Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 19, 2025
If she had fallen in love with the owl of Minerva, or cut off her auburn tresses, or turned rope-dancer, there might have been some shrugging of shoulders, but no one would have tried to analyze the motive; but so much his profound sagacity enabled him to see, that, if there was one thing more than another likely to sicken Agellius of Christianity, it was to find one who was so precious to him suffering from the suspicion of it.
I was in high favour. Men of all ranks visited the earl; and dukes, lords, and barons became as familiar to me as gowns and caps had formerly been in the streets of Oxford. I stood on the very pinnacle of fortune; and, proud of my skill, like a rope-dancer that casts away his balancing pole, I took pleasure in standing on tiptoe.
Suetonius, Seneca, and Pliny tell us of elephants in their time that were taught to walk the rope, backwards and forwards, up and down, with the agility of an Italian rope-dancer. Such was the confidence reposed in the docility and dexterity of the animal, that a person sat upon an elephant's back, while he walked across the theatre upon a rope, extended from the one side to the other.
Do you respect a rope-dancer, or a ballad-singer? BOSWELL. 'No, Sir: but we respect a great player, as a man who can conceive lofty sentiments, and can express them gracefully. JOHNSON. 'What, Sir, a fellow who claps a hump on his back, and a lump on his leg, and cries "I am Richard the Third"? Nay, Sir, a ballad-singer is a higher man, for he does two things; he repeats and he sings: there is both recitation and musick in his performance: the player only recites. BOSWELL. 'My dear Sir! you may turn anything into ridicule.
The open-hearted Duchess of Cleveland was said to have been in love with this rope-dancer and Goodman the player at the same time. The former received a salary from her grace." Granger, vol. ii., part 2, p. 461. In reference to the connection between the duchess and the ropedancer, Mr. Pope introduced the following lines into his "Sober Advice from Horace:"
Go three voyages round the world as a main-royal-man of the tallest frigate that floats; then serve a year or two apprenticeship to the guides who conduct strangers up the Peak of Teneriffe; and as many more respectively to a rope-dancer, an Indian juggler, and a chamois. This done, come and be rewarded by the view from our tower. How we get there, we alone know.
I know not which of the two, eye or ear, is more agreeably affected by this display.... For my part, I am certain that people applaud the outcries of an actress at the opera as they would the feats of a tumbler or rope-dancer at a fair.... Imagine this style of singing employed to express the delicate gallantry and tenderness of Quinault.
His majesty had frequently expostulated with the countess upon this subject: but his expostulations were never attended to; it was in one of these differences that he, advising her rather to bestow her favours upon Jacob Hall, the rope-dancer, who was able to return them, than lavish away her money upon Jermyn to no purpose, since it would be more honourable for her to pass for the mistress of the first, than for the very humble servant of the other, she was not proof against his raillery.
When the south wind blows, it is a study to see three or four of these air-kings at the head of the valley far up toward the mountain, balancing and oscillating upon the strong current; now quite stationary, except a slight tremulous motion like the poise of a rope-dancer, then rising and falling in long undulations, and seeming to resign themselves passively to the wind; or, again sailing high and level far above the mountain's peak, no bluster and haste, but as stated, occasionally a terrible earnestness and speed.
There's scores of places there a man could hide in, and never be tracked; and there's few fellows would like to meet Donogan single-handed. He's as active as a rope-dancer, and he's as courageous as the devil. 'It would be a pity to hang such a fellow. 'There's plenty more of the same sort not exactly as good as him, perhaps, for Dan was a gentleman once. 'And is, probably, still?
Word Of The Day
Others Looking