"Alliteration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was the result of study and imitation of Greek literature. But the old vernacular Latin was a homely and simple speech, much more like any modern language in its ways and movements than would be supposed by those who only know classical Latin. The old Latin poetry was rhythmical, and fond of alliteration. Such was the native song of the Italian Camen, unlike the sthetic poetry of the classical age, with its metres borrowed from the Greek Muses. The old Latin poetry was like the Saxon, in so far as it was rhythmical and not metrical; ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... been considered out of the ordinary. On the contrary, a person unable to make up a verse or two would almost be considered exceptional. Yet, this requires considerable skill as the Icelanders are the only nation that has preserved the ancient common Germanic alliteration (found in all Germanic poetry till late medieval times). We frequently find this device accompanied by highly complicated rhyme schemes. Despite this rather rigid form, restrictive perhaps, yet disciplinary in its effect, exquisite ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... all the literary arts. Especially does he love to use antithesis and to make his effects by violent contrasts. Add to this the art of skilful climax, clever alliteration, happy illustration and great narrative power and you have the chief features of Macaulay's style. The reader is carried along on this flood of oratorical style, and so great is the author's descriptive power that one actually beholds the scenes and ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... It is, perhaps, the finest thing in the poem; but I hardly know any ballad finer as a piece of dramatic narrative; and the resonant verse, strongly rhymed (in the Gaelic assonances), and copiously stressed with alliteration, bears out ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... viii. 60); and my late friend Edward Eastwick made artistic use of it in his Gulistan. Had I rejected the "Cadence of the cooing dove" because un-English, I should have adopted the balanced periods of the Anglican marriage service[FN432] or the essentially English system of alliteration, requiring some such artful aid to distinguish from the vulgar recitative style the elevated and classical tirades in The Nights. My attempt has found with reviewers more favour than I expected; and a kindly critic writes of it, "These melodious fray meets, these little eddies of song ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... influence of increasing civilisation rendered it expedient to depart from their primeval usages; but an aid to the recollection was often afforded as amongst the Britons, by poetry or by the condensation of the maxim or principle in proverbial or antithetical sentences like the Cymric triads. The marked alliteration of the Anglo-Saxon laws is to be referred to the same cause, and in the Frisic laws several passages are evidently written in verse. From hence, also, may originate those quaint and pithy rhymes in which the doctrines of the law of the old time ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... chiefly an historical phenomenon of the seventeenth century. It is part of the late Renaissance literary movement, when prose, after vaguely classic models, was held worth cultivating on its own account; and is in some degree a tempered afterglow of the crude brilliance of euphuistic balance and alliteration. It made no effort to conceal its definite rhythmic movements—rather, it gloried in them; but was always careful that they should not become ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... polishing and remodelling with infinite care and pains. Not even content with the correct and tasteful arrangement of his sentences, he read them over to himself aloud, lest by any chance there should have crept into them some trick of alliteration, or juxtaposition of words not entirely musical. In his work he gained, or seemed to gain, a complete absorption. The cloudy disquiet of the last few hours appeared to have passed away,—to have been, indeed, only a ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... alliteration. But the best specimen that I have met with in English—after having read much verse, and published a volume, which my partial friends call poetry—will be found in Quarles' Divine Emblems, book ii. emblem ii. Beyond all question, Quarles was a poet that needed not "apt alliteration's artful aid" to add to the vigour of his verse, or lend liquidity to his lines. Quarles is often queer, quaint, and querulous, but never prolix, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... Grieve, upon whose names the happy alliteration is made, are supposed to be celebrated English scene painters. But although the scenery meets with disparagement in the prologue, yet it was very superior; and the interior of the old schoolhouse, with the names of the boys cut into the oaken pannels of the ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... insignia of supreme power, a true king of gods, majestic and impassive as the Pharaohs who succeeded each other upon the throne of Egypt. The conception of Khopri as a disk enclosing a scarabaeus, or a man with a scarabous upon his head, or a scarabus-headed mummy, was suggested by the accidental alliteration of his name and that of Khopirru, the scarabaeus. The difference between the possible forms of the god was so slight as to be eventually lost altogether. His names were grouped by twos and threes in every conceivable ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... story-telling was in recitative. When the old alliteration passed on into rhyme, and the crowd or rustic fiddle took the place of the old "gleebeam" for accentuation of the measure and the meaning of the song, we come to the ballad-singer as Philip Sidney knew him. Sidney said, in his "Defence of Poesy," ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... 'The rings' of their corselets. 2: Instead of ltere, for the sake of the alliteration. 3: The translator here assumes (unnecessarily) that there is a gap in the text, with loss of a speech by Hildebrand. 4: 'Friendless,' i.e. separated from his kin. Hadubrand is giving reasons for thinking that his father ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... finery; but cleanliness in every thing. The French women dress enough, especially when they sally forth. My excellent neighbour, Mr. JOHN TREDWELL, of Long Island, used to say, that the French were 'pigs in the parlour, and peacocks on the promenade;' an alliteration which 'CANNING'S SELF' might have envied! This occasional cleanliness is not the thing that an English or an American husband wants: he wants it always; indoors as well as out; by night as well as by day; on the floor ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... thought and expression which has kept his reputation secure. He is best known, however, for his prose romance, Euphues, which gave its name to the style of which it was the climax. Euphuism is a manner of writing marked by elaborate antithesis and alliteration, and ornamented by fantastic similes drawn from a mass of legendary lore concerning plants and animals.[3] This style, which nowadays seems labored and inartistic, was excessively admired by the Elizabethans. Shakespeare imitated ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... larger number of supporters than any other. Unfortunately, the opinions of others have not the slightest weight with Mr. Massey, and words are too weak to express his scorn of this theory and its supporters. Mr. Brown wraps things in a winding sheet of witless words (delicious alliteration!); he leaves the subject dark and dubious as ever; his theory has only served to trouble deep waters, and make them so muddy that it is impossible to see to the bottom; in short, Mr. Brown and his fellow thinkers, in the opinion of Mr. Massey, are arch-deceivers and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... I've been telling my cousin I've been organising a little water-party for this evening—moonlight, mandolins, Menaggio. If you find that alliteration has any attractions, I hope you and your brother will do me ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... assembled armies, and sometimes sung before the van, it was intended as an incitement to battle, and even calculated to stimulate the courage of the general. The war-song of the Harlaw has been already noticed; it is a rugged tissue of alliteration, every letter having a separate division in the remarkable string of adjectives which are connected to introduce a short exordium and grand finale. The Jorram, or boat-song, some specimens of which attracted the attention of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the changing dispositions of the mind. They have a very marked subjective character. Some depend on the intellectual factor; the most usual are based on chance, on distant and vacillating analogies—further down, even on assonance and alliteration. Others depend on the affective factor and are ruled by the disposition of the moment: association by contrast, especially those alike in emotional basis, which have been previously studied. (First Part, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... place for technical analysis of the external poetic forms. A cursory inspection will show that Bjrnson's are wonderfully varied, and that the same form is seldom, if ever, precisely duplicated. In rhythm and alliteration, rhyme sequence and the grouping of lines into stanzas, the form in each case seems to be determined by the content, naturally, spontaneously. Yet for one who has intimately studied these verses until his mind and heart vibrate ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... authorship of these books, the world knows not. Sophie May must doubtless be a fancy name, by reason of the spelling, and we have only to be grateful that the author did not inflict on us the customary alliteration in her pseudonyme. The rare gift of delineating childhood is hers, and may the line of 'Little Prudy' go out to the end of the earth.... To those oversaturated with transatlantic traditions we recommend ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... proclaimed in his prose work, which are, first, to write nothing that is not moral and elevating in tone, and, second, to express himself in versification which is obedient to the laws of regular musical composition, in rhyme, rhythm, vowel assonance, alliteration, and phrasings. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... a sketch, written by John McArdle, called "Phil Foley's Frolics"—he was fond of alliteration. Noticing that Joseph Ward had made a special study of the comfortable old Irish vanithee, and had many of her quaint and humorous sayings, he added to the characters a special part for him—"Mrs. Casey,"—to which he did full justice. Indeed, so incessant ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... had mounted to my head; or nature and the perfect morning joined to him at disaffection; anyhow, having breakfasted, and triumphantly repeated the collect I had broken down in the last Sunday—'twas one without rhythm or alliteration: a most objectionable collect—having achieved thus much, the small natural man in me rebelled, and I vowed, as I straddled and spat about the stable-yard in feeble imitation of the coachman, that lessons might go to the ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... Friday.—Faust selected because alliteration in Faust and Friday. A trifle, but as DRURIOLANUS says, "The world is governed by trifles." Wise saw this, with practical modern instance. VAN DYCK looking like a Rembrandt, a Faust-rate Faust, ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... our own party. I shall gain immensely by such a connection; but I lose everything and gain nothing by her marrying Maltravers—of opposite politics too—whom I begin to hate like poison. But no duke shall have her—Florence Ferrers, the only alliteration I ever liked—yet it ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... fifteen of the twenty-four cantos, are so melodious that no one who had heard the original, even if he did not understand a word of it, could be quite satisfied with a version which does not reproduce them. The feminine rhymes and the alliteration of Canto XXI have presented obstacles which no single translation has ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... whose profound acquaintance with the writers of this and the following reign entitle him to be heard with deference, has favored us with his opinion of Euphues in these words. "This production is a tissue of antithesis and alliteration, and therefore justly entitled to the appellation of affected; but we cannot with Berkenhout consider it as a most contemptible piece of nonsense[90]. The moral is uniformly good; the vices and follies of the day are attacked with much force and keenness; there is in it much ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... I have deliberately employed alliteration, believing that the music of a line is intensified thereby,' says Mr. Kelly in the preface to his poems, and there is certainly no reason why Mr. Kelly should not employ this 'artful aid.' Alliteration is one of the many secrets of English poetry, and as long as it ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... title of his book just quoted shows, was very fond of alliteration, and one sentence of his diatribe may be quoted. He warned his readers that tobacco-smoke was "very pernicious unto their bodies, too profluvious for many of their purses, and most pestiferous to the publike State." Much may be forgiven, however, to the introducer ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... A dodecagamic Potter. This is at once more descriptive and more megalophonous,—but the alliteration of the text had captivated the vulgar ear of the herd ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... strikes with a shivering shock. Notice the effective use of alliteration (i.e., the recurrence of words beginning with the same letter), which is the basis of ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... shouted the parrot at the top of his voice. "Catfish and coffee!"—"Rice cakes for breakfast"—"All in my eye, Betty Martin"—"Yarns and Yankees"—"Shad and shin-plasters"—"Yams and yaller boys," and so on, in a string of the most irrelevant alliteration and folly, that, like much other nonsense, evoked peals of laughter, by its unexpected utterance, and which at last mollified and brought out Major Favraud ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... conspicuous example in English of the attempt to achieve an ornate and rather fantastic style. The result became known as euphuism, and those who employed it as euphuists. In its essential features it consists of three distinct mannerisms: a balance of phrases, an elaborate system of alliteration, and a profusion of similes taken from fabulous natural history. Regarding the euphuistic use of balance, Dr. Landmann says of Lyly's prose:[1] "We have here the most elaborate antithesis not only of well balanced clauses, but also of words, ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... that these regrettable institutions are properly managed. In fact the idea now seems to be prevalent here that we have gone too far in the direction of making prisons comfortable, and that excellent alliteration "Coddled Criminals" has more than once done duty in print in this connection. I consider that the present prison system in Japan is regulated and administered on sounder principles than those that obtain in this country. There are in all about 140 prisons in Japan. All the old ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... by a sort of prospectus, elegantly written, of course with the oriental ornaments of alliteration and antithesis, in which the editors proclaim the usefulness of instruction to the cause of religion and morality. These are the ends they have in view in the publication of the new journal, and they appeal ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... reasonable being can set up:—that any one should claim four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark and colour, without reference to the playing of the game, or the individual worth or pretensions of the cards themselves! She held this to be a solecism; as pitiful an ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the colours of things.—Suits were soldiers, she would say, and must have a uniformity of array to distinguish them: but what should ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... under Molo, to whom he ascribes a decisive influence upon the development of his literary style. He had previously affected the florid, or Asiatic, style of oratory then current in Rome. The chief faults of this were excess of ornament, antithesis, alliteration and assonance, monotony of rhythm, and the insertion of words purely for rhythmical effect. Molo, he says, rebuked his youthful extravagance and he ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... Italian conversazione best translates it,) but is applied to a series of short narratives, or rather anecdotes, told alternately in verse and rhymed prose, with all the brilliance of rhetoric, the richness of alliteration, antithesis, and imitative sound, and the endless grammatical subtilties of which the Arabic language is capable. The work of Hariri is considered the unapproachable model of this style of narrative throughout all the East. Rueckert called his translation "The Metamorphoses of Abou-Seyd of Serudj,"—the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... out of which you probably got it are carefully labeled "Fiction." Lamb says somewhere that we think of the "Dark Ages" as literally without sunlight, and so I fancy people like you, dear, think of the "East End" as a mixture of mire, misery and murder. How's that for alliteration? Why, within five minutes' walk of me there are the loveliest houses, with gardens back and front, inhabited by very fine people and furniture. Many of my university friends' mouths would water if they knew the income of some of the ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... Lat. ad, to, and littera, letter), the commencing of two or more words, in close juxtaposition, with the same sound. As Milton defined rhyme to be "the jingling sound of like endings,'' so alliteration is the jingle of like beginnings. All language has a tendency to jingle in both ways, even in prose. Thus in prose we speak of "near and dear,'' "high and dry,'' "health and wealth.'' But the initial form of jingle is much more common—"safe and sound,'' ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... poet. He wrote "Polymetres" in the manner of Arno Holz and Walt Whitman, with lines alternately very long and very short, in which stops, double and triple stops, dashes, silences, commas, italics and italics, played a great part. And so did alliteration and repetition—of a word—of a line—of a whole phrase. He interpolated words of every language. He wanted—(no one has ever known why)—to render the Cezanne into verse. In truth, he was poetic enough and had a distinguished taste for stale things. He was sentimental and dry, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Norris, and Wilkes, and all others who consorted with his enemies. Let them flee from the wrath to come! And truly they were only too anxious to do so, for they knew that Leicester's hatred was poisonous. "He is not so facile to forget as ready to revenge," said poor Wilkes, with neat alliteration. "My very heavy and mighty adversary will ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... examination. As to form, it is a long narrative ballad in seven "fyts" or parts, and descends from that "Bible of the romantic reformation," Bishop Percy's "Reliques." The verse is the common ballad stanza—eights and sixes—enriched by a generous use of medial rhyme and alliteration: ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... affinity, approximation, parallelism; agreement &c. 23; analogy, analogicalness[obs3]; correspondence, homoiousia[obs3], parity. connaturalness[obs3], connaturality[obs3]; brotherhood, family likeness. alliteration, rhyme, pun. repetition &c. 104; sameness &c. (identity) 13; uniformity &c. 16; isogamy[obs3]. analogue; the like; match, pendant, fellow companion, pair, mate, twin, double, counterpart, brother, sister; one's second self, alter ego, chip of the old ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of their alliteration; that is to say, two or three of their words begin with the same letter. Examples of this are: "Look before you leap." The proverb "A stitch in time saves nine" has something of both these attractions, though it is not exactly a rhyme. Other examples of alliteration in ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... man, named Nathaniel Bentley, for many years kept a large hardware-shop in Leadenhall Street, London. He was best know as Dirty Dick (Dick, for alliteration's sake, probably), and his place of business as the Dirty Warehouse. He died about the year 1809. These verses accord with the accounts ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... javanica) and the red-rumped or mosque swallow (H. erythropygia). I regret to have to state that Oates has saddled the latter with the name "Sykes's striated swallow"; he was apparently seduced by the sibilant alliteration! ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... the lyrical productions, in general, of Dr. Watts; and long after I had grown up, he pointed out to me a verse in one of those Hymns, remarking upon a point which I do not remember to have seen noticed elsewhere, that it presented the finest specimen of alliteration in ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... or unusual? Are the most effective words concrete or abstract? figurative or literal? Find examples of alliteration, of onomatopoeia, of all the figures of speech ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely
... pieces of literature. Therefore there seems something especially appropriate in the geographical title selected, and if the author's choice of name need further excuse, it is to be found in the alluring alliteration lying ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Alliteration is a splendid source of failure in this sort of poetry, and adjectives like lissom, filmy, weary, weird, strange, make, or ought to make, the rejection of your manuscript a certainty. The poem should, as a rule, seem to be addressed to an unknown person, and should express regret ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang
... apparently proved irksome. Against one such, evidently an attempt to help Dick see himself in his true colours, I find this marginal, note in pencil: "Better not. Might make him ratty." Opposite to another—obviously of Mrs. St. Leonard, and with instinct for alliteration—is scribbled; "Too terribly ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... musical delight here are almost barbarous in their simplicity. There is a surfeit of assonance—all, shore, shore, lord; heart, Arthur; ways, safe, pain. The alliteration is without complexity,—a dreary procession of sibilants. Worst of all are the monotonous incidence of the stress, and the unrelieved, undistinguished, crowded poverty ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... insignificant transposition of the words, and the taking of the word andsin out of the inverted commas is all that is necessary.[5] In the rendering in the text an attempt is made to reproduce to some extent the elaboration of alliteration, but the end-rhymes and the vowel-assonances cannot be imitated without sacrificing the sense. The metre resembles that known as mibhasc (four-syllable and six-syllable lines alternating, but with trisyllabic rhyme in the ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... of some of the chief characteristics of Skaldic poetry: the obscuring of the sense by the elaborate interlacing of sentences and the extensive use of kennings or mythological synonyms, and the complication of the metre by such expedients as the conjunction of end-rhyme with alliteration. Eddie verse is governed solely by the latter, and the strophic arrangement is simple, only two forms occurring: (1) couplets of alliterative short lines; (2) six-line strophes, consisting of a couplet followed by a single short ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... discovered an honest enthusiasm, a determination to strike a blow for the good and true that refreshed and exhilarated. A beaming face, spectacled and whiskered probably, an expansive waistcoat, and a tender heart, seemed to shine through the words which Messrs Beit had quoted; and the alliteration of the final sentence; that was good too; there was style for you if you wanted it. The champion of the blushing cheek and the gushing eye showed that he too could handle the weapons of the enemy if he cared to trouble ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... aloud. Rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, vowel coloring, the effect of enjambement, to name only the more obvious phenomena, appeal solely to the ear. Looking at a page of verse is like looking at a page of music. Unless the symbols are translated into sound values, the effect is blank. ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... No two numbers of a given series were chosen from the same decade or contained identical final figures. No word was used in more than one couplet. Their vowels, and initial and final consonants were so varied within a single series as to eliminate phonetic aids, viz., alliteration, rhyme, and assonance. The kind of assonance avoided was identity of final sounded consonants in successive words, ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... the legend that the Franks were descended from the ancient Trojans. "Troja" was then further corrupted to "Tronje" and "Tronege". Hagen was therefore originally a Frank and had no connection with the Burgundian kings, as the lack of alliteration also goes to show. Boer thinks that not Siegfried but Hagen originally lived at Xanten (see note 3 to Adventure II), as this was often called Troja Francorum. When the Hagen story was connected with the Burgundians and Hagen became either their brother or their ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... itself readily to verse (i. 20, iii. 31), and the poem is intolerably dry, except the introductions to each Book, which reveal considerable poetical power. The chief peculiarities of Manilius' language are his strange use of prepositions and his fondness for alliteration; imitations ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... scheme in the first and second stanzas. Are they alike? Does this rhyme scheme help to produce the effect of the poem? Have you noticed a similar use of "more" in any other poem? Point out striking examples of repetition, of alliteration. Are there many ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... we knew one another at Redhorse when we were young and true-hearted and barefooted. He was known in those far fair days as "Giggles," and I—O Irene, can you ever forgive me?—I was called "Gunny." God knows why; perhaps in allusion to the material of my pinafores; perhaps because the name is in alliteration with "Giggles," for Gig and I were inseparable playmates, and the miners may have thought it a delicate compliment to recognize some kind ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... her with surprise. Was it possible that this backwoods hoyden—Bouncing Bet of the Banister, he had named her to himself, with a taste for alliteration—was it possible that she had read any of his books? She was hardly more than a child. The hair hung down her back in a thick, gleaming rope, her merry gamin's face lacked as yet all those subtleties, those nuances of expression which ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... and indeed of all our earliest poetry depended upon accent and alliteration; that is, the beginning of two or more words in the same line with the same sound or letter. The lines were made up of two short halves, separated by a pause. No rime was used; but a musical effect was produced by giving each ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... English poetry has four primary accents, two in the first half-line and two in the second half-line. These half-lines are separated by the cesura and united by alliteration, the alliterative letter being found in the first stressed syllable of the second half-line. This syllable, therefore, gives the cue to the scansion of the whole line. It is also the only alliterating syllable in the second ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... did so purely for the sake of alliteration, Ana; and I shall make no further allusion to them. And now, since we are, with that exception, agreed so far, will you not agree with me further that Life has not measured the success of its attempts at godhead by the beauty or bodily perfection ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... is all-important in the music-drama. Wagner has rejected the forms of blank verse and rhyme as utterly unsuited to the lofty purposes of music, and has gone to the metrical principle of all the Teutonic and Slavonic poetry. This rhythmic element of alliteration, or staffrhyme, we find magnificently illustrated in the Scandinavian Eddas, and even in our own Anglo-Saxon fragments of the days of Caedmon and Alcuin. By the use of this new form, verse and melody glide together in one exquisite rhythm, in which it seems impossible to separate ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... Wilding's was a personality to dazzle any woman, despite—perhaps even because of—the reputation for wildness that clung to him. That he was known as Wild Wilding to the countryside is true; but it were unfair—as Richard knew—to attach to this too much importance; for the adoption of so obvious an alliteration the rude country minds needed but ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... of Pope's, in his Dunciad, "High-born Howard," echoed in the ear of Gray, when he gave, with all the artifice of alliteration, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Lady of The Lawn (JENKINS) has "the ornament of alliteration," but beyond that there doesn't seem to be any particular reason why Mr. W. RILEY should have chosen it. Certainly in his story there is an old lady who spends more of the winter on a lawn than any old lady of my acquaintance could be induced to, even with rugs and a summer-house to make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... know no phrase better fitted to describe his tone than that old favorite of the erotic novelists. It was vibrant with passion. It breathed bitterness. It sizzled with savagery. It—Oh, alliteration ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... obviously a printer's direction. All through the smudged 'copy,' which you threw away, there run alliterative lines, 'Stupendous Scientific Sensation,' 'Veritable Visitor Void' and finally 'Marvelous Man-l—Monster.' Only one trade is irretrievably committed to and indubitably hall-marked by alliteration, the circus trade. You'll recall that Farley insensibly fell into the habit even in his advertisement; 'lost lad,' 'retained for ransom' and 'Mortimer Morley.' Therefore I had the combination circus poster, an alleged meteor ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Ulceration of the Bladder or the Kidneys." Another one, with the title "Against Burning of the Urine and Excoriation of the Lower Part of the Yard." Gonorrhea is frankly treated under the name Shawdepisse, evidently an English alliteration of the corresponding French word. As to the instrumentation of such conditions and for probing in general, Ardern suggests the use of a lead probe, because it may readily be made to bend any way and not injure ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... principle of concord in Latin and Greek. Many of us have been struck by such relentless rhymes as vidi ilium bonum dominum "I saw that good master" or quarum dearum saevarum "of which stern goddesses." Not that sound-echo, whether in the form of rhyme or of alliteration[88] is necessary to concord, though in its most typical and original forms concord is nearly always accompanied by sound repetition. The essence of the principle is simply this, that words (elements) that belong together, particularly ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... when King or Corbet were in the pulpit.[6] Where grave and learned professions set the example, the poets, it will readily be believed, ran headlong into an error, for which they could plead such respectable example. The affectation "of the word" and "of the letter," for alliteration was almost as fashionable as punning, seemed, in some degree, to bring back English composition to the barbarous rules of the ancient Anglo-Saxons, the merit of whose poems consisted, not in the ideas, but in the quaint arrangement ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... was much struck with the equanimity with which reverses were accepted by the members of our gallant Amateur Army, and intend composing an ode in their honour, to be sung in camp to the accompaniment of bullets, bagpipes, and brass bands! (more alliteration for the Midlothian Maltese Marriage Merchant), the refrain of which will ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... "More alliteration. No, I don't want Alec and Alonzo when I have a cold in the head. But what has happened you two? Now that I look at you closely you seem all lighted up with an internal iridescence. Why, you're actually SHINING! ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... often avails himself of "apt alliteration's artful aid," as here, and in the next two lines; most ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... know what this - jolly old - Jaundiced Jail,' Tom had paused to find a sufficiently complimentary and expressive name for the parental roof, and seemed to relieve his mind for a moment by the strong alliteration of this one, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... interesting also because it might be classed as almost any one of the types of tales. It is not accumulative though it possesses to a marked degree three characteristics of the accumulative tale, repetition, alliteration, and all sorts of phonic effects. And it is not an old tale. But it is not only one of the most pleasing animal tales we possess but one of the best humorous tales having the rare quality of freshness. It is realistic in its portrayal of animal life; and it is highly romantic ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... as far as possible to preserve in my translations both the character of these poems and their metrical form. But the latter attempt can be only a mere approximation owing to the strict rules of early Irish verse both as regards alliteration and vowel consonance. Still the use of the "inlaid rhyme" and other assonantal devices have, it is to be hoped, brought my renderings nearer in vocal effect to the originals than the use of more familiar English ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... and traditions mentioned in them to the later years of the Roman occupation. The second class, of greater antiquity than the first, at least on the ground of subject, is also distinguished by a much more mythological character, a bolder use of the miraculous, an enigmatical form, a style full of alliteration and plays upon words. Of this number are the tales of Pwyll, of Bramwen, of Manawyddan, of Math the son of Mathonwy, the Dream of the Emperor Maximus, the story of Llud and Llewelys, and the legend of ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... by the priests, and stories of the gods; the second, or heroic cycle, contains the original materials of the "Nibelungen Lied" of Germany. The poems consist of strophes of six or eight lines each, with little of the alliteration by which the Scalds were afterwards distinguished. One of the oldest and most interesting is the "Voluspa," or Song of the Prophetess, a kind of sibylline lay, which contains an account of the creation, the origin of man and of evil, and concludes with a prediction of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Tracadie, as we drive from the Eastern Extension Railway Station, we notice as a curious coincidence of alliteration, the sign,— ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... and a few others, and yet to be sensible of the occasional obscurity and imperfections of his imagery in other pieces, to find it difficult to discover the meaning of some passages, to think the opening of four of his odes which commence with the common-place invocation of "O thou," and the alliteration by which so many lines are disfigured, blemishes too serious to be forgotten, unless the judgment be drowned in the full tide of generous and enthusiastic admiration of the great and extraordinary beauties by which these ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... glow of goodness gladdened (those go all together and are called alliteration) our hearts when we saw our own tramp coming down the road. The dogs did not growl at him as they had at the boys or the beer-man. (I did not say before that we had the dogs with us, but of course we ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... bears little resemblance to ours. There is no rhyme, and the lines are not equal in length, and there does not seem to be much music in it. One of its poetic characteristics is alliteration; that is, several words in the same line begin with the same or similar sounds. It is a noble old poem, however, and of great interest, for it shows us what the old Saxon gleemen sang at their feasts for the entertainment of their guests, as ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... fiend's name, spare us this alliteration and humbug," Cappy fairly shrieked. "You're driving me crazy. If it isn't platitude, it's your dog-gone habit of initialing things!" He placed his old elbows on his knees and bowed his head in his hands. "If I'm not the original Mr. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... fact it is made up of a very exact and very definite series of parts. The writing is done on a plan which has three main characteristics as follows. First, the structure of the sentence is based on antithesis and alliteration; that is to say, it falls into equal parts similar in sound but with a different sense; for example, Euphues is described as a young gallant "of more wit than wealth, yet of more wealth than wisdom." All the characters in the book, which is roughly in the form of a novel, speak ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... highest poetry. . . . In the best nursery rhymes, as in the simpler and more genuine ballads which have so close a connection with them, we find this attraction of the inarticulate—this charm of pure sound, this utilizing of alliteration and rhyme and assonance." Those who have noticed the tendency of children to find vocal pleasure even of a physical or muscular sort in nonsense combinations of sounds, and who also realize their own tendency in this direction, will feel that Professor Saintsbury has hit upon a ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... number of modern languages fluently. And when they have done that, they should procure a few of Wagner's later vocal scores and note the extremely ingenious manner in which he has made the peculiarities of German consonants subservient to his dramatic purposes. I refer especially to his use of alliteration—the repetition of a consonant in the same or in consecutive lines. This not only insures a smooth, melodious flow, but enables the composer to heighten the effect of any situation by choosing ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... minstrel lays of this period were later collected by Charlemagne, of which two specimens have come down to us. Like the Icelandic, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, old English, and old Saxon, they are in a measure called alliteration, that is, a repetition of the sound without the regular rhyme at the end of lines, or such as we call rhyme. This circumstance made Klopstock, at a later period, try to banish rhyme as not being correct ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... the dramas, are no mechanical tricks, no obvious compassing of sickly sweetnesses. The accent falls where it should, unstrained. The disguised alliteration comes, as almost always in Milton also, not from set and conscious purpose, but from the promptings of a mind vibrating ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... from the order normal in prose. Sometimes it is elliptic, sometimes it contains particles unnecessary to the meaning—both signs of an attempt at metre. Though almost constantly unrhymed, it carries alliteration and assonance to a degree beyond what is usual in prose, and prefers forms of words more sonorous than the ordinary. But these many and distinct passages of poetry issue from and run into contexts of prose unmistakable. For ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... spoke very fluently and not at all to the point, was booked to speak first at this debate, and any one who knew him could see his magnificent style in the way the motion was drawn up. He revelled in alliteration, and I should think that he preferred subjects which were more general than particular, for he had on one occasion come hopelessly to grief at a debate on French politics, and had to hide his confusion by saying that no one could be expected to take an interest in a Latin nation, ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... initials, and both in his speeches and in his contributions Elmendorf was emphatic in his condemnation of capital, and in his demands that labor should unite, unite everywhere, and by concerted and persistent effort wring from the congested coffers of capital—Elmendorf loved alliteration—a large share of its hoarded wealth. The hands that wrought the fabric, said he, should share and share alike in every profit. The man who riveted the bolt or swung the hammer deserved equal wage with him whose brain evolved the plan, or whose ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... Europe: some appear to have been the favourite lines of some ancient poem: even in more refined times, many of the pointed verses of Boileau and Pope have become proverbial. Many trivial and laconic proverbs bear the jingle of alliteration or rhyme, which assisted their circulation, and were probably struck off extempore; a manner which Swift practised, who was a ready coiner of such rhyming and ludicrous proverbs: delighting to startle a collector by his facetious or sarcastic humour, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... secular education, of a deeply emotional and spiritual nature, gifted with imagination and perception of beauty. He shows a liking for technique that leads him to adopt elaborate devices of rhyme, while retaining the alliteration characteristic of Northern Middle English verse. He wrote as was the fashion of his time, allegory, homily, lament, chivalric romance, but the distinction of his poetry is that ...
— The Pearl • Sophie Jewett
... pretty lisping Ned" I can find nothing. "The flying Pilchard and the frisking Dace" probably belong to the fish monsters alluded to in the Tempest. In "Tim Trundell" Herrick seems for the sake of alliteration to have taken a liberty with the Christian name of ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... remember that our whole training has been in the realistic school, by which we are prone to judge all others, but by which they must not be judged. We have no more right to weigh these compositions in the scales of our art motifs than we have to weigh Greek rhythm of quantity or Saxon of alliteration against our weights by which we measure rhythm of rhyme and stress. In fact it is impossible for us even to judge concerning the true harmonic effect of these other measures, and it may well be doubted ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... Browning sweep the soul upward to spiritual heights, and answer some of the deepest questionings of the soul of man. And hence literature is no longer merely a thing of vocabulary, of phrase, of rhythm, of assonance, of alliteration, or of metrical and philosophical form. It is a revelation of the progress of the soul, of its standards, of its triumphs, its defeats, and its desires. It is the unfolding of one's intellectual helplessness ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... the prose and what may be called the "regular" verse, a third form, that of rose, or as it is sometimes called rhetoric, which is a very irregular form of verse. Sometimes it rhymes, but more often not; the lines are of varying lengths, and to scan them is often very difficult, an alliteration taking the place of scansion in many cases. The rhetoric does not in general develop the story nor take the form of description, it usually consists of songs of triumph, challenges, prophecies, and exhortations, though it is sometimes used for other purposes. ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... have space to quote but one of the poems complete, to show the manner in which Mr. De Vere unites the real, the symbolic, and the external, with the spiritual. Like most of his poems, it is marked by artistic finish and grace, and many of the lines have a natural beauty of unsought alliteration and assonance. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Necator, with a sinister aptness of alliteration! Razumov had heard of him. He had heard so much since crossing the frontier of these celebrities of the militant revolution; the legends, the stories, the authentic chronicle, which now and then peeps out before a half-incredulous world. Razumov ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... of the cocoanut tree close to the water's edge, and behind, the pile dwellings of the Malays, nestling at the foot of a wooded eminence, capped to its very summit with a dense and varied growth; such is the picture viewed from the anchorage. Din Ding, or Ding Ding—as sailors, by a system of alliteration, very fashionable amongst themselves—render it, lies at the mouth of the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... Ormulum: Its metre, its spelling. The Ancren Riwle. The Owl and the Nightingale. Proverbs. Robert of Gloucester. Romances. Havelok the Dane. King Horn. The prosody of the modern languages. Historical retrospect. Anglo-Saxon prosody. Romance prosody. English prosody. The later alliteration. The new verse. Rhyme and syllabic equivalence. Accent and quantity. The gain of form. The "accent" theory. Initial fallacies, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... regular forms here given. Indeed, regularity, as has been clearly pointed out, is the exception and not the rule; for few single lines, and, in a still more marked degree, almost no songs, adhere to one measure throughout. Precisely as "apt alliteration's artful aid" may be used or not used as may suit his purpose best, so the song-writer makes regularity of measure subservient to the effect ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... Alliteration, n. [alitercien] Aliteracion. Paggamit ng salaysay na may mga paris na titik sa unahan ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... province, my small plot—a poor pedestrian's unimportant impressions of places and faces; all these p's come by accident; and this I put in parenthetically just because an editor solemnly told me a while ago that he couldn't abide and wouldn't have alliteration's artful aid in his periodical. Let us leave the subject of what Miss Mitford was to those of her day who knew her; a thousand lovely personalities pass away every year and in a little while are no more remembered than the bright-plumaged bird that falls in the tropical ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... of alliteration, i.e. having several words in a line beginning with the same letter, is another device frequently employed by ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser |
