United States or United Kingdom ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Southey's political system is just what we might expect from a man who regards politics, not as matter of science, but as matter of taste and feeling. All his schemes of government have been inconsistent with themselves. In his youth he was a republican; yet, as he tells us in his preface to these Colloquies, he was even then opposed to the Catholic Claims. He is now a violent Ultra-Tory.

But all my father ever said, to evince pride of ancestry, was in honor of William Caxton, citizen and printer in the reign of Edward IV., Clarum et venerabile nomen! an ancestor a man of letters might be justly vain of. "Heus," said my father, stopping short, and lifting his eyes from the Colloquies of Erasmus, "salve multum, jucundissime."

Sir John Paston's conversations with the Duchess of Norfolk would make less than duchesses blush now. The tales that Erasmus introduces into his writings, the jests of his Colloquies, are often quite unnecessarily coarse; but one which will illustrate our point may be repeated. One winter's morning a stately matron entered St. Gudule's at Brussels to attend mass.

To his fellow-poet, Erasmus writes as a poet, loosely and with some affectation. It was a meal such as he liked, and afterwards frequently pictured in his Colloquies: cultured company, good food, moderate drinking, noble conversation. Colet presided. On his right hand sat the prior Charnock of St.

Had they not assisted at those long colloquies when the opera which was for them was changed? Absurdly, she felt as if they had. And now, very soon, it would be for them to speak. And striving to shut her eyes more firmly, or pressing her fingers upon them, Charmian saw moving hands, a forest of them below, circles above circles of them, and in the distance of the gods a mist of them.

In the old colloquies on such matters between her and her sister, she had always declared that some decent income should be considered as indispensable before love could be entertained. But eight hundred a year had been considered as doing much more than fulfilling this stipulation. Bell had high-flown notions as to the absolute glory of poverty.

What was said about the Moria may be repeated here: if in the literature of the world only the Colloquies and the Moria have remained alive, that choice of history is right. Not in the sense that in literature only Erasmus's pleasantest, lightest and most readable works were preserved, whereas the ponderous theological erudition was silently relegated to the shelves of libraries.

From her corner she could not see the doorway, but judging from the sounds of coming and going, of dragging heavy weights, of scurrying along the passage, of whispered colloquies, and sudden explosions of laughter, it was evident that some great mystery was in the air.

There was piping of his boatswain, shrill piping shrieks of the whistle. How many nights had that most ill-fated of brides lain listening to the idiotic uproar! It excused a touch of craziness. But how many? Not one, not two, ten, twenty: count, count to the exact number of nights the unhappy girl must have heard those mad colloquies of the hurricane boatswain and the chirpy king. By heaven!

Most of them are, no doubt, mere notes passed across the table during a discussion in the Council, and abound in those hieroglyphics on the margin, which sufferers from tedious colloquies are impelled to make, and which perhaps indicate the frequent boredom of the King. But others are evidently messages transmitted from Whitehall to the Chancellor.