"Black letter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I was not likely to add much to my stock of knowledge, small as it was; and indeed nothing could well be smaller. At this period I had read nothing but a black letter romance called Parismus and Parismenus, and a few loose magazines which my mother had brought from South Molton. The Bible, indeed, I was well acquainted with; it was the favourite study of my grandmother, and reading it frequently with her, had impressed ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... restriction of rhetoric to style, and of the absorption of poetic by rhetoric is afforded by Lydgate in his Court of Sapyence. The passages which refer to rhetoric are given in full because they can otherwise be consulted only in the Caxton edition of 1481 or in the black letter copy printed by Wynkyn ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... writing were made in 1868, and I took up two very different lines of composition; I wrote some short stories of a very flimsy type, and also a work of a much more ambitious character, "The Lives of the Black Letter Saints." For the sake of the unecclesiastically trained it may be as well to mention that in the Calendar of the Church of England there are a number of Saints' Days; some of these are printed in red, and are Red Letter ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... equal vertical bands of red (hoist side), yellow, and green; uses the popular pan-African colors of Ethiopia; similar to the flag of Rwanda, which has a large black letter R centered in ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and ran through the less intelligent kinds of writing in a wild excess. Not much of the literature of this time remains in common knowledge, and for examples of these affectations one must turn over the black letter pages of forgotten books. There high-sounding and familiar words are handled and bandied about with delight, and you can see in volume after volume these minor and forgotten authors gloating over the new found treasure which placed them in their time in the van of literary success. That they ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... he was doing a locum in Dorsetshire and in due course received an answer from him. It was written in the formal manner he affected, studded with pompous epithets as a Persian diadem was studded with precious stones; and in the beautiful hand, like black letter and as difficult to read, upon which he prided himself. He suggested that Philip should join him and his family in the Kentish hop-field to which he went every year; and to persuade him said various beautiful and complicated ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... black letter "F" under each nail to designate the edge of footings. They now took their picks and dug a small score in the ground directly under all the lines, thus marking out correctly on the ground the outer and inner edge of the footings. As the elevation of the ground at the northwest corner ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... Lorelles Bote, which he describes to be a satire in verse, in which the author enumerates all the most common trades and callings then in being. It was printed, in black letter, Wynken de Worde, 4to. without date. History of Printing ii. 224, and Percy's Reliques, ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... in the ninth year of Edward IV., that is in 1470, and Caxton printed the first edition of the book in black letter, in 1485. Of this edition, now almost priceless, only two copies are known to exist, both of which are in private collections. One of these is in the United States, the other, slightly defective, is in the possession of Lord Spencer, who has also ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... the post of sexton in the church of St. Mary Redcliffe at Bristol; and at the time of which we write his uncle was sexton. In the muniment-room of the church were several coffers, containing old papers and parchments in black letter, some of which were supposed to be of value. The chests were examined by order of the vestry; the valuable papers were removed, and of the rest, as perquisites of the sexton, some fell into the hands of Chatterton's ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... eye for the minute distinctions of the technicalities of their craft; but, as short-sighted as the mole, they cannot look at justice. So they come to acknowledge no obligation but the legal, and know no law except what is written in Black Letter on parchment, printed in statute-books, reported in decisions; the Law written by God on the soul of man they know not, only the statute and decision bound in pale sheepskin. In the logic of legal deduction—technical inference—they forget the intuition of ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... held at Crosby Hall, there were exhibited by the churchwardens of St. Benet's, Gracechurch Street, Erasmus' Commentary on the Gospels in English, with the chains annexed, by which they were fastened in the church. There are two volumes, in good preservation, and black letter. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... that the adventurous and accomplished ruffler, at present captain of this district, under the new appellation of Lovett, is in reality no other than the obscure and surnameless Paul of the Mug. Now you and I, Augustus, have read human nature, though in the black letter; and I know well that were I to make my appearance in Thames Court, and were the old lady (as she certainly would, not from unkindness, but insobriety,—not that she loves me less, but heavy wet more) to divulge the secret of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a miscellaneous, but yet in some points valuable collection of old vellum manuscripts was left, at the beginning of the present century, by a poor peripatetic Scottish tailor, who could not read one word of the old black letter documents which he spent his life and his purse in collecting. Being a visionary claimant to one of the dormant Scottish peerages, he buoyed himself up with the bright hope that some clever lawyer would yet find undoubted proofs of his claims in some of the written parchments ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... (Second day out) 15th—-We are now in Hungary and just outside of Buda Pesth "the wickedest city in the world," still in spite of that fact I am going on. I am very glad I came this way— The peasants and soldiers are most amusing and like German picture-papers with black letter type— I shall stop a day in Paris now that I ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... Godfrey with her virtue—all swallowed it as gracefully as possible. Noblesse oblige. Honora had read French and English memoirs, and knew that history repeats itself. And a biography that is printed in black letter and illuminated in gold is attractive in spite of its contents. The contents, indeed, our heroine had not found uninteresting, and she turned now to the subject with ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... there of course it raged like a fire, and no one was much surprised when the vicar resigned his living and crept away to a bed-sittingroom in Museum Street, a broken old man, to spend the brief remainder of his life among black letter texts and incunabula. He could have borne any sin in the Decalogue less hardly than a breach of the military oath. He stopped Isabel, Rowsley, Lawrence himself when they tried to plead for Val. "I am not angry," he said feebly. "If my son were alive ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... any means convey the idea of covering sheet after sheet of paper with rapid writing. The strip of parchment was about fourteen inches by four. He laid it lengthwise before him, and the letters grew slowly on it, in the old black letter hand, which took some time to ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... in coffins of lead over the Holy Hole. At the rebuilding of the choir, as it was necessary again to remove them, Bishop Fox had them deposited in these chests, and placed in this situation. The chests are carved, gilt, and surmounted with crowns, with the names and epitaphs, in Latin verse and black letter, inscribed upon them. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... book!' demanded his adversary. 'Sir, and your honors,' said Wirt, straightening himself up to his full height, 'I am not bound to grope my way among the ruins of antiquity, to stumble over obsolete statutes, or delve in black letter law, in search of a principle written in living letters upon the heart of every man.' If the idea contained in this answer of Wirt, were more fully appreciated by our modern jurists, it would be all the better ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... The last mass burning in Germany was said to have taken place in 1678, when 97 persons were burned together. The earliest recorded burning of a witch in England is in Walter Mapes' De Nugis Curialium, in the reign of Henry II. An old black letter tract gloats over the execution at Northampton, 1612, of a number of persons convicted of witchcraft.[32] The last judicial sentence was in 1736, when one Jane Wenham was found guilty of conversing familiarly with the devil in the form of ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... already signalized to the nation his readiness to co-operate in so open a mischief as dismemberment of the empire, wherefore should he shrink from violating an obscure rule of the common law, or a black letter statute? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... both straung and true of hainous and horrible acts committed by Elizabeth Stile, etc. (for full title see appendix). This pamphlet is in black letter. Its account is confirmed by the reference in Acts P. C., n. s., XI, 22. See also ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... time, two years hence, when, my education being finished, I should at last rejoin my parents in India; and I was fond of describing all the beautiful things I would send as presents to the friends who had been kind to me in England. And then one fearful day came the black letter bearing the terrible news which bowed my head in the dust, scattered my girlish vanities, and altered my fate for life. Every one in the house learned the news before me. I saw blank faces all around, and could only guess the cause, so careful were they to ...
— The Late Miss Hollingford • Rosa Mulholland
... preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage, when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him from a window of Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the Thames; "when Sir Martin returned from that voyage," saith Black Letter, "on bended ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... been a general one or had it centered in a particular volume? I ran my eye over the shelves within reach, possibly with an idea of settling this question, and though my knowledge of books is limited I could see that these were what one might call rarities. Some of them contained specimens of black letter, all moldy and smothered in dust; in others I saw dates of publication which placed them among volumes dear to a collector's heart. But none of them, so far as I could see, gave any evidence of having been lately handled; and anxious to waste no time on puerile details, I hastily ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... another something better, and a third cut about 1482; one of Double Pica, good, which first appears 1490; and one of Long Primer, at least nearly agreeing with the bodies which have since been called by those names. All of Caxton's works were printed in what are called black letter. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... the Tower of London. That the Commissioners did their work we know from their account for the same, which came to L40. In the reformed prayer-book, however, Richard's name has been allowed to stand among the black letter saints. ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the ninth century by Alcuin of York, the friend and preceptor of Charlemagne. This was the parent of the Roman alphabet, in which our books are now printed. Among other deteriorations, there crept in, in the fourteenth century, the Gothic or black letter character, and these barbarous forms are still essentially retained by the Teutonic nations though discarded by the English and Latin races; but from its superior excellences the Roman alphabet is constantly extending its range and bids fair to become the sole alphabet of the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... a Catalogue of Curious Books; containing numerous Works on the Occult Sciences, America, Asia, Books of Prints, curious Quarto Tracts, English Black Letter, Early Printed Works, Proverbs, Facetiae, &c. &c. May be had on application, or by forwarding Two ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 63, January 11, 1851 • Various
... Luther's ninety-five theses, nailed upon the church door in Wittenberg, did not assert woman's natural or religious equality with man. It was a maxim of his that "no gown worse becomes a woman, than that she should be wise." A curious old black letter volume, published in London in 1632, declares that "the reason why women have no control in parliament, why they make no laws, consent to none, abrogate none, is their original sin." The trial of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, in the seventeenth century, was chiefly for the sin of having ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Old ballads, old plays, and old women's stories, are at present in as much request as old wine or new speeches. In fact, this is the millennium of black letter: thanks to our ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... however, to see that one great battleground of controversy in any suggested reforms must be the design of the type itself. Here, fortunately, the English public starts with a great advantage. We have thrown overboard our old black letter with its dazzling contrasts of shading and its fussy ornament, and therefore can begin where the Germans must some day leave off. We have no accents or other diacritical marks, and in this respect are superior ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... only an auctioneer admires all schools of literature. I think it is certain that the way to get most enjoyment from books is to specialise a little. Mr. Pepys, it will be remembered, collected Black Letter Ballads, Penny Merriments, Penny Witticisms, Penny Compliments, and Penny Godlinesses, and what Pepys paid a penny for are now worth much gold. Lord Crawford is, I believe, one of the most enthusiastic among present day collectors, and I am told that he spends many hours ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... with engraved blocks and even with movable types. In the German towns, where the art spread rapidly, the printers adhered to the style of letters which the scribe had found it convenient to make with his quill—the so-called Gothic, or black letter.[230] In Italy, where the first printing press was set up in 1466, a type was soon adopted which resembled the letters used in ancient Roman inscriptions. This was quite similar to the style of letter commonly used to-day. The Italians also invented the compressed italic type, which enabled ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... glouben vnd ir gewon | || heit vn ouch von menigerlei cristen glouben die gensit mers sint die doch || nit gar vnsern glouben hand. Jtem von menigerlei Jueden glouben vnd || wie vil cristen land sint vnd doch nicht vnsern glouben haltend noch re | || chte cristen sind. Folio; black letter. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... has three arches in it, to lead to the old chancel, and above those arches there were some paintings. They came to light when the Old Church was pulled down. First, a great deal of plaster and whitewash came off. Then appeared part of the Commandments in Old English black letter, and below that, again, were some paintings, traced out in red upon the wall. They have been defaced so much that all that could be found out was that there was a quatrefoil shape within a square. The corners ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... famulus. In another room at some distance is seen through the door-case a man standing at a large sleeved gown of a sea-green colour, and under it a garment of a blossom-colour, holding a book open in his hands written or printed in the black letter, and reading very earnestly in it. About the middle of the room, over against Sir Thomas, hangs a clock with strings and leaden weights without ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler |
