress remained conjectural. A noble square of Limerick point was flung over her head and hung veil-like by each ear; and, indeed, with the little cherub Lucy at her feet, she might have ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... less than two leagues from the mouth of the strait, if more it was only a little more. The coast of the island then turned north close to that of Spain, and was joined to the island of Cadiz or Gadiz, or Caliz, as it is now called. I affirm this for two reasons, one by authority and the other by conjectural demonstration. The authority is that Plato in his Critias, telling how Neptune distributed the sovereignty of the island among his ten sons, said that the second son was called in the mother tongue "Gadirum," which in Greek we ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... of casting a nativity, but a suspicion, or, indeed, rather more than a suspicion, seems to have crossed his mind as to the value of these astrological predictions, for he says in fine, "I found astrology to give generally strong conjectural ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... in medicine. He spoke of it as an art entirely conjectural, and his opinion on this subject was fired and incontrovertible. His vigorous mind rejected all but ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... and not at all more satisfactory; he states merely as a supposition their inquiry concerning matters of which he positively knew that they had called for an explanation. He knew it, because he presumed to censure them for doing so. To the hypothesis of a further inquiry he gives a conjectural answer of such a kind as probably, in an account of a doubtful transaction, and to a superior, was ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the disposing thereof as aforesaide text reads "aforesaidel" corrospondent and agreeing with spelling as in original Sidenote: A petiment in corrupt English. reading "petiment" conjectural Sidenote: Anaglipts are cunning carues and grauers. reading conjectural: beginning of each line is missing naglipts / e cunning / arues and / rauers effected by many seuerall workmen text reads "wookmen" Bagistanus must giue place text reads "geue" although the Obelisk of Iupiter text reads "Obelist" asosciated ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna
... doubt, is that which is reflected from honesty, such as was the glory of Cato and Aristides, but it was harmful to them both, and is seldom beneficial to any man whilst he lives; what it is to him after his death, I cannot say, because I love not philosophy merely notional and conjectural, and no man who has made the experiment has been so kind as to come back to inform us. Upon the whole matter, I account a person who has a moderate mind and fortune, and lives in the conversation of two or three agreeable friends, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... be snatched from the hands of those who had proven incapable of doing any good and were furthermore even losing their capacity for active evil. Their method of working through an artificially picked Pre-Parliament and a conjectural Constituent Assembly, had to be opposed by our political method of mobilizing the forces around the Soviets, through the All-Russian Congress of Soviets and through insurrection. This could be done only by means of an open break, before the eyes of ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... troubles are purely conjectural," said Sewell with a laugh. "I'm bound to say that Barker himself didn't say a word to justify the conjecture that he was either in love or wished to be out of it. However, I've given him some wholesome advice ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... new collation of the old MS. containing most of Books Seventy-eight and Seventy-nine, and with many new and brilliant conjectural emendations by the editor.) Two volumes. ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... Mr. Cunningham, speaking of Houndsditch, merely quotes the words of Stow. It would appear that Stow's reason for the name is entirely conjectural; and indeed the same reason would justify the same name being applied to all the "ditches" in London in the year 1500, and indeed much later. This passage of Arnold throws a new light upon the name, at least, of that rivulet; for stagnant its waters could not be, from its inclination to the horizon. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... "What means this way of addressing Him? save that, though He knew that the Son of God was to come, yet he did not think that He had come in the weakness of the flesh?" But afterwards, when he saw Him work miracles, he had a sort of conjectural suspicion that He was the Son of God. Hence on Mk. 1:24, "I know who Thou art, the Holy one of God," Chrysostom [*Victor of Antioch. Cf. Catena Aurea] says that "he had no certain or firm knowledge of God's coming." Yet he knew that He was "the Christ ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... everywhere condemned, and in the end it was deemed advisable to bring Dreyfus back to France and accord him a new trial. This trial, which lasted from August 7 to September 7, 1899, indicated that he had been convicted on the most flimsy and uncertain evidence, largely conjectural in character, while there was strong evidence in his favor. Yet the judges of the court-martial seemed biased against him, and by a vote of three judges to two, he was again found guilty - "of treason, with extenuating circumstances," as if ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... which the last four centuries have bestowed upon man.] The improvements of the savage races whose history we can distinctly trace are borrowed and imitative, and our theories as to the origin and natural development of industrial art are conjectural. Of course, the relative antiquity of particular branches of human industry depends much upon the natural character of soil, climate, and spontaneous vegetable and animal life in different countries; and while the geographical ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... text was handwritten, probably by a professional copyist. All line-endings were regularized by added dashes of variable length; some "real" dashes are therefore conjectural. Instead of typographic variants such as italics or boldface, some words are distinguished by underlining or smaller writing. Abbreviations such as "Mr." were written with superscripts as M^r.; they have been simplified ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... offered. They are more or less conjectural. One is that the Yemishi of Mutsu were led by chieftains of Yamato origin, men who had migrated to the northeast in search of fortune or impelled by disaffection. It seems scarcely credible, however, that a fact so special would have eluded historical reference, whereas ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... preserved, by tradition, on the west borders, but much mangled by reciters; so that some conjectural emendations have been absolutely necessary to render it intelligible. In particular, the Eden has been substituted for the Eske, p. 193, the latter ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... class of men madly desirous to read cuneiform and runic inscriptions simply because of their unreadableness, adding to our compulsory stock of knowledge about the royal Smiths and Joneses of to-day much conjectural and conflicting information concerning their royal prototypes of an antiquity unknown, and, as we fondly hoped, unknowable. Were there only a compensatory arrangement for this also in another class who should be driven by a like irresistible instinct to unreadable books, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... this region traversed from east to west—from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco—by a great river called the Buena Ventura: which may be translated, the Good Chance. Governor McLaughlin believed in the existence of this river, and made out a conjectural manuscript map to show its place and course. Fremont believed in it, and his plan was to reach it before the dead of winter, and then hybernate upon it. As a great river he knew that it must have some rich bottoms, covered with wood and grass, where the wild animals would ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... losses. A sense of satisfaction was distinctly dominant as she took leave of her hostess. St. Michael's gossip, or rather the manner in which it had been received, had given her a clue to the real state of affairs, which, however slender and conjectural, at least pointed in the desired direction. At first she had been horribly afraid lest she should be listening to a definite announcement which would have been the death-blow to her hopes, but as the recitation went on without ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... Archeological and Historical knowledge of Yore, beyond our most sanguine expectation. The path is open and becoming easy to pursue; much therefore will be achieved by following the comparative process and discarding all the conjectural systems. ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque
... be added that Guppy's later views give some support to the conjectural existence of the "lost continent." "The distribution of the genus Dammara" (Agathis) led him to modify his earlier conclusions. He tells us:—"In my volume on the geology of Vanua Levu it was shown that the Tertiary period was an age of submergence ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... is the sense of Zimmer's translation, which is only conjectural, of this difficult passage (see Zeitschrift fuer Deutsches Alterthum und Deutsche Litteratur, Bd. xxxii, 1888, S. 275). The idea is probably more clearly expressed in Stowe, H. 1. 13 and YBL. 43a, 41, and may be rendered, 'membrum virile ejus coram viros Hiberniae ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... evolution, is also, not the most honoured, but often just the reverse; remembering, above all, that we know nothing historically of the mental condition of the founders of religion, we may hesitate to accept the anthropological hypothesis en masse. At best it is conjectural, and the facts are such that opponents have more justification than is commonly admitted for regarding the bulk of savage religion as degenerate, or corrupted, from its own highest elements. I am by no means, as yet, arguing positively in favour of ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... he has collected his documents, and he has given them to us as they are, guiding us adroitly along the course of the life which they illustrate, but not allowing himself to dogmatise on what must still remain conjectural. And he has given us a series of reproductions of portraits, of the highest importance in the study of one who is not merely a difficult poet, but a very ambiguous human being. They begin with the eager, attractive, somewhat homely youth of eighteen, grasping the hilt of his ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... it may be asked what is the relation of the particles of insulating bodies, such as air, sulphur, or lac, when they intervene in the line of magnetic action? The answer to this is at present merely conjectural. I have long thought there must be a particular condition of such bodies corresponding to the state which causes currents in metals and other conductors (26. 53. 191. 201. 213.); and considering that the bodies ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... supposed to find support upon the outlying circle of mountains. But the precise mechanism through which the observed revolution of the heavenly bodies was effected remains here, as with the Egyptian cosmology, somewhat conjectural. The simple fact would appear to be that, for the Chaldeans as for the Egyptians, despite their most careful observations of the tangible phenomena of the heavens, no really satisfactory mechanical conception of the cosmos was attainable. We shall see in due course ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... had wheeled away all Cheveleigh and half Ormersfield, till the last unfortunate wheal failed when the rope broke, and there were no funds to buy a new one. No wonder Lord Ormersfield trembled when he heard his son launch out into those easily-ascending conjectural calculations, freely working sums in his head, so exactly like the old Earl, his grandfather, that she could have laughed, but for sympathy with the father, and anxiety to see how the son would take the damp so ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... visited the Bermudas; but it seems much more likely, that he should amuse himself with forming an imaginary scene, than that so important an incident, as a visit to America, should have been left floating in conjectural probability. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... 1513, MOURNERS.]—This attribution of the different speeches or songs to different speakers is, of course, conjectural. Ancient dramas come down to us with no stage directions and very ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... published from tradition, with some conjectural emendations. It is corrected by a copy in Mrs Brown's MS., from which it differs in the concluding stanzas. Some verses ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... on a hill of gentle slope, green as grass; and it is backed close against a steep mountain-side, of which the tree-trunks are conjectural, for I never saw any, the trees resembling rather one continuous leafy tree-top, run out high and far over the extent of ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... understand an obviously corrupt passage in Villani, viii. 41. One of the unlucky Blacks was a Portinari, doubtless a kinsman of Beatrice—a fact which curiously seems to have escaped the conjectural commentators. ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... suggesting that an event may have happened. He is certain that it happened, and calls on the reader to be certain too, (though not a trace of it exists in any record whatever,) because it would solve the phenomena so neatly. Just read over again, if you have forgotten it, the conjectural restoration of the Inscription in page 126 of the second volume; and then, on your honour as a scholar and a man of sense, tell me whether in Bentley's edition of Milton there is anything which approaches to the audacity of that emendation. Niebuhr requires you ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... roughly to gauge his trustworthiness as a guide in other departments of criticism, where, from the nature of the case, no test can be applied. In the land of the unverifiable there are no efficient critical police. When a writer expatiates amidst conjectural quotations from conjectural apocryphal Gospels, he is beyond the reach of refutation. But in the present case, as it so happens, verification is possible, at least to a limited extent; and it is important to avail ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... population must determine the question, even against the efforts of the Federal Government? Did the Southern leaders prefer the election of a Republican, their open opponent, to Douglas, their friend and half-ally? To such questions as these there can be little more than a conjectural answer. It would be most interesting to know the true thoughts and purposes of the leading delegates. We shall see a little later the interpretation given by one of their defenders. But the strong presumption is that their action was the fruit less of a policy ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... an asterisk and in parentheses (*) are those at which a copy of the respective works was deposited at the Paris Bibliotheque du Conservatoire de Musique, the dates without an asterisk in parentheses are derived from advertisements in French musical journals; the square brackets [ ] enclose conjectural and approximate dates and additional information; and lastly, the dates without parentheses and without brackets were obtained by me direct from the successors of the original German publishers, and consequently are more exact and trustworthy ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Collier's folio, he did not hesitate to insinuate broadly that he believed it to be an imposition. But as he based his suspicion solely upon the very numerous coincidences between the marginal readings in that volume and the conjectural readings of the editors and critics of the last century,—coincidences which, however, affect the character of a very large proportion of the noticeable changes in the folio,—he failed to accomplish his conservative purpose at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... out:—but the Tobacco-PIPES that are shown as Friedrich Wilhelm's in the KUNSTKAMMER or Museum of Berlin, pipes which no rational smoker, not compelled to it, would have used, awaken just doubt as to the cicerones; and you leave the Locality of the Tabagie a thing conjectural. In summer season, at Potsdam and in country situations, Tabagie could be held under a tent: we expressly know, his Majesty held Tabagie at Wusterhausen nightly on the Steps of the big Fountain, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle |
