"Biographer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the story of the earlier portion of his life. He was to have written a volume—had his wife succeeded, after due perseverance, in overcoming his modesty—entitled "Recollections of Seventy Years." To this, we, also, that is, the biographer and others, often urged him. ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... perniciosa, non pyrio, sed pulvere nescio quo exotico certat, non globulis plumbeis, sed pilulis aeque lethalibus interficit." This was certainly thought fine by the author, and is still admired by his biographer. In October, 1702, he became one of the ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... labor, was well under way; and other literary projects were actively planned; when, suddenly, the summons came which, in an instant, with the shears of fate, slit the strand of this activity. The rest of the story may be told in the words of the biographer appointed by the Medical Society of the County of Philadelphia to prepare a memoir ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... pleasant glimpse of Theodosia in these happy years, in a trifling anecdote preserved by the biographer of Edward Livingston, during whose mayoralty the present City Hall was begun. The mayor had the pleasure, one bright day, of escorting the young lady on board a French frigate lying in the harbor. "You must bring none of your sparks on board, Theodosia," exclaimed the pun-loving magistrate; ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... invites comparison with another of the dominant figures of the war—General French. For French is described by his biographer as "a worshipper of Napoleon," regarding him as the world's greatest strategist, and in following out and studying Napoleon's campaigns French personally covered and studied much of the ground in Belgium over which he has been fighting. French is a year younger than Foch. They ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... myth into a defined area." "He lighted Baffin into his bay. He lighted Hudson into his strait. He lighted Hans Egede to the scene of his Greenland labour." And more than this, says his enthusiastic biographer: "His true-hearted devotion to the cause of Arctic discovery, his patient scientific research, his loyalty to his employers, his dauntless gallantry and enthusiasm form an example which will be a beacon-light to maritime explorers for all ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... career falls into two clear-cut parts, almost as if it had been specially arranged for the biographer; there is the probationary period in Korea, and the executive in North China. The first is important only because of the moulding-power which early influences exerted on the man's character; but it is interesting in another way since it affords glimpses of the sort of things which affected this ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... sagacious with rumours of original irregularity of descent. But the most probable existing conjecture is, that his grandfather was a confectioner in Bury Street, St James's. We care not a straw about the matter, though the biographer is evidently uneasy on the subject, doubts the trade, and seems to think that he has thrown a shade of suspicion, a sort of exculpatory veil over this fatal rumour, by proving that this grandfather and his wife were both buried, as is shown by a stone, still to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... Leicester's friend, and Raleigh works patiently under him, like a sensible man, just because he is Leicester's friend. Some modern gentleman of note—I forget who, and do not care to recollect—says that Raleigh's 'prudence never bore any proportion to his genius.' The next biographer we open accuses him of being too calculating, cunning, timeserving; and so forth. Perhaps both are true. The man's was a character very likely to fall alternately into either sin—doubtless did so a hundred times. Perhaps both are ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... only one remains. (Alas, no more!) But their name and honour shall not be forgotten on Deeside while fire burns and water runs, if this biographer can help it. The M'Haffies were all distinguished by their sturdy independence, but Jen M'Haffie was ever the cleverest with her head. The parish minister had once mistaken Jen for a person of limited intelligence; but he altered his opinion after Jen had taken him through-hands ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... music, painting, modelling for sculpture, mathematics, classical and modern literature, physical science as then comprehended, and all the bodily exercises proper to the estate of a young nobleman, were at his command. His biographer asserts that he was never idle, never subject to ennui or fatigue. He used to say that books at times gave him the same pleasure as brilliant jewels or perfumed flowers: hunger and sleep could not keep him from them then. At other times the letters on the page appeared to him like twining ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... the hymns composed by Christian musicians form an important part of our musical heritage. [11] The cathedral school at Metz and the monastery at Saint Gall became famous as musical centers, and of the work of one of the teachers of music at Saint Gall (Notker) it was written by his biographer: "Through different hymns, sequences, tropes, and litanies, through different songs and melodies as well as through ecclesiastical science, the pupils of this man made the church of God famous not merely in Alemannia, but ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... the priory, the construction of roads and bridges, and the cultivation of extensive tracts on the mountainside, so that it became of note among literary men as the home of one of the most original of their guild. His biographer tells us that he imported sheep from Segovia, and applied to Southey and other friends to furnish him tenants who would introduce improved agricultural methods. The inhabitants of this remote region were morose and impoverished, and he wished to reclaim them. To clothe the bare ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... in a quarter of Paris called the Courtille, says the historian whose work lies before me;—born in the Courtille, and in the year 1693. Another biographer asserts that he was born two years later, and in the Marais;—of respectable parents, of course. Think of the talent that our two countries produced about this time: Marlborough, Villars, Mandrin, Turpin, Boileau, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Moliere, Racine, Jack Sheppard, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... biography of the Celebrity is written, and I have no doubt it will be some day, may his biographer kindly draw a veil over that instant in his life when he was tenderly and obsequiously raised by Mr. Cooke from the trap in the floor ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... English legal institutions. The result is a correction of many errors, an addition of much new information, and a better general view of our strictly legal history than any other jurist, historian, or biographer had ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 4, Saturday, November 24, 1849 • Various
... Teach, hatless and shoeless, and, says his biographer, "a little flushed with drink"—as a man might be who spent most of his waking hours swigging pure rum—stumbled up on deck and made a proposal to ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... refus'd any compromise to the last. He was curiously antique. In that harsh, picturesque, most potent voice and figure, one seems to be carried back from the present of the British islands more than two thousand years, to the range between Jerusalem and Tarsus. His fullest best biographer justly says ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... have had his equals; but that it is next to an impossibility to find his superior. At all events, the world has given Kit Carson the title of "Nestor of the Rocky Mountains," for his reputation as a hunter alone; and as his biographer, we take pleasure in recording the facts by which the title has been earned and maintained. Let the reader possess himself of the facts, as they shall appear divested of any and every picture which fancy or partiality may accidentally cause us to paint, and even then Kit ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... out a four-volume edition in 1856. Griswold had suffered from Poe's sharp criticisms and had quarreled with him, though later there was a reconciliation, and Poe himself selected Griswold to edit his works. The biographer painted the dead author very black indeed, and his account is now generally ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... something more to say. But our article is already too long; and we must close it. We would fain part in good humour from the hero, from the biographer, and even from the editor, who, ill as he has performed his task, has at least this claim to our gratitude, that he has induced us to read Boswell's book again. As we close it, the club-room is before us, and the table on which stands the omelet for ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... the religious Revolution in which he took so great a part, has passed through several variations in the last century. In the Edinburgh Review of 1816 (No. liii. pp. 163-180), is an article with which the present biographer can agree. Several passages from Knox's works are cited, and the reader is expected to be "shocked at their principles." They are certainly shocking, but they are not, as a rule, set before the public ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... Memoirs of Charles Mathews by his widow abundant anecdotes are recorded of these practical jokes; but, in fact, "Gilbert Gurney," which may be regarded as an autobiography, is full of them. Mr. Barham, his biographer, also relates several, and states, that, when a young man, he had a "museum" containing a large and varied collection of knockers, sign-paintings, barbers' poles, and cocked hats, gathered together during his predatory adventures; but its most attractive object was "a gigantic Highlander," lifted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... preference to the Pythagorean, which he studied with Euxenus of Heraclea, a man, however, whose life ill accorded with the ascetic principles of his Sect. At the early age of sixteen years, according to his biographer, he resolved on strictly conforming himself to the precepts of Pythagoras, and, if possible, rivalling the fame of his master. He renounced animal food and wine; restricted himself to the use of linen garments and sandals made of the bark of trees; suffered his hair ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... very much stress on the fact that, after all, the greatest of Richardson's works is his successor, caricaturist, and superior—Fielding. When the memoirs of Miss Pamela Andrews appeared, the future biographer of her doubly supposititious brother was a not very young man of thirty-three, who had written a good many not very good plays, had contributed to periodicals, and had done a little work at the Bar, besides living, at least till his marriage and it may be feared ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Jerome," and especially his letters, which he read and re-read all his life. These and the philosophers of Port Royal, with Bossuet, and Fenelon, with the Bible and Virgil, were his mental food. Virgil and the Bible he read always in the Latin; he was so familiar with them both that, when a man, his biographer, Sensier, says he never met a more eloquent translator of these two books. When the time came, therefore, for Millet to go up to Paris, he was not, as has been said by some writer, an ignorant peasant, but a well-taught man who had read ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... ago, on 19th February 1896, Pastor Hsi, to quote the words of his biographer, "was translated to higher service." Those who read the fascinating and wonderful story of his life by Mrs. Howard Taylor will at once be interested in The Fulfilment of a Dream, which is the story of the work in Hwochow, and gives the account ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... to find that he had one true defender here," pursued the biographer of Plooie. "Though he could not fight in the ranks there was use for him. There was use for all true sons of Belgium in those black days. He was made driver of a—a charette; I do not know if you have them ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... young, whilst he himself, the oldest of all, surpasses all in the productiveness of his mind. He listened with friendly disposition to my first lyrical outpourings; and he acknowledged with earnestness and cordiality the poet who told the fairy-tales. My Biographer in the Danish Pantheon brought me in contact with Oehlenschl ger, when he said, "In our days it is becoming more and more rare for any one, by implicitly following those inborn impulses of his soul, which ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... which Sir Walter spoke to Lockhart, his biographer, were, "Be a good man, my dear!" and with the last flicker of breath on his dying lips, he sighed a farewell to his family, and passed away ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in camp with Henry Sharp (who had not only given him his freedom, but also taken up arms against the Revolutionists), he reported to Tybee Island to preach to the refugees there assembled. At any rate, when Liele appears in Savannah, Georgia, as a preacher of the Gospel, his biographer declares that "He came up to the city of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... of eight or nine children. One of his sons he afterwards maintained at the college of Dublin till he was ready for taking holy orders. He was, like his predecessors in the same cure, schoolmaster as well as clergyman of his parish; but "he made no charge," says his biographer, "for teaching school; such as could afford to pay gave him what they pleased." His hospitality to his parishoners every Sunday was literally without limitation; he kept a plentiful table for all who chose to come. Economical as he was, no act of his life was chargeable with any thing in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... years of his life, Buffon worked every morning at his desk from nine till two, and again in the evening from five till nine. His diligence was so continuous and so regular that it became habitual. His biographer has said of him, "Work was his necessity; his studies were the charm of his life; and towards the last term of his glorious career he frequently said that he still hoped to be able to consecrate to them a few ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... The life of Goldsmith has inspired many pens; but the subject, far from being exhausted, is still awaiting the right biographer. The poet's youthful escapades in the Irish country, his classical education at Trinity College, Dublin, and his vagabond studies among gypsies and peddlers, his childish attempts at various professions, his wanderings over Europe, his shifts ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... to Forbes' biographer reached me before I left, so I suppose you had not received one in time. I am dying to see ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... published in 1690 by the son of the designer, the Abbe Michel de la Quintinye, in two bulky volumes. "It was meet that a royal vegetable garden should have been designed by a 'Gentleman Gardener,'" said the faithful biographer in his foreword, and as such the man and the work are to be ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... step or two, with a couple of extended fingers, and exclaim, quite affably, 'Ha! Mr. Thackry! litary cove! Glad to see you, sir. How's Major Dobbings?' and likely enough would turn to the waiter, and bid him, 'Give this gent a glass of the same, and score it up to yours truly!' We have his biographer's word for it, that he would have winked at the Duke of Wellington, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... is the nation or the man without a history, but blessed too is the biographer who has something definite to write about. Mr. C. CARLISLE TAYLOR, in putting together his Life of Admiral Mahan (MURRAY), the American naval philosopher and prophet, must have felt this keenly, for rarely can a man whose work was so important that he simply had to have a biography have done ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... his patron, made an epitome of the writings of Galen, and then extended the work by including a collection of the writings of all preceding medical authors. When this work was finally completed it consisted of seventy books under the title "Collecta Medicinalia." He wrote also for his friend and biographer Eunapius two books on diseases and their treatment, and treatises on anatomy and on the works of Galen. He earned for himself the title of the Ape of Galen. In the "Life of Oribasius," by Eunapius, we find that Julian created Oribasius Quaestor of Constantinople, but after the death of ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... was not altogether free from some amount of show-off on Robert's part, I cannot yet help thinking that it had its share in that development of the character of Falconer which has chiefly attracted me to the office of his biographer. There may have been in it the exercise of some patronage; probably it was not pure from the pride of beneficence; but at least it was a loving patronage and a vigorous beneficence; and, under the reaction of these, the good which ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... Ancelot proves to what a degree the union of "grandeur" and "want" she has alluded to went. "Mme. d'Abrantes," says her biographer of the moment, "was always absorbed by the present impression, whatever that might happen to be; she passed from joy to despair like a child, and I never knew any house that was either so melancholy or so gay." One evening, however, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... Paton's Lament; and some lines from a translation in hexameters of the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad, that appeared as late as 1843, which must have sent more than one reader to the magazine, and made them echo the biographer's words, that "Lockhart had precisely the due qualifications for a translator, in sympathy, poetic feeling, and severe yet genial taste, and could have left a name for a popular, yet close and spirited version of the Iliad," had he not, after this single anonymous ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... good-night kiss. He gave her the good-night kiss willy-nilly. If she had retired when he came home, he used the trusty latchkey and went to her room to imprint on her lips the good-night kiss. He did this, the biographer would have us believe, to convince the good mother that his breath was what it should be; and he awakened her so she would know the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... in it, and he wished to be helped in a work of this importance. He was, however, so dissatisfied with their work that he effaced all that they did, and, without any assistance, if we are to believe his biographer, even grinding his own colors, he shut himself up in the chapel, beginning at dawn, quitting at nightfall, often sleeping in his clothes on the scaffolding, allowing himself but a slight repast at the end of the day, and letting no one see the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... be written and his biographer will be one whose good fortune it has been to see much of the "Student" in Bermondsey, the place that was the forcing-house of his development. In the following pages it is proposed only to give an outline of his life, and particularly the earlier and therefore ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... biographer of Froebel, and collector of Froebel's works (from whose collection the present translation has been made), and by his numerous articles one of the best friends to the advocacy of Froebel's educational principles, died, ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... task has been assigned to abler hands, and to a more suitable occasion. He will there be presented in other, though not less interesting lights. As the penetrating delineator of manners and character in the British Spy; as the biographer of Patrick Henry, dedicated to the young men of your native commonwealth; as the friend and delight of the social circle; as the husband and father in the bosom of a happy, but now most afflicted family;—in all these characters I have known, admired, and loved him; ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... as the product of a flawed life. But in the eighteenth century, an age largely devoted to the idea of discreet biography which concealed or minimized the subject's weaknesses, a man like Johnson presented formidable problems to the biographer and his readers. Although Courtenay merely versified material which other writers had discussed in much more detail, his poem is important because it synthesizes the conflicting attitudes towards Johnson which prevailed immediately after his death. ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... the College Wynd. When Johnson and Boswell returned to Edinburgh Jeffrey was a baby there seventeen days old. Some seventeen or eighteen years later 'he had the honour of assisting to carry the biographer of Johnson, in a state of great intoxication, to bed. For this he was rewarded next morning by Mr. Boswell clapping his head, and telling him that he was a very promising lad, and that if "you go on as you've begun, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... A biographer whose opinions about Washington are usually sound concludes that the General was a failure as a farmer. With this opinion I am unable to agree and I am inclined to think that in forming it he had in mind temporary financial stringencies and perhaps a comparison between Washington and the ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... him as he appeared to the small circle of his intimate acquaintances. The mere narrative of the life of a man of leisure and literary tastes would have contained too few incidents to be of general interest, and it appeared to me best to let him be his own biographer, telling his own story and revealing his own character in his letters. Fortunately there are many of these, and I have endeavoured to give such a selection from them as would serve this purpose, adding a few words here and there to connect them and explain what was not sufficiently ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... neglected by writers on the eighteenth century. He has no biographer. M. Walferdin wrote (in an edition of Diderot's Works, Paris, 1821, Vol. XII p. 115): "Nous nous occupons depuis longtemps rassembler les matriaux qui doivent servir venger la mmoire du philosophe de la patrie ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... already mentioned Charles Churchill. Another Johnian poet of this period was William Mason, who entered the College in 1742. Mason afterwards became a Fellow of Pembroke, where he was the intimate friend of Thomas Gray. As the biographer of Gray he is perhaps better remembered than for his own poetry, though during his lifetime ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... down towards the individual whose life we are recalling, the character of his progenitors becomes more and more important and interesting to the biographer. The Reverend William Emerson, grandfather of Ralph Waldo, was an excellent and popular preacher and an ardent and devoted patriot. He preached resistance to tyrants from the pulpit, he encouraged his townsmen and their allies ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... 25/April 4., 1623, and the fulsome letter of Robert Cushman returning thanks in behalf of the Planters (through John Pierce), to Gorges, for his prompt response to their request for a patent and for his general complacency toward them Hon. James Phinney Baxter, Gorges's able and faithful biographer, says: "We can imagine with what alacrity he [Sir Ferdinando] hastened to give to Pierce a patent in their behalf." The same biographer, clearly unconscious of the well-laid plot of Gorges and Warwick (as all other ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... already said so much for themselves that it seems as if little remained to be told by their biographer. Mrs. Douglas was the only member of the community who was at all conscious of the unfortunate association of characters and habits that had just taken place. She was a stranger to Lady Juliana; but she was interested by her youth, ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... accomplishing thus much Professor Sloane has vindicated his claim to be regarded as a great biographer. It has been the bane of nearly all biographical writing that the subjects of it have been completely mythologized. Thus far in the history of mankind biography might be defined as the art of myth-making. I ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... Dr. Arnold's biographer, speaking of the power of this kind exercised by him over young men, says: "It was not so much an enthusiastic admiration for true genius, or learning, or eloquence, which stirred the heart within them; it was a sympathetic thrill, caught ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... Wright, the second of four sons, was born May 4, 1872, in Rome, Oneida County, New York. From an earlier biographer we quote ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... Walton his biographer, Sir John Hawkins, writing in 1760, says, "he was a friend to a hierarchy, or, as we should now call such ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... Fifth—Saint Pius, for his name is commemorated in the prayers of the Church on the 5th of May—was, we are told by his biographer, a model of severity to his own kindred; and, if the fact that he elevated his grand-nephew, Michael Bonelli, to the sacred college should be alleged as casting some doubt upon this characteristic of his, we must hasten to add that he did ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... self-sufficient mechanics of villages and towns, who were ready to dispute on all topics, and inclined to be convinced on none. This club had the pleasure of subscribing for the first edition of the works of its great associate. It has been questioned by his first biographer, whether the refinement of mind, which follows the reading of books of eloquence and delicacy,—the mental improvement resulting from such calm discussions as the Tarbolton and Mauchline clubs indulged in, was not injurious to men engaged in the barn and ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... sequence that is at once more logical and more in harmony with the sources of information than any other. The error of Ferdinand Columbus—a very easy one to commit, and not in the least damaging to his general character as biographer—lay in confusing his father's two real visits (in 1484 and 1491) to Huelva with two visits (one imaginary in 1484 and one real in 1491) to La Rabida, which was close by, between Huelva and Palos. The visits were all the more likely ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... almost incredible that no history should exist of the childhood and early life of an emperor of such note as "Barbarossa;" yet, in spite of most diligent search, we have been compelled almost to renounce one of the most pleasing tasks of a biographer, which consists in making acquaintance with a hero in his infancy, and through childhood and youth following his career to fame and glory. So far as we have been able to discover, no trace, except a few dry data, exists of "Frederick of the Red Beard," ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... (afterwards St. Chad of Lichfield), in possession of the see. He therefore retired to Ripon for three years, during which, however, he visited Mercia and also Kent, where he met Aedde, or Eddius, who became his chaplain and biographer. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... sincerity, which maintains that the artist, in his volitional or practical life, should be at one with his dream, or with his incubus. Whether or no he have been so, is a matter that interests his biographer, not his critic; it belongs to history, which separates and qualifies that which art ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... and pride of social estimation. Even Columbus, more magnanimous than most of his contemporaries, is not so greatly more wise. The noblest use he can conceive for his discovery is to aid in the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. With the precious metals that should fall to his share, says his biographer, he made haste to vow the raising of a force of five thousand horse and fifty thousand foot for the expulsion of the Saracens from Jerusalem. Nor is this the only instance in which even the noble among men have sought to clutch the grand opening futures, and wreathe the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... an unequaled strength of patriotic purpose. I see in him, too, a pure and high-minded gentleman of dauntless courage and stainless honor, simple and stately of manner, kind and generous of heart. Such he was in truth. The historian and the biographer may fail to do him justice, but the instinct of mankind will not fail. The real hero needs not books to give him worshipers. George Washington will always receive the love and reverence of men, because they see embodied in him the noblest ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... and the unctuously pious biographer of Sir Hudson are obviously overcome by the coincidence of the storm and Napoleon's death coming simultaneously. To them it is the voice of God shouting forth gladness that the enemy of the British race is being made to pay the penalty of all the evil he has wrought. This is a very comforting ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... the following story, had not, at the time his biographer first became acquainted with him, "grown familiar with falsehood;" his conscience was not entirely callous to reproach, nor was his heart insensible to compassion; but he was in a fair way to get rid of all troublesome feelings and principles. He was connected with ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... 640-709), bishop of Sherborne, English scholar, was born before the middle of the 7th century. He is said to have been the son of Kenten, who was of the royal house of Wessex, but who was certainly not, as Aldhelm's early biographer Faritius asserts, the brother of King Ine. He received his first education in the school of an Irish scholar and monk, Maildulf, Maeldubh or Meldun (d. c. 675), who had settled in the British stronghold of Bladon or Bladow on the site of the town called Mailduberi, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... like to know how far the fact of Harold's oath, whatever its nature, was known in England? On this point we have no trustworthy authority. The English writers say nothing about the whole matter; to the Norman writers this point was of no interest. No one mentions this point, except Harold's romantic biographer at the beginning of the thirteenth century. His statements are of no value, except as showing how long Harold's memory was cherished. According to him, Harold formally laid the matter before the Witan, and they unanimously ...
— William the Conqueror • E. A. Freeman
... officer's gallantry was conspicuous. Before concluding, however, we cannot refrain from laying before our readers the following account of the last enterprise in which Captain Lydiard was engaged, and which is related by his biographer in The Naval Chronicle.[11] ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... composer to write an opera for the opening of the season, which generally consists of twenty or thirty nights, during which period seldom more than two operas are performed. The first night of one of these seasons is most amusingly described by the biographer of Rossini. "The theatre overflows, the people flock from ten leagues' distance; the curious form an encampment round the theatre in their calashes; all the inns are filled to excess, where insolence reigns at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... enough, but it has "a certain heartiness and epic greatness of cynicism"; and so his biographer continues justifying this royal outburst of racy profanity with Rabelaisian gusto. I dare not follow him; but I am anxious to know why Carlyle's "Frederick" circulates with impunity and even applause, while the Freethinker is condemned and denounced. Judge North may be ignorant of Carlyle's ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... Benedict, who, his biographer tells us, left the walls of the consistory naked, appears to have expended little on the pictorial decorations of the halls and chambers erected during his pontificate; but with the elevation of the luxurious ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... Boswell caught that personality and preserved it for us, so that, for generation after generation, Johnson lives as no other character in English literature lives. Boswell gave a new meaning to the word biographer, that is the writer of a life, and now when a great man has had no one to write his life well, we say "He ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... disturbed at the results of his operations that he resolved to strike out in an offensive campaign which would restore all that was lost, and if successful accomplish still more. We have the authority of his son and biographer for saying that his plan was to attack the forces at Shiloh and crush them; then to cross the Tennessee and destroy the army of Buell, and push the war across the Ohio River. The design was a bold one; but we have the same authority for saying that in the execution ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... the trade, was represented in Parliament by Edmund Burke. Even among the literary men of England,—if Boswell's gossip may be trusted,—Dr. Johnson was peculiar in his hatred of the infamy—a hatred which is obsequious biographer mollifies to an "unfavorable notion," and officiously ascribes to "prejudice and imperfect or false information." The anti-slavery work of England was originally inspired from America, and the action of the British ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... however, among the elect, though differing in glory—his Frederick the Great, fascinating for obvious reasons to the patriotic German mind, and his Life of Sterling, a quiet book on the whole, a record of an uneventful life, in which the natural positions of subject and biographer are reversed, the man of genius writing the life of the unimportant friend, and the fact that the friend was exceedingly lovable in no way lessening one's discomfort in the face of such an anomaly. Carlyle ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... willing younger brother. Tancred's estate, we are told, was not large enough to feed his two batches of children; that was the reason why they went to seek their fortunes so far off. If they had stayed at home, the estate might possibly have grown; for we are told by their own biographer that it was the nature of the sons of Tancred, when they saw that anybody else had anything, to take it to themselves. Perhaps this dangerous tendency extended only to misbelievers, schismatics, or at least men of other tongues. Otherwise ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... known that on the publication of Old Mortality many people were offended by what was considered a caricature of the Covenanters, and that Dr. M'Crie, the biographer of Knox, wrote a series of papers in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor, which Scott affected to despise, and said he would not read. He not only was obliged to read the articles, but found it necessary to inspire ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... addressed to the "Edelmann Storg" in Rome. The true translation of this expression is "Nobleman Story;" that is, William W. Story, the sculptor, who modelled the statue of Edward Everett in the Boston public garden. Lowell's biographer, however, does not appear to have been aware of the full significance of this paraphrase ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... of the works of Daniel Defoe formed by Mr. Walter Wilson, his biographer, which at his sale realised the sum of 50l., and which had been rendered still further complete by the addition of upwards of forty pieces by the recent possessor, when sold by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson, on Wednesday, the 5th instant, produced no less than 71l. ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.15 • Various
... Of course, this is a mere piece of barbaric boasting. If the whites had really acted on any such theory there would have been a constant succession of disasters like that at the Blue Licks. Sevier's latest biographer, Mr. Kirke, in the "Rear-guard of the Revolution," goes far beyond even the old writers. For instance, on p. 141 he speaks of Sevier's victories being "often" gained over "twenty times his own number" of Indians. As a matter of fact, one of the proofs of Sevier's skill as a commander ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... shortly afterwards. He was the Chief Secretary for Naval Affairs during many years; he defended his department at the Bar of the House of Commons after De Ruyter's attack in 1668, and he remained true to the Stuart dynasty in heart after James was driven abroad. Yet, though his contemporary biographer calls Pepys the greatest and most useful public servant that ever filled the same situations in England, Pepys would not now be honoured if he had not kept the most amusing diary in the world. Samuel was a highly conscientious, truly pious man, constant in all religious exercises, though ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... Monck Mason has the following note. This learned biographer's remarks are specially important inasmuch as he has fortified them with letters from Archbishop King, unpublished at the time he wrote: "But this [referring to the extract from the Report given by Swift] will not appear so strange or inexplicable after perusing the following ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... it is safe to assert that even the exact sciences might be made more widely intelligible. I am, however, thinking primarily of those studies which have some claim to rank as literary studies. It is through literature that the historian, the biographer, the sociologist, and the philosopher must make their contributions to knowledge. Yet how much research and how much acute thinking are wasted because the student has not the means of making his subject alive for others, has not the reconstructive imagination by means of which truth is communicated! ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... persistence of the spirit we shall come to a veritable triumph. Yes; and in such light we turn to read what Ruskin called the greatest inscription ever written, that which Herodotus tells us was raised over the Spartans, who fell at Thermopylae, and which Mitchel's biographer quotes as most fitting to epitomise Mitchel's life: "Stranger, tell thou the Lacedemonians that we are lying here, having obeyed their words." And the biographer of Mitchel is right in holding that he who reads into the significance of these brave lines, reads a message not of ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... man. Mohammed dictated the Koran, and left it behind him as a sacred book for the guidance of his followers; many others, who have established sects, have also founded a literature for their disciples; but Jesus Christ wrote nothing. The Son of God was not obliged to condescend to become His own biographer, and thus to testify of Himself. He had at His disposal the hearts and the pens of others; and He knew that His words and actions would be accurately reported to the latest generations. During His personal ministry, even His apostles ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... for instance, seems to have understood it in the sense of a half-religious consecration; he desired to assume the wreath in the baptistery of San Giovanni, where, like thousands of other Florentine children, he had received baptism. He could, says his biographer, have anywhere received the crown in virtue of his fame, but desired it nowhere but in his native city, and therefore died uncrowned. From the same source we learn that the usage was till then uncommon, and was held to be inherited by the ancient Romans from the Greeks. The ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... matters the makers of the Constitution had in the highest temper of statesmanship found a way round seemingly insuperable difficulties. The whole attitude of "the fathers" towards slavery is a question of some consequence to a biographer of Lincoln, and we shall return to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... us, as may serve to extenuate the criminality of those acts, and to show that his misconduct was the natural, or rather the necessary and inevitable result of the circumstances to which he was exposed, and nothing more than the every-day issues of human infirmity. If in discharging the office of a biographer, and canvassing the character of the dead, we are compelled to utter truths that will be unwelcome to many a heart, and to speak lightly of the bad members of a profession for the good ones of which we have a high respect, let it be remembered ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... takes a proud place, in the world's estimation, with the master minds of all nations—with Dante, Shakspeare, and Milton. He has arisen above the prejudices of the great and fashionable; and the learned and aristocratic Southey has sought to be the biographer of his sorrows and the expounder of his visions. The proud bishops who disdained him, the haughty judges who condemned him, are now chiefly known as his persecutors, while he continues to be more honored and extolled with ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... did not excite greater interest than the resignation of the meanest officer in the state. Even Thackeray, his admiring biographer, was obliged to make this confession:—"A greater contrast in the feelings of the cabinet and the nation upon the present resignation of Lord Chatham to those which were evinced upon his dismission from office in 1757, and upon his retirement in 1761, can scarcely be imagined. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... shared Jefferson's antipathy to the English secretary, whose manner grew more supercilious and overbearing as he drew nearer the date when he expected to run off with one of the richest catches of the season. He had not sought the acquaintance of his employer's biographer since her arrival, and, with the exception of a rude stare, had not deigned to notice her, which attitude of haughty indifference was all the more remarkable in view of the fact that the Hon. Fitzroy usually left ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... this long digression, thinking it my duty to protest against such a ludicrous method of treating French prosody; I do so both in the name of aesthetics and as a part of my task as biographer ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... admitted that, after giving due weight to all ameliorating considerations, it is impossible to avoid disappointment at the grossness of the jesting. No thought, no word raised it above the low level of the audience made up of the laborers on the farms and the loungers in the groceries. The biographer who has made public "The First Chronicles of Reuben" deserves ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... they had no claims for favour." In other words, Pepperell's memory was dishonoured, because in serving New England he had worn the king's uniform. In the eyes of the newly emancipated, treachery was retrospective. Pepperell's biographer explains his sin and its punishment with a perfect clarity. "The eventful life of Sir W. Pepperell," he writes, "closed a few years before the outbreak of the Revolution. Patriotism in his day implied loyalty and fidelity to the King of England; but how changed ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... we perceive them carried out and realised in the actual affairs of life in a degree to which our personal experience is a stranger. Influenced as human nature is by example, these unpretending narratives, whose whole strength lies in the facts which they record, and not in the art of the biographer, undeniably strike the mind with an almost supernatural force. They enchain the attention; they compel us to say, Are these things true? Are these things possible? Is religion, after all, so terribly near to us? Are this ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... As the biographer pointed out, the world enclosed in physical nature should welcome one who followed its precepts, one who was indeed the first to introduce deliberately and confessedly into human affairs such laws as those of the Survival of the Fittest and the immorality of forgiveness. If there was mystery ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... "The Second Sunday in Lent" recalls, in the line on "the mimic rain on poplar leaves," the sounds made by a trembling aspen, whose leaves quivered all through the summer evenings, growing close to the house of Mr. Keble's life- long friend and biographer, Sir John Taylor Coleridge, at Ottery St. Mary. An engraving of Raffaelle's last picture "The Transfiguration" hung ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... own way. He went to New Zealand, and, now that it was done, the interest and sympathy of all his family and friends followed him. Let me give here the touching letter which Arthur Stanley, his father's biographer, wrote to him the ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... volume of "Beethoven, eine Kunststudie" is a "Leben des Meisters," a mere sketch, made up from the same works as the "Catalogue," with a very few additions from other sources. As a biographer, Lenz fails as signally as in his capacity of critic. Much original matter, from one living so far away, was not to be expected; but he has made no commendable use of the printed authorities which he had at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... in this battle, though by no means conspicuous, was such as to call forth from an early biographer the affirmation, that "he displayed the most undaunted intrepidity, and completely redeemed his character from the suspicion of that unmanly weakness, with which he had been charged in early life; while in no instance did he exhibit ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... through faith. For Wrede, on the other hand, such a biography is impossible because of the nature of our sources. Not alone are they scant, but they are not biographical. They are apologetic, propagandist, interested in everything except those problems which a biographer must raise. The last few years have even conjured up the question whether Jesus ever lived. One may say with all simplicity, that the question has, of course, as much rightfulness as has any other question any man could raise. The somewhat ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... well to devote a whole volume to whales. They are worthy of the biographer who has now well grouped and described these creatures. The general reader will not find the volume too technical, nor has the author failed in his attempt to produce a book that shall be acceptable to the zoologist and the naturalist."—N. ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... sunset, when temperately, with eggs, bread, and fish, we will sustain Adam's nature. Pray him and his sons to attend us—they alone be our guests." And with a sound that seemed a laugh, or the ghost of a laugh, low and chuckling—for Edward had at moments an innocent humour which his monkish biographer disdained not to note [128],—he flung himself back in his chair. The priests took the cue, and shook their sides heartily, as Hugoline left the room, not ill pleased, by the way, to escape an invitation to the ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Cusa, see also Heller, vol. i, p. 216. For Aristotle's views, and their elaboration by St. Thomas Aquinas, see the De Coelo et Mundo, sec. xx, and elsewhere in the latter. It is curious to see how even such a biographer as Archbishop Vaughan slurs over the angelic Doctor's errors. See Vaughan's Life and Labours of St. Thomas of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... different aspects of the hills. If a tree is felled in the forests, strawberries spring up, just as mushrooms might, and the peasants sell them for just nothing. . . . Then our friends Mr. and Mrs. Story help the mountains to please us a good deal. He is the son of Judge Story, the biographer of his father, and for himself, sculptor and poet—and she a sympathetic graceful woman, fresh and innocent in face and thought. We go backwards and forwards to tea and talk ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... therefore attempted, not indeed to supply what is missing at the beginning and end, but to restore those leaves which have been torn out of the middle, imitating, as accurately as I was able, the language and manner of the old biographer, in order that the difference between the original narrative, and my own interpolations, ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... worldling, it was observed, took much after his secular father, but much more after his scheming mother. He was already a self-seeking, self-satisfied youth; and when he became a man and began business for himself, no man's business flourished like his. 'Nothing of news,' says his biographer in another place, 'nothing of doctrine, nothing of alteration or talk of alteration could at any time be set on foot in the town but be sure Mr. Worldly-Wiseman would be at the head or tail of it. But, to be sure, he would always decline ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... those who continually and happily associate with their elders; several house guests (yonder is Audubon the great naturalist, here is an office-seeker from Boston, and that chap over there, so very much at home, can be no other than Peter Harvey, Webster's fond biographer). Callers there are, also, as is shown by the line of chaises and saddle horses waiting outside, and old Captain Thomas and his wife, from whom the place was bought, and who still retain their original quarters, move in and out like people who consider themselves part of the family. ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... Henry VIII. in the Illustrated Shakspeare, published by Tyas, will recognise the "reverent disciple" whom he hints at, but does not name. In short, I think that {402} Fletcher was the pupil of Shakspeare; and this view, it appears to me, demands the serious attention of the biographer who next may study or speculate upon ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... strange talents and unsuspected abilities of George Borrow's unique character. He himself referred to the period spent in Spain as the "five happiest years" of his life. When, however, his life came to be written by Dr Knapp, than whom no biographer has approved himself more loyal or enthusiastic, it was found that the records of that period were not accessible. The letters that he had addressed to the Bible Society had been mislaid. These came to light shortly ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... in England, with the connivance of Calonne:—all these will be considered, with numberless other statements equally requiring correction in their turn. What she has omitted I trust I shall supply; and where she has gone astray I hope to set her right; that, between the two, the future biographer of my august benefactresses may be in no want of authentic materials to do full justice ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe |
