United States or Sierra Leone ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He expressed great indignation at the imposture of the Cock-lane Ghost, and related, with much satisfaction, how he had assisted in detecting the cheat, and had published an account of it in the news-papers. Upon this subject I incautiously offended him, by pressing him with too many questions, and he shewed his displeasure. He sometimes could not bear being teazed with questions.
Churchill, in his poem entitled The Ghost, availed himself of the absurd credulity imputed to Johnson, and drew a caricature of him under the name of 'POMPOSO, representing him as one of the believers of the story of a Ghost in Cock-lane, which, in the year 1762, had gained very general credit in London.
'The Cock-lane Ghost, I believe. 'Then I have no doubt, said Mrs Nickleby, 'that it was with him my great-grandfather went to school; for I know the master of his school was a dissenter, and that would, in a great measure, account for the Cock-lane Ghost's behaving in such an improper manner to the clergyman when he grew up. Ah! Train up a Ghost child, I mean
Thus, while in the life the great whale's body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world. Are you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than the Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe in them. The Sphynx
Yet he seriously discussed the truth of second-sight; he carefully investigated the Cock-lane ghost a goblin who anticipated some of the modern phenomena of so-called "spiritualism," and with almost equal absurdity; he told stories to Boswell about a "shadowy being" which had once been seen by Cave, and declared that he had once heard his mother call "Sam" when he was at Oxford and she at Lichfield.
Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.
He assigns, as grounds for his religious belief, stories as absurd as that of the Cock-Lane ghost, and forgeries as rank as Ireland's Vortigern, puts faith in the lie about the Thundering Legion, is convinced that Tiberius moved the senate to admit Jesus among the gods, and pronounces the letter of Agbarus, King of Edessa, to be a record of great authority.
This does not bring you and the girl tramping the country, knocking at doors at midnight with Cock-lane stories of chaises and abductions. Come to it, man, or 'Oh, I say, Lord Almeric protested weakly. 'Tommy is an honest man in his way, and you are too stiff with him. 'D n him! my lord; let him come to the point then, Mr. Pomeroy retorted savagely. 'Is she in the way to get the money?
His connection with Newbery the bookseller now led him into a variety of temporary jobs, such as a pamphlet on the Cock-lane Ghost, a Life of Beau Nash, the famous Master of Ceremonies at Bath, etc.; one of the best things for his fame, however, was the remodeling and republication of his Chinese Letters under the title of The Citizen of the World, a work which has long since taken its merited stand among the classics of the English language.
Consistently with the whole trend of his thought in his recent work connected with psychical research, in Myth, Ritual, and Religion, in Cock-Lane and Common-Sense, Mr. Lang begins by entering a protest against the attitude observed towards the subject by contemporary science, especially by anthropology, which, as having been so lately "in the same condemnation," might be expected to show itself superior to that injustice which it had itself so much reason to complain of. Yet anthropology, abandoning the first principles of modern science, still refuses to listen to the facts alleged by psychical research, and justifies its refusal on Hume's oft-exploded fallacy, namely, on an
Word Of The Day