"Mountebank" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the reading public likes! You ask him to tame the frenzy of his inspiration, to pull your pleasure-carriages with his wingd steed! He shall be no more the seer and the prophet and the leader—he shall be mountebank ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... flowers and sunshine. I don't pity my Lady, just because she shirks her duties: she merely reigns, and leaves us to govern; but I can tell you, no Prioress of this convent would have an easy life, if she did her duty. I remember once, when I was in the world, I saw a mountebank driving ten horses at once. I dare say he hadn't an easy time of it. But, lack-a-day! we have to drive thirty: and skittish fillies some of them are. I don't know what Sister Roberga has done with her vocation: but I never saw the corner of ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... conglomerate of anonymous popular traditions, largely of medieval origin, which in the latter part of the sixteenth century came to be associated with an actual individual of the name of Faustus whose notorious career during the first four decades of the century, as a pseudo-scientific mountebank, juggler and magician can be traced through various parts of Germany. The Faust Book of 1587, the earliest collection of these tales, is of prevailingly theological character. It represents Faust as a sinner and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the Emperor in the prolonged holiday he had granted the people. It was as if the Saturnalia had arrived. Industry, such as there ever is, was suspended; all were sitting idle, or thronging some game, or gathering in noisy groups about some mountebank. As we advanced farther, and came just beyond the great road leading to Tibur, we passed the school of the celebrated gladiator Sosia, at the door of which there had just arrived from the amphitheatre, a cart bearing home the bodies of such as had been slain the preceding ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... sneer, but with set pompous merriment and farcical buffoonery. This dignitary of the church, Dean of the most conspicuous cathedral in Ireland, had, in full canonicals, made himself into a regular mountebank, for the sake of giving fuller effect, by the force of contrast, to the silliest of jests directed against all that was most inalienable from Christianity. Ridiculing such things, could he, in any just sense, be thought ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... school proclaimed that Tcheriapin had discovered an entirely new technique, a revolutionary system of violin playing, another school was equally positive in declaring that he could not play at all, that he was a mountebank, a trickster, whose proper place ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... great deal of industry and of reserve, and great skill in everything connected with healing operations, restoring the sick to health, and in working wonders peculiar to himself. He was considered a clever mountebank and a good doctor. As may be imagined, he passed for a wizard as well—not much indeed; only a little, for it was unwholesome in those days to be considered a friend of the devil. To tell the truth, Ursus, by his passion for pharmacy and his love of plants, laid himself ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... heard amidst the glare of the lightning, the howl of the winds, and the roll of the thunder,—"Sir Philip Derval, you accost me in a language which, but for my experience of the powers at your command, I should hear with the contempt that is due to the vaunts of a mountebank, or the pity we give to the morbid beliefs of his dupe. As it is, I decline the confidence with which you would favour me, subject to the conditions which it seems you would impose. My profession abandons to quacks ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... could out of him, for the sake of the Republican party, as well as for the sake of the sacred cause of "liberty, equality, and fraternity." But he soon saw that he was dealing with one who was a cross between a mountebank and a madman, as we learn from a letter of Madison to Jefferson, written within two months of Jefferson's first interview with Genet. "Your account of Genet," says the letter, "is dreadful. He must be brought right if possible. His folly will otherwise do mischief ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... time," said the young lawyer. "In the first place, what did that mountebank, Colleville, ever do ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... from his yellow, wrinkled cheeks. He was visibly punished by his journey; the sweat streamed from his leather and under his puckered eyelids his eyes flamed imprecations. His grotesque body was enveloped in yet more grotesque apparel—the piebald of the buffoon, the mottled livery of the chartered mountebank. There was a slender collar of gold about his neck, on which those that were near enough to him and had quick sight might read in plain terms that he was a royal fool, one of those jesters whom the great loved to tend to their beck, ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... as well as other monkeys in cap and jerkin. You're a minstrel or a mountebank, I'll be sworn; you look for all the world as silly as a tumbler when he's been upside down and has got on his heels again. And what fool's tricks hast thou been after, Tessa?" she added, turning to her daughter, whose frightened ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... sc. 2, after Mosca and Volpone have erected a stage upon the stage, Volpone enters, disguised as a mountebank, and abuses those 'ground ciarlatani' (charlatans, impostors) 'who come in lamely, with their mouldy tales out of Boccaccio.' Then there is a most clear allusion to Hamlet (act iv. sc. 6), where he informs his friend Horatio, by letter, of his voyage to England when he was ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... and Intellect thronged the house. Nothing could have been more cordial than the temper of the gallery. All were eager to applaud the new Romeo. Presently, when the varlets of Verona had brawled, there stepped into the square—what!—a mountebank, a monstrosity. Hurrah died upon every lip. The house was thunderstruck. Whose legs were in those scarlet pantaloons? Whose face grinned over that bolster-cravat, and under that Charles II. wig and opera-hat? From whose shoulders hung that spangled sky-blue cloak? Was this bedizened scarecrow ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... was the last of his cloth; forced and constant jesting becoming less and less appreciated. As the jesters approached their end, they had more of the moralist and politician in them than of the mountebank. We may judge of Killegrew's wit, when we read that one day on his appearance Charles said to his gay companions, "Now we shall hear our faults." "No," replied the jester, "I don't care to trouble my ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... some think he's a spy, some guess he's a mountebank, some say one thing, some another: but, for my own part, ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... silent, Catharine, on what thou hast seen and heard in yonder thicket. It is but a brief oblivion I ask of you, whose word will, I know, be listened to, whether you say such things were or were not. That of your mountebank companion, the foreigner, none will hold to be of a pin point's value. If you grant me this, I will take your promise for my security, and throw the gate open to those who now approach it. If you will not promise ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... father!" There was a sharp sting in the speech which ran into him suddenly, and put him in a worse mood. So he had National Participled the unconscious Corporal with most hearty emphasis, and had made up his mind to think no more about such a mountebank. ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... this jargon?" said the prince, in visible astonishment and secret awe. "Comest thou to menace me in my own halls, or wouldst thou warn me of a danger? Art thou some itinerant mountebank, or some unguessed-of friend? Speak out, and plainly. What ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Jonah, "is the sodden mountebank who dares to cast a stone into the limpid pool of my character. That ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... these hideous animals for their amusement. At his feet gamboled a dwarf that squeaked and screeched, distorting its face in hideous grimaces. Scattered about the room, singing, bawling or brawling, were indigent morris dancers; bare-footed minstrels; a pinched and needy versificator; a reduced mountebank; a swarthy clown, with a hare's mouth; joculators of the streets, poor as rats and living as such, straitened, heedless fellows, with heads full of nonsense and purses empty, poor in ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Duchesse de Bourgogne and Madame had arm-chairs in the center of the hall. The Duchesse de Bourgogne was surprised to see a splendid theater, adorned with her arms and monogram. . . . As soon as the princess was seated, Bari, the famous mountebank of Paris, came forward and asked her protection against the doctors, and having extolled the excellence of his remedies, and the marvels of his secrets, he offered to the princess as a little diversion ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne
... looked less like a hell-cat than any vision of the animal I ever imagined) "wants to make out that seventy-one times seven annas and three pice is forty-nine rupees, eleven annae! Oh, you charlatan! You mountebank! You black-blooded robber! You miscreant! Cut ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... will appear to eat a sword; another will vomit coals or pebbles; one will drink wine and send it out again at his forehead; another will cut off his companion's head, and put it on again. You will think you see a chicken dragging a beam. The mountebank will swallow fire and vomit it forth, he will draw blood from fruit, he will send from his mouth strings of iron nails, he will put a sword on his stomach and press it strongly, and instead of running into him, it will bend back to the hilt; another will run a sword through his body ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... literature. He had seen Tarrant, or his equivalent, often before; he had "whipped" him, as he believed, controversially, again and again, at political meetings in blighted Southern towns, during the horrible period of reconstruction. If Mrs. Farrinder had looked at Verena Tarrant as if she were a mountebank, there was some excuse for it, inasmuch as the girl made much the same impression on Basil Ransom. He had never seen such an odd mixture of elements; she had the sweetest, most unworldly face, and yet, with it, an air of being on exhibition, of belonging to a troupe, of living in the gaslight, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... apologize Now that you've brought me. As I said at first, I am prepared to see a mountebank Perform his pretty tricks of eloquence To set the crowd agape. Why, once a week The Ethical Society hires one To work the same performance—quite the same Each time. Unearth a few forgotten doubts, Or dig your elbow into some new dogma, And you will see the mob fawn ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... and Harper's great booth, where, by the picture of the wooden horse, we are told, is represented "The Siege of Troy." The next paintings consist of the fall of Adam and Eve, and a scene in Punch's opera. Beneath is a mountebank, exalted on a stage, eating fire to attract the public attention; while his merry-andrew behind is distributing his medicines. Further back is a shift and hat, carried upon poles, designed as prizes for the best runner or wrestler. In front is a group of strollers parading the fair, in ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... how blunt it was, pretended the blade was loose, and put it on the anvil to rivet it. "It must have been used to cut paving-stories with," said he. But this was absurd; the blade was neither loose nor had it been misused. He was evidently a mountebank. ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... itinerant, mountebank, conjurer, cheat, sophist, and sorcerer, heaped upon the teachers of Christianity; sometimes to account for the report or apparent truth of their miracles, sometimes to explain their success. Our Lord was said to have learned his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... amusement in it, a queer Eastern comedy of the mountebank who raised his eyes to a Druse princess, and wife of a Frank ship's master. It might be amusing to Fenzile to see this conqueror of men conquered by her presence, but it wasn't dignified. By ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... of "coney-catching." Deceptive and vaunting title-pages were practised to such excess, that TOM NASH, an "Author by Profession," never fastidiously modest, blushed at the title of his "Pierce Pennilesse," which the publisher had flourished in the first edition, like "a tedious mountebank." The booksellers forged great names to recommend their works, and passed off in currency their base metal stamped with a royal head. "It was an usual thing in those days," says honest Anthony Wood, "to set a great name to a book or books, by the sharking booksellers ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Addison, in the 240th Tatler, "when our whole island was shaken with an earthquake some years ago, that there was an impudent mountebank who sold pills, which, as he told the country people, were 'very good against ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... you. His eyes brightened and hardened, and his manner changed to what I remember it in past times—to that mixture of pitiless resolution and mountebank mockery which makes it so impossible to fathom him. 'Warn Mr. Hartright!' he said in his loftiest manner. 'He has a man of brains to deal with, a man who snaps his big fingers at the laws and conventions ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... of hundreds of thousands were turned with anxious interest, Gloucestershire. Would the patriotic and high spirited gentry and yeomanry of that great county again confide their dearest interests to the Impudent Scandal of parliaments, the renegade, the slanderer, the mountebank, who had been, during thirteen years, railing at his betters of every party with a spite restrained by nothing but the craven fear of corporal chastisement, and who had in the last Parliament made himself conspicuous by the abject court which he had paid to Lewis and by the impertinence ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... he should in some way be deprived of his treasure." While spinning out this lengthy yarn, Messer Alfonso did not look at me, because we were not previously acquainted. But when that precious clay model appeared, he displayed it with such airs of ostentation, pomp, and mountebank ceremony, that, after inspecting it, I turned to Messer Alberto and said: "I am indeed lucky to have had the privilege to see it!" [2] Messer Alfonso, quite affronted, let some contemptuous words escape him, and exclaimed: ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... to GEORGE FRANCIS, that he is himself a marvel of taciturnity—that in the noble art of sounding his own trumpet he is a mere child—that as a contributor to the public amusement he is in danger of falling into paltry insignificance. Alas! he is not the marvellous mountebank which he has heretofore considered himself to be; and the nonsense upon which he so prided himself, in comparison with the nonsense of GEORGE FRANCIS, sinks into the most melancholy and insufferable wisdom. He looks forward to the future with a fear lest he may descend to the depths of serious ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... the moral. The constructive ingenuity exhibited throughout is almost morbid. Nothing could be more happily imagined, as a reductio ad absurdum of the aristocratic principle, than the adventures of Gwynplaine, the itinerant mountebank, snatched suddenly out of his little way of life, and installed without preparation as one of the hereditary legislators of a great country. It is with a very bitter irony that the paper, on which all this depends, is left to float for years at the will of wind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... yon reverend lad Maks faces to tickle the mob; He rails at our mountebank squad, Its rivalship ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... it is, I am not one of those genial fellows, half boys themselves, who can join in the sports con amore; I should only make a mountebank of myself if I tried, and the boys would distrust ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a machine resembling an English round-a-bout, with wooden horses for the players, each of whom was furnished with a foil, with which he strove to seize the greatest number of rings from the centre; this was, indeed, a chivalrous exhibition. Stilt-walkers, mountebank families, and jugglers, "chequered in bulk and brains," lent their aid to amuse the crowd; and, occasionally, two or three fellows contrived to enact scenes from plays, and with their vulgar wit to merit the applause of their audience. Portable clock-work exhibitions swarmed, and mummeries ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... that is to say—another handsome young man started up and eclipsed the EARL OF SOMERSET. This was GEORGE VILLIERS, the youngest son of a Leicestershire gentleman: who came to Court with all the Paris fashions on him, and could dance as well as the best mountebank that ever was seen. He soon danced himself into the good graces of his Sowship, and danced the other favourite out of favour. Then, it was all at once discovered that the Earl and Countess of Somerset had not deserved all those great promotions and mighty rejoicings, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... and in her hair she had the scarlet flowers of the hibiscus. She showed the best bearing for a bride conceivable, serious and still; and I thought shame to stand up with her in that mean house and before that grinning negro. I thought shame, I say; for the mountebank was dressed with a big paper collar, the book he made believe to read from was an odd volume of a novel, and the words of his service not fit to be set down. My conscience smote me when we joined hands; and when she got her certificate I was tempted to throw up the ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was, or believed himself to be, in the same mind. In a letter to Moore, dated April 9, 1814 (Letters, 1899, iii. 64), he writes, "No more rhyme for—or rather, from—me. I have taken my leave of that stage, and henceforth will mountebank it no longer." He had already—Journal, April 8 (Letters, 1898, ii. 408)—heard a rumour "that his poor little pagod, Napoleon" was "pushed off his pedestal," and before or after he began his letter to Moore he must have read an announcement in the Gazette Extraordinary (April 9, 1814—the ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... has got to take his life in his hand. Precautions are pretty well useless. In nine cases out of ten the assassin—I mean the fellow who wants to be an assassin and tries to be an assassin—is a mere mountebank, who might be safely allowed to shoot at you or stab at you as long as he likes and no harm done. Why? Because the creature is nervous, and afraid to risk his own life. Get the man who wants to kill you, and does not care ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... the voice of La Tour d'Azyr, who had half-risen from his seat: "Mountebank! This is ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... "What happened to Kramer?" he asked. And the German told him a strange story. Kramer was a queer mountebank sort of a chap who before conscription claimed him had been clown in a circus, and his antics and gymnastic feats had made him very popular with his fellow-troopers. He had been a good soldier too; and when he ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... him, wee would spare him till some other tyme. I never failed to take such noates by wrighting out of his doctrine as my capacity could comprehend, unless some raynie day hindred my endeavor. My mynde never swelled with such ympossible mountebank humors as could make me affect any other kingdome than the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... their exhausted exchequers, I knew none of them. Work I abhorred with a detestation worthy of a scion of nobility; and, I believe, you could just as soon have persuaded the lineal representative of the Howards or Percys to exhibit himself in the character of a mountebank, as have got me to trust my person on the pinnacle of a three-legged stool. The rule of three is all very well for base mechanical souls; but I flatter myself I have an intellect too large to be ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... modelilo. Mould (soil) tero. Mouldy sxima. Mouldy, to get sximigxi. Moult sxangxi plumojn. Moult (birds) sxangxi plumojn. Mound remparo, digo. Mount supreniri. Mount monteto. Mountain monto. Mountaineer montano. Mountainous monta. Mountain-range montaro. Mountebank jxonglisto. Mourn malgxoji, ploregi. Mournful funebra. Mourning (dress) funebra vesto. Mouse muso. Mouse, shrew soriko. Mouse-trap muskaptilo. Moustache lipharoj. Mouth busxo. Mouth (of river) enfluo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... prince you were promised? Rather a come down, one must admit." Lanyard laughed low, and moved nearer. "I'm sorry, I mean I might be (for myself, too) if Nogam were less a fraud than that pretentious mountebank, Prince Victor—or for the matter of that, if you were as poor of spirit as you would seem on your own valuation, if you were not at heart your mother's daughter, and mine, my child by a woman whom I loved well, and who long ago ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... were posted upon the walls, and threw some money here and there into the collection-boxes for the wounded, which were placed on chairs in the middle of the pathway. Then she stopped before some caricatures representing Louis Philippe as a pastry-cook, as a mountebank, as a dog, or as a leech. But she was a little frightened at the sight of Caussidiere's men with their sabres and scarfs. At other times it was a tree of Liberty that was being planted. The clergy vied with each other in blessing ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... mountebank—a meddler, that's what he is. The sooner we come to realise it, the better," exclaimed the over-heated Duke. "He has greater influence over our beloved Prince than any one else in the royal household. He has no business here—none whatsoever. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... mountebank!", said March, with great amusement at Fulkerson's access; "you call that congeries of advertising instinct of yours the human mind at its best? Come, don't be so diffident, Fulkerson. Well, I'm off to find Lindau, and when I come back I hope Mr. Dryfoos will have you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... find the following sententious paragraph in the county paper for 1792:—"This is an age of Sights and polite entertainment in the country as well as in the city.—The little town of Storrington has lately been visited by a Company of Comedians,—a Mountebank Doctor,—and a Puppet Show. One day the Doctor's Jack Pudding finding the shillings come in but slowly, exclaimed to his Master, 'Gad, Sir, it is not worth our while to stay here any longer, players have got all the gold, we all the silver, and Punch all the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... unquenchable curiosity, that exuberance of mental spirits that forces to rapid and continuous expression, has ever been suspect of the English mind. He was "highly caressed in France." To Evelyn Sir Kenelm was a "teller of strange things," and again the Diarist called him "an errant mountebank"—though Evelyn sought his society, and was grateful for its stimulus. Lady Fanshawe, who met him at Calais, at the Governor's table, says he "enlarged somewhat more in extraordinary stories than might be averred.... That was his infirmity, though otherwise a person of most excellent parts, and ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... slung upon her arm, Of hawker's wares—books, pictures, combs, and pins— Some aged woman finds her way again, 30 Year after year, a punctual visitant! There also stands a speech-maker by rote, Pulling the strings of his boxed raree-show; And in the lapse of many years may come [7] Prouder itinerant, mountebank, or he 35 Whose wonders in a covered wain lie hid. But one there is, [8] the loveliest of them all, Some sweet lass of the valley, looking out For gains, and who that sees her would not buy? Fruits of her father's orchard, are her wares, 40 ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... hair, he rubbed the turpentine upon the bare flesh, which immediately beginning to burn and smart, the afflicted quadruped began to express his sense of pain, by flinging his hinder legs, gently shaking himself, and other restless motions, which made the poor mountebank wonder what had befallen his horse; but the pain increasing, the disorderly behaviour of the steed increased proportionably, who now began to kick, prance, stand on end, neigh, immoderately shake himself, ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... the spreading of false intelligence, for the purpose of elevating the funds, if he actually appeared to Lord Cochrane stripped of his great coat, and with that red coat and aid-de-camp's uniform, star and order, which have been represented to you, he appeared before him rather in the habit of a mountebank than in his ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... that stranger, dark and tall, On the wooden settle next to the wall— Mountebank, pilgrim, or ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... a liar and a blackguard!" said Fontenelle fiercely, "And unless you apologise for your insult to the lady whose name you have presumed to utter with your mountebank tongue—" ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... all affectation as a thing of the mountebank or pantomime, and appears himself without a Jezebel's paint or a Jacob's clothing, so that you may know at once who he is, what he says, and ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... Jesuits, Methodists, philosophers, politicians, the hypocrite Rousseau, the scoffer Voltaire, the encyclopedists, the Humes, the Lytteltons, the Grenvilles, the atheist tyrant of Prussia, and the mountebank of history, Mr. Pitt, all are to me but impostors in their various ways. Fame or interest is their object; and after all their parade, I think a ploughman who sows, reads his almanack, and believes the stars but so many farthing candles, created to prevent his falling ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... givest victory in the race of life, How are ye still by envious malice dogged! This place of power, which now I hold, by me Unsought, was by the city's will bestowed. Yet the thrice-loyal Creon, my fast friend, Seeks now to oust me by foul practices, Using for tool this knavish soothsayer, This lying mountebank, whose greedy palm Has eyes, while in his science he is blind. Show me the proofs of thy prophetic gift. Why, when the riddling Sphinx was here, didst thou Fail by thy skill to save the commonwealth? The riddle was not ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... his passion, in a diatribe which beats in abomination any slang that was ever ranted out of a tub by a mountebank saint, he harps back upon the prodigious attractiveness of his mistress, in the following pathetic, though not very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... exalted that, though they might have been cut to pieces, they could never have been defeated or routed. I pity our children when I reflect that their tranquillity and happiness will, perhaps, depend upon such a corrupt and unprincipled people of soldiers,—easy tools in the hands of every impostor or mountebank. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... bargee, after their backs were turned, told their story and made known their identity to an open-mouthed and delighted audience, no one would have suspected that the two little ragamuffins in company with the outlandish-looking mountebank were the lost children whose tragic fate had cast quite a gloom over the neighbourhood, and elicited such universal sympathy with the ladies at Firgrove and the poor bereaved father fighting for his country far, far away ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur |
