"Verisimilitude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Jordan again, but to Ephraim (xi. 54), a town on the border between Judea and Samaria, and from there he started towards Jerusalem when the Passover drew near. This record of John has, as Dr. Sanday has recently remarked (HastBD II. 630), so many marks of verisimilitude that it must be accepted as a true tradition. It demands thus that in our conception of the last journey from Galilee room be found for several excursions to Jerusalem or its neighborhood. One of these at least—to the feast of Dedication (x. 22)—represents another effort to "gather the children ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees
... kind, and to this day it remains a model, not only unsurpassed, but unapproachable. It was the first of detective-stories, and it has had thousands of imitations and no rival. The originality, the ingenuity, the verisimilitude of this tale and of its fellows are beyond all praise. Poe had a faculty which one may call imaginative ratiocination to a decree beyond all other writers of fiction. He did not at all times keep up to the high level, in one style, of "The Fall of the House of Usher," ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... the liberator of Greece, is also an allusion to the later history. Hence we may safely conclude that the entire narrative is due to the imagination of Plato, who has used the name of Solon and introduced the Egyptian priests to give verisimilitude to his story. To the Greek such a tale, like that of the earth-born men, would have seemed perfectly accordant with the character of his mythology, and not more marvellous than the wonders of the East narrated ...
— Critias • Plato
... describing this broker-life, with its lights and shadows. Choosing a single subject and a single class, he has elaborated it with a truthfulness which is positively startling. As we often know that a portrait is perfect from its manifest verisimilitude, so we feel from every chapter of this book that the author has, with strictest fidelity, adhered to real life with pre-Raphaelitic accuracy but without pre-Raphaelitic servility to any tradition or set mannerism. The pencil of a reporter, the lens of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... setting of ordinary and familiar scene, and a more plentiful and exact adjustment of ordinary and familiar manners. It is true that Addison, partly owing to the undercurrent of his satirical humour (Steele succeeds rather better here), has not attained the astonishing verisimilitude of the writer to whom we shall come next and last but one in this chapter. His characters are perfectly natural, but we know, all the while, that they are works of art. But in most of the points just mentioned he has exactly the tricks of ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... treatment of such material the chief difficulty lies in preserving a just measure between the beast-character and the imported element of humanity. Little by little the anthropomorphic features were developed at the expense of verisimilitude; the beast forms became a mere masquerade; the romances were converted into a satire, and the satire lost rather than ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... have desired to find her—her thus acting, and continuing to act in direct contradiction to his wishes; when, I say, I viewed her disclosure in connection with all these circumstances, I could not help feeling that there was at least a fearful verisimilitude in the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... disguised, and with even his shock of black hair adding to the verisimilitude of his likeness to the natives of the city, he sought for some means of reaching the street below. While he might have risked a drop from the eaves of the roof he feared to do so lest he attract the attention of passers-by, and probable discovery. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... things, fresh and interesting to us, were ordinary and banal to them, would be a rather shallow one. The point is that, in previous fiction, circumstantial verisimilitude of this kind had hardly been tried at all. So it is with the incident of Nicodeme sending a rabbit (supposed to be from his own estate, but really from the market—a joke not peculiar to Paris, but specially favoured there), or losing at bowls a capon, to old Vollichon, and on the strength of each ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... the hagiographa. The argument for the identity of the two canons deduced from 4 Esdras xiv. 44, &c., as if the twenty-four open books were distinguished from the other writings dictated to Ezra, is of no force, because verisimilitude required that an Egyptian Jew himself must make Ezra conform to the old Palestinian canon. It is also alleged that the grandson of Jesus Sirach, who translated his grandfather's work during his abode in Egypt, knew no ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... our Boston Newspapers twice in the last three days? That "Thomas Carlyle is coming to America," and the tidings cordially greeted by the editors; though I had just received your letter silent to any such point. Make that story true, though it had never a verisimilitude since thirty odd years ago, and you shall make many souls happy and perhaps show you so many needs and opportunities for beneficent power that you cannot be allowed to grow old or withdraw. Was I not once promised a visit? This house entreats you earnestly and lovingly to come and ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... conceivable that he should take the trouble to make all the errors and omissions found in our twelve pages and all the additions and corrections representing different ages, different styles, when less than half the number would have served to give the forged document an air of verisimilitude. The assumption that the Morgan fragment is a forgery thus becomes highly unreasonable. When you add to this the fact that there is nothing in the twelve pages that in any way arouses suspicion, the conclusion ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... street-corner is not always suited to the library, and the taste of the United is as yet but imperfectly attuned to the lyrical liltings of the pool-room Muse. It is both hard and unwise to take the "Best Sport Page" seriously. As a copy of "yellow" models it is a work of artistic verisimilitude; indeed, were Mr. Dowdell a somewhat older man, we might justly suspect a ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... is great force and an imposing verisimilitude in this and the preceding chapter, and much that demands silent thought and respectful attention. But still the great question presses on me:—'coming in a cloud'! What is the true import of this phrase? Has not God himself expounded it? To the Son of ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 'm! I was just playin' round the tent, me and another boy, and Bud he come up and jumped on us." And then to add verisimilitude to his narrative, he appended: ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... viscount afterwards, was never at a loss for a story, and could cajole a woman or a dun with a volubility, and an air of simplicity at the same time, of which many a creditor of his has been the dupe. His tales used to gather verisimilitude as he went on with them. He strung together fact after fact with a wonderful rapidity and coherence. It required, saving your presence, a very long habit of acquaintance with your father to know when his lordship was l——,—telling ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Presidency,—certainly before he is elected. The material to be plaster, made of the shells of those oysters with which Virginia shall have paid her public debt. It may be objected, that plaster is not durable enough for verisimilitude, since bronze itself could hardly be expected to outlast one of the Governor's speeches. But it must be remembered that his mere effigy cannot, like its prototype, have the pleasure of hearing itself talk; so that to the mind of the spectator ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... happen again, a certain probability, at least no kind of improbability, was attached to the idea taken in itself, of miraculous intervention in later times, and miraculous accounts were to be regarded in connexion with the verisimilitude, scope, instrument, character, testimony, and circumstances, with which they presented themselves to us; and, according to the final result of those various considerations, it was our duty to be sure, or to believe, or to opine, or to surmise, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... resolved to give the affair the strongest possible air of verisimilitude; and he engaged a governess, a Miss Belthrop, for Pollyooly. That led to his engaging a nurse, Emily Gibbs, for the Lump, though Pollyooly protested that it ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... outer door, feeling the necessity for a somewhat careful conning of his tale to give it, as he said himself, a little artistic verisimilitude. Then, with his lesson—as he thought—well learned, and praying for aid of unknown gods, he went back to ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... We are cold as blue blazes here when the sun goes down and the salty fog creeps up from the sea, and the icy mist rolls down from the mountains to chill our bones; and when it has not rained for six months at a stretch, your own private swimming pool is a comfort. This to add verisimilitude to what everyone else in Lilac Valley is going ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... unrivalled in certain bourgeois, military, and provincial types. No one can draw a volunteer, a monthly nurse, a Scotchman, an "ancient mariner" of the watering-place species, with such absolutely humorous verisimilitude. Personages, too, in whose eyes—to use Mr. Swiveller's euphemism—"the sun has shone too strongly," find in Mr. Keene a merciless satirist of their "pleasant vices." Like Leech, he has also a remarkable power of indicating a landscape background with the fewest possible touches. His book- illustrations ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... being impressed and stirred by it, even to the regeneration of his soul? If there is any thing calculated to make man feel and live like a child of God, it would surely seem to be this conception. Its unrivalled simplicity and verisimilitude compel the assent of the mind to its reality. It is the most adequate and sublime view of things that ever entered the reason of man. It is worthy the inspiration of God, worthy the preaching of the Son of God. All the artificial and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... astronomy. He gathered up the wisdom of the philosophers who had preceded him. He incorporated this with the results of his own observations, and illumined it with his theories. His speculations, even when they were, as we now know, quite erroneous, had such an astonishing verisimilitude to the actual facts of nature that they commanded universal assent. Even in these modern days we not unfrequently find lovers of paradox who maintain that Ptolemy's doctrines not only seem true, but actually ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... has advanced in verisimilitude,' Henry Wilmers added slyly; and Diana rejoined: 'You recognize a verisimilitude of the mirror when it is in advance of reality. Flatter the sketch, Miss Paynham, for a likeness to be seen. Probably there are ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he had not disentangled the whole plot, he had perceived clearly enough that Voltaire's visit was in reality that of an agent of the French Government; he also thought he saw an opportunity of securing the desire of his heart. Voltaire, to give verisimilitude to his story, had, in his letter to Frederick, loaded the Bishop of Mirepoix with ridicule and abuse; and Frederick now secretly sent this letter to Mirepoix himself. His calculation was that Mirepoix would be so outraged that he would make it impossible ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... of the drama is part of a novel, yet there can be no doubt of its being 'founded on fact'—at any rate, I think there never was a narrative of greater verisimilitude. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of truth is hurtful to beauty, and preoccupation with beauty impedes truth. However, without an ideal there is no truth; this is why types are of a more continuous reality than portraits. Art, besides, only aims at verisimilitude; but verisimilitude depends on the observer, and is a ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... adopts a high aim, must be a law to himself, bide his time, and take the risk of discovering, at last, that his life has been a failure. His task is one in which failure is easy, when he must not only depict the truths of Nature, but must do this with such verisimilitude as to vindicate its truth to other eyes, And since this recognition may not even begin till after his death, we can see what Rivarol meant by his fine saying, that "genius is only great patience," and Buffon, by his more guarded definition of genius ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... her delight in blood; Hanuman, the monkey-god, with his huge tail; Krishna engaged in his gambols; Ganesh, the god of wisdom, with his elephant head and protuberant belly; and many others beside. Everything you see is wild, grotesque, unnatural, forbidding, utterly wanting in verisimilitude and refinement, with nothing to purify and raise the people, with everything fitted to pervert their taste and lower their character; and yet, I must add, with everything to give a faithful representation of the mythology prepared ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... entirely absent, while if we were to apply the same pertinacity and subtlety that Jung in his "Wandlungen" has brought to bear in working over the treacherous material of mythology, we might prove with no less verisimilitude than he has shown the primacy of the libido that in the beginning was anger, and that not Anaxagoras' love or the strife of Heraclitus was the fons et origo of all things, that the Ichtrieb is basal, and that the fondest and most comprehensive ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the point of the "been and took and eaten" as an instance of felicity in reconstructing children's conversation, and making the verisimilitude to their grammar the charm of ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... are "The Man of the Crowd"; "The Tell-Tale Heart," also depicting insanity; and "The Black Cat," of which the atmosphere is horror. "The Adventures of One Hans Pfaal" and "The Balloon Hoax" are examples of the pseudo-scientific tales, which attain their verisimilitude by diverting attention from the improbability or impossibility of the general incidents to the accuracy and naturalness of details. In "The Descent into the Maelstrom," scientific reasoning is skillfully blended with ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... I ship fo' sech wo'k? I nebber knowed it. It does seem to me dat de consanguinity ob de 'casion done call fo' notting but de quietest kind o' verisimilitude. De qualmishness dat arises in de interiorness of ma diaphragm ev'ry time I circumnavigates erbout in disher flyin' ship makes me wanter express mahself in de mos' scatterin' kin' ob er way—I hopes you gits ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... this anecdote to Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, the editor of the poems of the witty Bishop Corbet. [No solid foundation for this tradition is known, though there is a certain circumstantial verisimilitude about it. Rushton was and is in the midst of forest scenery such as the poem describes, and it had been the seat of the persecuted Roman Catholic family of Tresham, some of whose buildings, covered with emblems of their faith, survive to this day. Here perhaps maybe mentioned another of the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... learn, in Echard's view, was "regularity," that is, the discipline imposed upon a dramatist by observing the Unities, and obeying the other "rules of the drama" (such as the liaisons), in pursuit of verisimilitude and tautness of structure. Echard's main hope was that his translation and notes would correct his contemporaries' habit of ignoring the Roman dramatists' "essential Beauties," and "contenting themselves with considering the superficial ones, such as the Stile, Language, ...
— Prefaces to Terence's Comedies and Plautus's Comedies (1694) • Lawrence Echard
... there was a vivid picture—scenery, date, Greenwich time, and all to give an air of artistic verisimilitude—of the signing of the Peace armistice. The armistice had not been signed at the time, was not signed for some days after. But it would have been absurd to have waited, since "our special correspondent" had seen it all in advance, right down to the ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... more than usual, for he knew that very soon the daffodils were due on the stage to clinch the verisimilitude of the scene by dancing the tango with the rabbits. He endeavoured to make the most of ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... for themselves; indeed, but for the help of a worthy sergeant-major, who saw that each individual assumed and maintained the attitude proper for the situation at whatever inconvenience, the artist could not possibly have impressed upon her picture that verisimilitude ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... think that our usual analogies and probabilities have any authority. Our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses. And however we may flatter ourselves that we are guided, in every step which we take, by a kind of verisimilitude and experience, we may be assured that this fancied experience has no authority when we thus apply it to subjects that lie entirely out of the sphere of experience. But on this we shall have occasion to ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... with the new life-lights, curious, tawdry, fascinating, revolting, above all sharp and undisguised, of the world she had left, that she saw them already projected with a verisimilitude which, if she had possessed the art of it, would have made her indeed famous. Her own power of realization, assured her on this point—nobody could see, not divine but see, as she did, without being able to reproduce; the one implied the other. She fingered ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... the charge that he did not know high life, although it is of course true that a writer like Balzac, possessing the intuition of genius, need not frequent salons or live in hovels in order to describe them with absolute verisimilitude. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... superbly above the realm of artifice. Suspicion was in the last degree unlikely in any case, but Hazel Rath's entry and loud scream, just before the moment fixed for the explosion, ensured complete success by adding a natural verisimilitude which might have deceived the very Spirit of Truth. Colwyn esteemed himself fortunate indeed in lighting on what he believed to be the facts. Who could have imagined a situation in which whimsical Destiny had ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... Swift's assumption of the existence of little people not six inches high, and of a country in which the inhabitants 'appeared as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple,' the exactness and verisimilitude of the narrative, with its minute geographical details, make it appear so reasonable that a young reader may feel inclined to resent the criticism of an Irish bishop who said that 'the book was full of improbable lies, and for his part he hardly believed a word of it.' It is curious to note ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... the vicar and the shepherd-mariner in the poem of The Brothers, that of the shepherd of Green-head Ghyll in the Michael, have all the verisimilitude and representative quality, that the purposes of poetry can require. They are persons of a known and abiding class, and their manners and sentiments the natural product of circumstances common to the class. Take ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... acts as if it felt that more profundity would be confusing and that more play of mind might be dangerous. This is that "Scholasticism" and "Mediaevalism" against which the modernists inveigh or under which they groan; and to this intellectual barrenness may be added the offences against taste, verisimilitude, and justice which their more critical minds may discern in many an act and pronouncement of their official superiors. Thus both their sense for historical truth and their spontaneous mysticism drive the modernists to contrast with the official religion what ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... able to remove or to replace, has been augmented no less than six millions of livres, or 270,000 pounds English. A further augmentation of this or other duties is now talked of; and it is certainly necessary to their affairs: so exceedingly remote from either truth or verisimilitude is the author's amazing assertion, that the burdens of France in the war were in a great measure temporary, and must be greatly diminished by a few years ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... surprised at the ingenuity and the learning apparent in these contrivances. The Essay bedstead is a particularly handsome piece of furniture, being made of polished mahogany, elaborately carved, and intricately embellished throughout. When closed, this bedstead presents the verisimilitude of a large book-case filled with the essays of Emerson, Carlyle, Bacon, Montaigne, Hume, Macaulay, Addison, Steele, Johnson, Budgell, Hughes, and others. These volumes are made in one piece, of the best seasoned oak, and are hollow within ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... forward with some verisimilitude, and yet with a symbolic syncopation that indicated the Lion Dance was a very ancient and conventional ceremony. These dancers gave way to a chorus of singers. For interminable hours, so it seemed, they chanted a high, shrill recitative, ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... power of the human spirit in the great moments of experience; but surely it is utterly wrong artistically, because, if the ideas are historically out of place, Isaiah himself ought to have felt that, by placing them there, he was breaking the spell of verisimilitude, on which the effect of such ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... think, is sufficient reason, for rejecting his story; and yet the general truth of the descriptions, and a certain verisimilitude which marks it, might easily deceive a careless reader and perplex a critical one. These, however, are easily explained. Six years before Hennepin published his pretended discovery, his brother friar, Father Chretien Le Clercq, published an account of the Recollet ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... relatively high state of civilization. Schliemann may or may not have been correct in identifying one of the seven cities that he unearthed at Hissarlik as the fabled Troy itself, but at least his efforts sufficed to give verisimilitude to the Homeric story. With the lessons of recent Oriental archaeology in mind, few will be sceptical enough to doubt that some such contest as that described in the Iliad actually occurred. And now, thanks to the efforts of a large company of workers, notably Dr Arthur ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... story itself, it may be worth while to remark that, differing from all or most others of the series in that the interest aimed at is of an ideal or subjective nature, and frankly imaginative, verisimilitude in the sequence of events has been subordinated to ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... showing that the King 'could govern,' averted the impending danger. In communicating it to Napoleon, the King is said to have added 'that Italians would lose their last drop of blood before consenting to disruption,' a warning which he was not unlikely to give, but the whole story lacks verisimilitude. It appears more credible that an old man's memory is at fault than that a letter, so colossally insolent, was actually written. Menabrea, and even the King, may have feared that something of the kind was in the ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... His reason for this was not a conviction that there is no God. On the contrary, he habitually disclaimed, not without acrimony, dogmatic atheism; and once even condescended so far as to declare that 'the hypothesis of design has much greater verisimilitude than that of a blind mechanism.' But in the 'mature state of intelligence' at which his mind had arrived, 'conjecture founded on analogy did not seem to him a basis to rest a theory upon.' He preferred a religious theory without a basis, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... up to the present time. The passenger on a Tennessee River boat is almost sure to be told how a very popular first mate escaped arrest by disguising himself as a cook. The story is amusing enough to bear repetition, and bereft of corroborative detail, evidently designed to lend artistic verisimilitude to the ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... holiday recreation of youth, it proves to be a production equally well suited for children of six feet and upwards. The author is personally familiar with the scenes he describes, and is thus able to give them a verisimilitude which in other circumstances can be attained only by the rarest genius; and notwithstanding the associations, of his last book, the Scalp-hunters, there is only one bloody conflict in the present one fought by animals of the ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... another. His "moonshiny romance," he calls it in a letter; and, in truth, the lunar element is a little too pervasive. The action wavers between the streets of Rome, whose literal features the author perpetually sketches, and a vague realm of fancy, in which quite a different verisimilitude prevails. This is the trouble with Donatello himself. His companions are intended to be real—if they fail to be so, it is not for want of intention; whereas he is intended to be real or not, as you please. He is of a different substance ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... much does not remain to be said. The Regicide is such a tragedy as might be expected from a clever youth of eighteen. The language is declamatory, the thoughts inflated, and the limits of nature and verisimilitude transgressed in describing the characters and passions. Yet there are passages not ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Although born in Sweden she has achieved remarkable mastery of English diction. As a friend of Miss Lagerloef and an artist she is enabled herself to pass through the temperament of creation and to reproduce the original in essence as well as sufficient verisimilitude. Mrs. Howard is no mere artisan translator. She goes over her page not but a dozen times, and the result is not a labored performance, but a work of real art in ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... In the eyes of James such freedom of speech, especially in Ralegh, was lese majeste. An explanation by himself of his ill-will to the book, which has been handed down by Osborn, has an air of verisimilitude. In his Memoirs on King James, Osborn relates that 'after much scorn cast upon Ralegh's History, the King, being modestly demanded what fault he found, answered, as one surprised, that Ralegh had spoken irreverently of King Henry the Eighth.' He would be more indignant on his own account than on ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... understanding of Hamsun himself that they have their chief significance. As a by-product, one might almost say, the reader gets the art which reveals the story of the Falkenbergs by a process of indirect approach equalled in its ingenuity and verisimilitude only by Conrad's ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... indicated with genial emphasis, in one of his essays, how much more wonderful as a psychological phenomenon is the clairvoyance of imagination than that ascribed to mesmerism: since, by the former, writers of genius describe with verisimilitude, and sometimes with a moral accuracy such as we can scarcely believe to originate in the creative mind alone, all the traits and phases of a scene, an event, or a character, the details of which are lost in dim tradition or evaded by authentic history. Shakspeare ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... service which convinced her that he really had served. She became thoughtful. Rust, eager to show off his accomplishments, explained that he had been recommended for a commission and had joined St. Cyr. More details followed, all of a verisimilitude wholly convincing. Madame, who knew France and the French Army up and down, became more thoughtful and more puzzled. It was plain that Rust had really served in the ranks of the Army, and had been at St. Cyr. Yet he was an Englishman and an officer of the English Flying Corps! She asked ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... wife is ordinarily entrusted to a slender, beardless man with a fresh complexion, who is able to give great verisimilitude to the character he assumes and to represent burlesque despair so naturally that the spectators may be amused and saddened at the same time as by the genuine article. Such thin, beardless men are not rare in our country districts, and, strangely ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... who told the wondrous tales of adventure invariably left in the afternoon for New York, but his name was on the hotel register as a corroborative detail intended to give verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. Perhaps I should explain that the hotel clerk was a ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... statement of these difficulties in the preface to his play. He mentions, for instance, the unpromising monotony of Adam's life during the time spent in the earthly paradise, and the difficulty of giving verisimilitude to the conversation between the woman and the snake. But he waxes most eloquent on the last and greatest difficulty—"since the composition must remain deprived of those poetic ornaments so dear to the Muses; deprived of the power to draw comparisons ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... the puppets of his imagining. It is impossible to read a page of his masterpieces without recognising that they could have been composed only in an American environment. The dialect in which they are written enhances their verisimilitude without impairing their dignity; and the flashes of humour which light up the gravity of the narrative are never out of place nor out of tune. The cunning and resourcefulness of his boyish heroes are the cunning and resourcefulness of America, and the sombre Mississippi ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... national legend permits them, without disturbing our critical sense of the probability of things, a superhuman passion; for they are ideals, this of chivalry, that of love, this of the bravery, that of the purity, of youth. Yet Wagner employs infinite devices to give them more and more of verisimilitude; modulating song, for instance, into a kind of chant which we can almost take for actual speech. It is thus the more interesting to note the point to which realism conducts him, the limit at which it stops, his conception of a spiritual reality which ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... by brief examination while Pocket was fetching his things from behind the bush. Pocket pressed for earlier details with a morbid appetite which was not gratified without reluctance, and out of a laconic interchange the deed was gradually reconstructed with appealing verisimilitude. It was Baumgartner who had first caught sight of the somnambulist, treading warily like the blind, yet waving the revolver as he went, as though any moment he might let it off. The moment came with a wretched reeling man who joined Baumgartner on the path, and would ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... Roche and wished he had never doubted." Before publishing his story Mackenzie read it to Adam Smith, in order to be told whether anything should be omitted or altered as being out of keeping with Hume's character, and so completely was Smith carried away by the verisimilitude that he not only said he found not a syllable to object to, but added that he was surprised he had never heard the anecdote before. In his absence of mind he had forgotten for the moment that he had been asked to listen to the ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... decided. Him would he maneuver to have with him in the narrow trail when the Outlaw should be made the scapegoat. Martinez was no horseman. All the better. It would be well, Dick judged, to make the Outlaw act up in real devilishness for a minute or two before the culmination. It would give verisimilitude. Also, it would excite Martinez's horse, and, therefore, excite Martinez so that he would not see occurrences ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... day, which of course demands the brightest possibilities of the palette, and got the lighted objects themselves as nearly as he could,—thus destroying the relative values, but getting an extraordinary joyous and glowing effect; and one, too, of unexpected verisimilitude, for it would seem that in a sunlit scene we are really attentive to the shaded objects alone, and what becomes of the others does not so much matter. This effect was made still more possible by the so-called dissociation ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... it is from his lips that flows the delightful stream of naive confession and mordant sarcasm that never seems either ill-natured or artificial, that lashes without vindictiveness, and excoriates without malice. In strict ratio, however, to the verisimilitude of the performance, must be esteemed the talents of the non-Oriental writer, who was responsible for so lifelike a creation. No man could, have written or could now write such a book unless he were steeped and saturated, not merely in Oriental experience, but in Oriental forms of expression and ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... a spirit of prophecy and had long practised the devices of a fortune-teller, thus accustomed to scan the possibilities and in some degree versed in the adjustment of the probabilities, accorded the homely verisimilitude of their worldly-wise representations the meed of a simple and respectful credulity. The mountaineers were ignorant indeed in their sort, but far too sophisticated to entertain aught but the most contemptuous disbelief in her pretensions of special foresight and mysterious ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... those who have been caught up and waylaid by the modern spirit. And yet Scott's novels have ample and admirable excellencies. In his expansive and digressive fashion he can give his characters—especially the older and the more idiosyncratic among them—a surprising and convincing verisimilitude. ...
— One Hundred Best Books • John Cowper Powys
... effect. If truth to natural appearances is carried far in the figures, the same truth will be expected in the background; but if only certain truths are selected in the figures, and the treatment does not approach the naturalistic, much more liberty can be taken with the background without loss of verisimilitude. ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... himself in a room that has all the appearance of the interior of a barn, with chickens and pigeons strutting around, harness hanging on pegs, and hay in mangers, and all the farming utensils around to give it the verisimilitude of country. Tables and chairs are crude in the extreme and old-time lanterns are used for lighting. It is an idea that is worth while, but, unfortunately, the proprietors depend too much on the decorative feature and too little on the food and ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... scathing, though somewhat irrelevant, attack upon husbands, as a class; the Sporting Editor, signing himself 'Working Man,' and garnishing his contribution with painfully elaborated orthographical lapses, arranged to give an air of verisimilitude to the correspondence, while, at the same time, not to offend the susceptibilities of the democracy (from whom the paper derived its chief support), had replied, vindicating the British father, and ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... There she stands in the dusk nearby and only by putting my hand on the prickly needles and the rough trunk do I recognize a familiar pitch pine. The trees near this entrance to the enchanted wood sigh as the east wind touches them, seeming to draw deep breaths as living creatures might and thus add verisimilitude to the terror that stands on either hand to reach for me. Thus ancient hermits depicted the soul on the walls of their caverns, a shrinking shape that fled among goblins that clutched at it from all ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... a spirit of revenge I took the score, rearranged it for small orchestra, and it is being played at the big circus under the euphonious title of The Patrol of the Night Stick, and the musical press praises particularly the graphic power of the night stick motive and the verisimilitude of the escape of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... the promise was "great, remains unfinished. With Vanity Fair, the author's masterpiece in another manner, Esmond cannot properly be compared, because an imitation of the past can never compete in verisimilitude or on any satisfactory terms with a contemporary picture. Nevertheless, in its successful reproduction of the tone of a bygone epoch, lies Esmond's second and incontestable claim to length of days. Athough ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... alive, you remarked, well remembered persons who had not only seen the celebrated Roy M'Gregor, but had feasted, and even fought with him. All those minute circumstances belonging to private life and domestic character, all that gives verisimilitude to a narrative, and individuality to the persons introduced, is still known and remembered in Scotland; whereas in England, civilisation has been so long complete, that our ideas of our ancestors are only to be gleaned from ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... mighty convenient, as will be reality admitted. So I hunted this rare beast in my own name, told it in the first person, present tense, painted the requisite locale, gave it the necessary garnishings and touches of verisimilitude, and looked to see the man stunned by ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... logical truth, opposed to error, and moral truth, opposed to falsehood, so there is also esthetic truth or verisimilitude, which is opposed to extravagance, and religious truth or hope, which is opposed to the inquietude of absolute despair. For esthetic verisimilitude, the expression of which is sensible, differs from logical truth, the demonstration of which is rational; ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... crime. After the publication of the Gold Bug he received from all parts of the country specimens of cipher writing, which he delighted to work out. Others of his tales were clever pieces of mystification, like Hans Pfaall, the story of a journey to the moon, or experiments at giving verisimilitude to wild improbabilities by the skillful introduction of scientific details, as in the Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar and Von Kempelen's Discovery. In his narratives of this kind Poe anticipated the detective novels of Gaboriau and Wilkie Collins, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... he saw and heard what happened instead of collecting traditions about it. The paleographers and daters of first quotations may say what they please: John's claim to give evidence as an eyewitness whilst the others are only compiling history is supported by a certain verisimilitude which appeals to me as one who has preached a new doctrine and argued about it, as well as written stories. This verisimilitude may be dramatic art backed by knowledge of public life; but even at that we must not forget that the best dramatic art is the operation of a divinatory ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... also give the fullest warning of the impracticability of the method, after all; for Richardson is forced to pay heavily for its single benefit. He pays with the desperate shifts to which he is driven in order to maintain any kind of verisimilitude. The visible effort of keeping all Clarissa's friends at a distance all the time, so that she may be enabled to communicate only by letter, seems always on the point of bearing him down; while in the case of Grandison it may be said to do so finally, when Miss Byron ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... entirely devoid, not merely of verisimilitude, but even of possibility. Tacitus could not be deceived in appropriating to the Christians of Rome the guilt and the sufferings which he might have attributed with far greater truth to the followers of Judas the Gaulonite, for the latter ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... outside the war zone which the Germans had proclaimed in February, and had refused to accept the condition they sought to attach to the pledge, that he would require corresponding pledges from Great Britain to observe the "freedom of the seas." Tirpitz had been dismissed to give verisimilitude to Germany's new virtue; but she had no intention of keeping her pledge any longer than was convenient, or abandoning any reasonable prospect of bringing us to our knees by a submarine campaign, and she knew that its effective ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... but it is more of the kind shown by Walter Scott than of the kind shown by Shakspeare. He can reproduce historical characters with great vividness and effect, and with enough knowledge of humanity to make the verisimilitude admirably strong; but as to the deep knowledge with which Shakspeare searches the radical elements of the human soul, he has it not. His Death of Queen Elizabeth is a strong Walter Scott picture; so are his Execution ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... me with his dark penetrating glance. I was struck by the absolute verisimilitude of this suggestion. But we were always tilting at each other. I saw an opening and ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Marionette, and thither I like best to go. The Marionette prevail with me, for I find in the performances of these puppets, no new condition demanded of the spectator, but rather a frank admission of unreality that makes every shadow of verisimilitude delightful, and gives a marvelous relish to the immemorial effects and traditionary tricks of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... on the other hand, The Castaway (Appendix 5) for its judicious use of details. Defoe in his stories is a supreme master of verisimilitude (likeness to truth). As we read him, we cannot help believing that these things actually happened. More than in anything else the secret of his lifelikeness lies in his constant faithfulness to reality. He puts in ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... a short novel, the history "Of Captain Misson and his Crew" reveals many of the same techniques which Defoe used in his longer works. To gain a sense of verisimilitude the narrator pretends to be working from a manuscript, a device which Defoe also employed in his Memoirs of a Cavalier. As in Colonel Jack real historical figures and events from the War of the Spanish Succession ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... B. Donne had been unable to obtain Lavengro for The Edinburgh Review as it had been bespoken a year previously by Dr Bowring, Dr Hake adds that Donne had written "putting the editor in possession of his view of Lavengro, as regards verisimilitude, vouching for the Daguerreotype-like fidelity of the picture in the first volume, etc., etc., in order to prevent him from being TAKEN IN BY a spiteful article." This passage is very significant as being written by one of Borrow's most intimate friends, with the sure knowledge ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... a book lies in its truth and its actuality rather than in its wording. Nor would he need to consider my feelings if at any point he should feel minded to blame or to upbraid me, or to demonstrate the harm rather than the good which has been done through any lack of thought or verisimilitude of which I have been guilty. In short, for anything and for everything in the way of criticism ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... from oysters and soup down to coffee, cigars, and liqueurs, and I succeeded in swallowing Kennedy's tales of Monte Carlo and Ostend and Ascot without even a smile. He must have heard them somewhere, and treasured them up for just such an occasion, but he told them in a manner that was verisimilitude itself, using perfect English with just the trace of an accent at ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... all his criticisms, which had been fatal to a narrative, do not amount among them to exhibit one flaw in this masterpiece of drama. For the drama, it is perfect; though such a fable in a romance might make the reader crack his sides, so imperfect, so ethereally slight is the verisimilitude required of these conventional, ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... recurrent intrusion of the flickering doubt which had showed itself when first he listened to the story. Amid all the wildness of the tale there was yet a certain air, not merely of truthfulness in the narrator—that was not to be questioned—but of verisimilitude in the narration, which had its effect, although it gave rise to no conscious exercise of discriminating or ponderating faculty. Leopold's air of conviction also, although of course that might well accompany the merest invention rooted in madness, yet had its force, persistently as ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... her best word, "Gorky," which means, "A thousand thanks for the verisimilitude of your charming and interesting story, but is not the love element a trifle weak?" (Margery is a ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... unable to tell as to the absolute truth of these tales, but they had such verisimilitude that they impressed and shocked him. He was doubly astounded at the evident enjoyment with which they were received by his friends, and especially at the fact of the hearty and unrestrained manner in which Blodgett and even Blatherwick joined ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... mystification, can be justified only by an interesting plot. But American readers have learned by this time, much to their credit, not to apply to Jean Paul for the sensation of a cunningly woven narrative, like that of the English school, which furnishes verisimilitude to real life that is quite as improbable, though less glaringly so, than his departures from it. "Hesperus" is filled with pure and noble thought. The different types of female character are particularly well-defined; and if Jean Paul sometimes affects to say cynical things of women, he cannot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the licence of its language in speaking about the gods. He has no sophistical notions about love, which is brought back by him to its common-sense meaning of love between intelligent beings. His account of the origin of the sexes has the greatest (comic) probability and verisimilitude. Nothing in Aristophanes is more truly Aristophanic than the description of the human monster whirling round on four arms and four legs, eight in all, with incredible rapidity. Yet there is a mixture of earnestness in this jest; three serious principles seem to be insinuated:—first, ...
— Symposium • Plato
... 21, 1900, a thrilling story was told, it being the official and unvarnished account of a disastrous hunting trip taken by five of the post soldiers, the dispassionate routine language but giving it verisimilitude; while the subsequent happenings serve to show what kind of government seems most to appeal ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... open-air cheerfulness and vigour as this Sonata, aptly christened the Pastoral. Here we are made accomplices of Nature's moods, and set in the midst of her voices. Here, in swift succession, are storm and sunshine; falling rain-drops; the plash and ripple of mountain streams; bird notes of rare verisimilitude, from the anxious twitterings before the thunder-shower, to the chorus of thanksgiving after it has swept vigorously past. And Theo Desmond, lying in semi-darkness, with pain for his sole comrade, knew that the hand of healing had been again outstretched ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... hint; which seemed to have an ugly verisimilitude in it: but still, philosophy he must learn, and bread he must eat; ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... affords a favourite scene, in which Dorothea's whole soul is absorbed, and to which Jim devotes an earnest attention, as of one who weighs the verisimilitude of an illustration, that he may accept the purport of the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... enough. It resides not only in his finer workmanship, his more delicate art, his surer certainty of execution, his more absolute knowledge of what it was best to do and of the way best to do this; it is to be seen not only in his command of verisimilitude, in his plausibility, in his faculty of enwrapping the figures of his narrative in the atmosphere most fit for them; it is not in any of these things or in all of them that Poe's supremacy is founded. ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... of Gilead. It seems that in reviving the past, the Hebrew poets were often vouchsafed remarkable insight into nature and local coloring, which ordinarily was not a characteristic of theirs. The same warmth and historical verisimilitude is found again in ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... mind sundry exploits of a gang of horse-thieves about these coves and mountains, detailed in recent newspapers. These rumors had been esteemed by urban communities in general as merely sensational, and had attracted scant attention. Now, with their recurrence to his recollection, their verisimilitude was urged upon him. The horse he rode was a valuable animal, and moreover, here, ten or twenty miles from a habitation, would prove a shrewd loss indeed. Nevertheless, it was impossible to shake off or evade his companion; the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... trifles one can go by. The character of the publication, the general verisimilitude of the news, the consideration of the motive, and so on. I don't trust blindly the accuracy of special correspondents—but why should this one have gone to the trouble of concocting a circumstantial falsehood on a matter of no ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... people still alive, for he is strongly personal at times, and perhaps not always just; and some other events I have carefully paraphrased (notably his trial at the Old Bailey), and given for them as careful an equivalent as I could manage without too great a loss of verisimilitude. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... "It is certain my conviction gains infinitely the moment an other soul will believe in it." And what is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history. Providence which saved my MS. from the Congo rapids brought it to the knowledge of a helpful soul far out on the open sea. It would be on my part the greatest ingratitude ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... the accounts of him in the "Memoirs of Eminent Monks," compiled in A.D. 519, and a later work, the "Memoirs of Marvellous Monks," by the third emperor of the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1403-1424), which, however, is nearly all borrowed from the other; and all in them that has an appearance of verisimilitude can be ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... is remarkable for his keen observation of every-day life and character, the average existence in town and country of mankind high and low: he is a truthful reporter, the verisimilitude of the picture is part of its attraction. It is not too much to say that, pictorially, he is the first great English realist of the Novel. For broad comedy presentation he is unsurpassed: as well as for satiric gravity ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... nice mess you've got us into, with your nodding head and the deference due to a man of pedigree! POOH. Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. PITTI. Corroborative detail indeed! Corroborative fiddlestick! KO. And you're just as bad as he is with your cock— and-a-bull stories about catching ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... achieving of a correspondence between printed words or painted forms and the world as they know it are right in judging the plays of Shakespeare inferior to those of Mr. Galsworthy. As a matter of fact, the achievement of verisimilitude, far from being the only possible problem, disputes with the achievement of beauty the honour of being the worst possible. It is so easy to be lifelike, that an attempt to be nothing more will never bring into play the highest emotional and intellectual powers of the artist. Just as the ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... pictures in the Uffizi are of course only a pretext for gloriously coloured arrangements of people with rich scenic backgrounds. No.621 is the finer. The way in which the baby is being held in the other indicates how little Giorgione thought of verisimilitude. The colour was ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... Drummond, "it wasn't anything important. I was only appealing to you for corroborative detail to give artistic verisimilitude to a bald and ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... C.I.E.'s: 'Rai Bahadur Pandit Bhag Rum.' Does it occur to you that a person of that name really exists? 'Khan Bahadur Naoraji ('Naoraji,' mark you) Pestonji Vakil'—it's the language of extravaganza! The Marquis goes too far: it spoils all verisimilitude." ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... towards the street until I was abreast of the stump. As I paused Beppo was making his round of the fort and espied me. Instantly crying "Hostiles!" he presented his stick, banged, reloaded, banged again, reloaded and banged yet again. I took up a stick and presented it—bang! With amazing verisimilitude Beppo rolled over—shot through the heart. Really, for a moment I had a mad apprehension that in some occult way, some freak of hypnotic suggestion, I had actually wrought the child harm. I stood there breathlessly triumphant and wondering whether it was now my business to rush in ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... sicklied over with a pale cast of doubt; a withering shadow seems to flit across his soul, and chill it in his loftiest moods. The dark condition of the man who longs to believe and longs in vain, he can represent with a verisimilitude and touching beauty, which shows it to have been familiar to himself. Apart from their ingenuity, there is a certain severe pathos in some of these passages, which affects us with a peculiar emotion. The hero of another work is made to ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... Strindberg had rejected the "symmetrical dialogue" of the French drama in order "to let the brains of men work unhindered." But Hauptmann carries the same methods extraordinarily far and achieves a poignant verisimilitude that rivals the pity and terror of the most ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... between ancient and modern proper names I have thought it best in each case to decide which would give the keener impression of verisimilitude. Consistency has, therefore, been abandoned. Horace, Virgil and Ovid exist side by side with such original Latin names as Julius Paulus. While Como has been preferred to Comum, the "Larian Lake" has been retained. Perugia (instead of Perusia) and Assisi (instead of Assisium) have been ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... had been shot, probably by Belgian soldiers retreating through the town. The story of this tragedy is told by the boy's mother, under oath, before the Belgian Commission, and is so simple, so touching, so convincing in its verisimilitude, that I attach a copy of it in extenso to this report. It seems to afford an altogether typical example of what went on all over the stricken land during those days of terror. (In other places it was the daughter of the burgomaster who was ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... resembles Shelley about as much as a lady in a book of fashions resembles real women; and it constitutes evidence all the more detrimental and misleading, since it appears to give as well as to receive a color of verisimilitude from the usual written description, which represents Shelley as "feminine," "almost girlish," "ideal," "angelic," and so forth. The accounts of him by firmer hands are still cramped by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... of this story is very strong; there is a striking verisimilitude about it. The execution of a woman to whom so much romantic interest attached cannot have been in the royal square; that would have been to court unpopularity for the Government. Moreover, there is a want ...
— The Reconciliation of Races and Religions • Thomas Kelly Cheyne
... raised, but as several persons we knew had seen us walking towards the Belle Tout, it would, without a doubt, be surmised that we had been drowned while bathing. The only thing we regretted was that we had not left some portion of our clothing on the beach to give verisimilitude to the suggestion. However, we troubled ourselves not one whit about the past. I was glad to escape from the doom of the gas-lit cellar, and was looking forward with keen anticipation to a new life in ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... 'the testator in the cause of Hall v. Russell,' was the author of the plays in the Folio of 1623. We are favoured with the names of counsel employed, who snarl at one another with such startling verisimilitude, whilst the remarks that fall from the bench do so with such naturalness, that it is perhaps not surprising, or any very severe reflection upon his literary esprit, that a member of the Bar, having heard Judge Willis deliver his lecture in the Inner Temple Hall, repaired next day ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... circumstance about St. Martin; and that is that, although he is in the Virgin's presence, he wears the violet chasuble of an Intercessor. The chasuble is lined with red, and it and the rich vestments, on which scenes of the Passion are displayed, are the patient verisimilitude of ancient vestments. In St. Martin's gloved left hand is his crozier and the right glove, which he has drawn off ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... most diverting extravaganza, rather in the style of Jules Verne.... The apology of the translator for the lack of verisimilitude in the last scene is entirely unnecessary; otherwise she has done her work with credit, while M. Veilliemin's spirited illustrations heighten the attractions of a most entertaining and ...
— Stamp Collecting as a Pastime • Edward J. Nankivell
... thing as a miserable daughter, have you? Some fairly good-looking girl who has been crossed in love, or is misunderstood. Because if so, you might dress her up in something out of the local museum and send her along. A little thing like that gives verisimilitude to ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... these schemes, ingenious as they may be, are objectionable for the same reasons as the flying Island of Laputa—their glaring violation of verisimilitude, and many of them of possibility. In these respects, that of the author of the work before us is liable to less objection: he only resorts to an extension of avowed physical principles; and if we could suppose a ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... The weaving in of the wonders wrought by Moses and Aaron, of the overwhelming of the Pharaoh, whether Thotmes or Rameses, is skilfully managed, and imparts to the portions of the Biblical narrative used by him a verisimilitude and a sensation of actuality highly artistic. The purely erudite part of the work would probably not have interested the general public, indifferent to the discoveries of archaeology, but the introduction of the human element of love at once ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... proper; but the marvels are excellent, the poet relating them with an admirable mixture of gravity and complaisance, in spirited style and language, and though with extremely little attention to coherence and verisimilitude, yet with no small power of what may be called ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... reconciling impossibilities, smoothing over difficulties, keeping the mind on the alert, they may surprise, interest, divert, and entertain, so that wonder and delight joined may keep pace one with the other; all which he will fail to effect who shuns verisimilitude and truth to nature, wherein lies the perfection of writing. I have never yet seen any book of chivalry that puts together a connected plot complete in all its numbers, so that the middle agrees ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... benefit of any feminine reader of this veracious history I should say that the repetition which she has just noticed is not an accident, but has been carefully set down. It is an attempt to give verisimilitude to the conversation—because men always say things ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... troubled himself to argue away the anachronism. It is the poet's prerogative to mask himself and his own age in the forms of the fictitious past. He will do it anyway, no matter how hard he may strive after historical verisimilitude. It is just as well, therefore, for him to throw away his scruples and stand boldly ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... practical exponents of the spirit of the age, of all the various historical illustrations of the period, which the Author's researches among conflicting but equally important authorities had enabled him to garner up, while, at the same time, the appearance of verisimilitude necessary to an historical romance might, he imagined, be successfully preserved by the occasional introduction of the living characters of the era, in those portions of the plot comprising events with which they had ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Lena actually did make great strides in the next few days. She learned to lounge quite comfortably, to pretend with verisimilitude, even to chatter a little, helped chiefly by a certain persistent light-weight on the part of Mr. Lenox; but the life was hard and the rewards meager. All the time she suspected Miss Elton and Mrs. Lenox of despising her, because she had so much less than they. Their ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... anxiety to draw Mr. Brumley as he was, I have perhaps a little neglected to show him as Lady Harman saw him. We have employed the inconsiderate verisimilitude of a novelist repudiating romance in his portrayal; towards her he kept a better face. He was at least a very honest lover and there was little disingenuousness in the flow of fine mental attitudes that met her; ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... "In other words, verisimilitude, not verity, is wanted in fiction. The observer notes his facts, and then the artist seizes on the ideas behind them, the types they represent, the spiritual substances they embody. The result, when all ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... at that time that, like Newton and his famous apple, I discovered unexpectedly the great law upon which the entire history of human thought rests, which seeks not the truth, but verisimilitude, the appearance of truth—that is, the harmony between that which is seen and that which is conceived, based on the strict laws of logical reasoning. And instead of rejoicing, I exclaimed in an outburst of naive, juvenile despair: "Where, ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... Turner to carry food to Overbury in the Tower. If the substitution story has any truth in it it might well have been a Monson girl who played the part of the Countess. But, of course, a Monson girl may have been chosen by the inventors to give verisimilitude to the substitution story, simply because the family was friendly with Turner, and the tale of the lewd high jinks with Symon added to make it seem more likely that old Lady Monson would lend herself to such ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... pure invention and as fittingly might have been staged in any other of the nine provinces. The author humbly craves indulgence if he has in any way exceeded the license allowed him in spinning the incidents necessary for a novel of this type while seeking verisimilitude in settings ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... master is clearly visible in the myth. First in the connection with mythology;—he wins a kind of verisimilitude for this as for his other myths, by adopting received traditions, of which he pretends to find an explanation in his own larger conception (compare Introduction to Critias). The young Socrates has heard of the sun rising in the west and setting in the east, and of the earth-born men; but ...
— Statesman • Plato
... acquainted with the virtues of the canine race, and the attachment insensibly imbibed for so faithful an attendant, not to forgive your affectionate mention of him. Besides it will go far to assist the verisimilitude of your travels. As for your female readers, they will ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... tells us that Helen learned the nature of drugs and herbs from the wife of Thone, King of Egypt. Now, by considering this latter fact, in conjunction with what is asserted by Mr. Savary, some verisimilitude seems to be imparted to the hypothesis of the tobacco plant having sprung originally from Egypt. We are not aware of any author (though we think it not improbable that such may exist) who has carried matters so far as ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... appended to her lover's manuscript after his death. Probably Browning placed it in the mouth of Pauline from his rooted determination to speak dramatically and impersonally: and in French, so as to heighten the effect of verisimilitude.[7] ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... full of pre-Raphaelitism, and so is fiction, if indeed it resembles life—such as we know it, or such as it might be. The art of verisimilitude is ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... and nobler, that it rests on a deep and solid basis of humility, instead of "revolving restlessly" around its own airy and flitting centre. The Shakespearian Drama works in the order and spirit of this principle; so that what the Poet creates is in effect historical, has the solidity and verisimilitude of Fact, and what he borrows has all the freedom and freshness of original creation. Therewithal he often combines the two, or interchanges them freely, in the same work; where indeed they seem just as much at home ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... If verisimilitude itself does not repudiate Guicciardini's story, there are the Capuan chronicles to do it—particularly that of Pellegrini, who witnessed the pillage. In those chronicles from which Guicciardini drew the matter for this portion of ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... practise, for we could not bear to own ourselves baffled in our boasted wisdom of taking the train at Porter's Station, and had agreed to say that we had been to Concord and got back. Even after coming home to my house, we felt that our statement would be wanting in verisimilitude without further delay, and we crept quietly into my library, and made up a roaring fire on the hearth, and thawed ourselves out in the heat of it before we regained our courage for the undertaking. With all these precautions ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... entertained of the sun. Some supposed the moon was the wife of the sun; others that it was a beautiful country in which the aoa grew." [101] These arborary fancies derive additional interest, if not a species of verisimilitude, from the record of a missionary that "a stately tree, clothed with dark shining leaves, and loaded with many hundreds of large green or yellowish-coloured fruit, is one of the most splendid and beautiful ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... descend to the foolish lies of the nursery; they told her she was going on a visit to the Savors, who would take her on the cars with them, and then bring her back to Aunt Annie's house. Before they could reconcile her to this fabled prospect they had to give it verisimilitude by taking off her everyday clothes and putting on her ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Jacobites and Papists, {25} while he distrusted his portraits, those portraits of the rougher people which may have frequently been over-praised by Scott's admirers. We most of us love Scott, it is a fact, beyond the power of nice discrimination. As to the verisimilitude of a portrait such as that of Meg Merrilies we must allow Borrow to be a most competent critic, but we are at a loss to sympathise with his failure to appreciate studies of such lifelike fidelity as Edie Ochiltree ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... "The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut." It was the story of a man's warfare with a personified conscience—a sort of "William Wilson" idea, though less weird, less somber, and with more actuality, more verisimilitude. It was, in fact, autobiographical, a setting-down of the author's daily self-chidings. The climax, where conscience is slain, is a startling picture which appeals to most of humanity. So vivid is it all, that it is difficult in places not to believe ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... regard than for Giannoli. One of the worst aspects of the matter, moreover, was that I was really unable to judge how far Giannoli's suspicions were true and how far imaginary. As to his sincerity there was no possibility of doubt, and this lent to all he said an air of verisimilitude which was most convincing. I did not know the majority of the other Italians well enough to feel positive as to their honesty, and many of them were uncertain and somewhat suspicious characters. Mori, for instance—the youthful Neapolitan already referred to, the enigmatic ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith |
