United States or Cambodia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage were most licentious.
It is wonderful that any man could have, in the space of eight days, written, with his own hand, so fiery an invective, so compelling of the attention of any reader, so completely annihilative of his antagonist's pretensions and contentions, so convincingly establishing his own: to have made of it, in the course of composition so rapid and totally unrevised, such a jewel of Latinity, in a style not only pure and impeccable, but glowing and charming, is astonishing.
He was languid; spirited only when he railed at a slave who brushed against his immaculate toga. The frills on his robes made him almost feminine; and he spoke, even in invective, in a soft, lisping voice. Around him floated the aroma of countless rare unguents, that made his coming known afar off.
This sense of desolation may account for the acrimony which too much disfigures his writings henceforward. Between 1732 and 1740, he was chiefly engaged in satires, which uniformly speak a high moral tone in the midst of personal invective; or in poems directly philosophical, which almost as uniformly speak the bitter tone of satire in the midst of dispassionate ethics.
He could not but see that some of those with whom he had been most closely allied of late years were impressed with the force of the invective; not, indeed, by its moral force, but by the thought of the influence it must have on the country.
Stringer hammered away with fierce and reiterated invective. He had no hope of defeating the bill, but he confidently believed that he was putting his adversary, the Governor, in a hole. It had been noised about the lobbies by the friends of the measure earlier in the session that the Governor was all right and could be counted on.
Even Niles was silent, bringing up the rear of the retreat, pumped dry of invective. "You'll be up against Dudley, there, at the polls, running on an independent ticket. He's sure to do it!" went on Presson, watching them out of sight. "You don't know the district," said Thornton, serenely. "And what's more important, I've got almost three months to meet that possibility in.
His hair was red, his complexion was sandy, and his eyes, when he was excited and angry, had a baleful expression that led some one in my presence on a certain occasion to speak of them as "brush-heaps afire." He was not an eloquent man, although a ready and frequent public speaker. His voice was not musical. His strong forte was invective. He was nearly always denouncing somebody.
Extraordinary and irregular vindications of public liberty are sometimes necessary: yet, however necessary, they are almost always followed by some temporary abridgments of that very liberty; and every such abridgment is a fertile and plausible theme for sarcasm and invective. Unhappily sarcasm and invective directed against William were but too likely to find favourable audience.
The comic weekly, indeed, helped to build up his reputation by the almost inexplicable bitterness of its invective. Another potent force was in his favour. From the beginning he set himself to play the game of the popular actor, and neglected no opportunity of turning the limelight on his own doings.
Word Of The Day