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More "Black letter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him, and set his hand to a letter, which held the same possibilities and was in many senses, the first Declaration of Independence. From the Town House in Boston went out the handbill, printed in black letter and signed by fifteen names, the old patriarch heading the list. Bancroft, who is seldom enthusiastic, tells the story of the demand upon Andros of immediate surrender of the government and fortifications, and the determination of the passionate ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... Ballads concerning Robin Hood (People's edit. p. 27.), the following story, extracted from Certaine Merry Tales of the Madmen of Gottam, by Dr. Andrew Borde, an eminent physician, temp. Hen. VIII. (Black letter), ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 59, December 14, 1850 • Various
... "the translation according to the Ebrewe," which differs but little from the former, in Roman letter, and "the translation used in common prayer," or that of the Great Bible, printed by Whitchurch, 1553, in black letter. ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.02.09 • Various
... men, who had been shut up all their lives in their studies, poking their noses into saucepans full of cookeries, which did not resemble savory soups or well-flavored ragouts, wearing their eyes out with reading books printed in the crabbedest black letter possible, and shrivelling up their brains with thinking, until they quite rattled inside their skulls, all in ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... fell in love, as she expressed it, with the illuminated capitals. Of this fancy she eagerly availed herself to lead him on to an acquaintance with the alphabet; and from hence proceeded to teach him to read in an old Testament or Bible in the black letter. Doctor Gregory, one of his biographers, justly observes, that it is not unreasonable to suppose his peculiar fondness for antiquities to ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... it, always choosing the obscurer word as the obscurer arts. First he set himself to the sever practice of the text; he spent many hours and days of toil in struggling to fashion the serried columns of black letter, writing and rewriting till he could shape the massive character with firm true hand. He cut his quills with the patience of a monk in the scriptorium, shaving and altering the nib, lightening and increasing the pressure and flexibility of the points, till the pen satisfied him, and gave ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... philosophy of Hume, the simplicity of Goldsmith, the industry of Henry, the research of Turner, and the patience of Lingard. The pages of these writers, however, accurate and luminous as they generally are, as well as those of Brady, Tyrrell, Carte, Rapin, and others, not to mention those in black letter, still require correction from the "Saxon Chronicle"; without which no person, however learned, can possess anything beyond a superficial acquaintance with the elements of English History, and ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... that which was developed in 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 ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... real influence. I grieve that every late voluminous edition of his works would enable me to substantiate the present charge with a variety of facts one tenth of which would of themselves exhaust the time allotted to me. Every critic, who has or has not made a collection of black letter books—in itself a useful and respectable amusement,—puts on the seven-league boots of self-opinion, and strides at once from an illustrator into a supreme judge, and blind and deaf, fills his three-ounce phial at the waters of Niagara; and determines ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... but not till many treasures had been garnered. Last of all he became a book-hunter, beginning with little volumes of poetry and the drama from 1590 to 1610; and as time went on the boundaries expanded, but never so as to include black letter. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... twinkling insult on Heaven's darken'd face, Like a conven'd conspiracy of spies Wink at each other with confiding eyes! Turn from the portent—all is blank on high, 5 No constellations alphabet the sky: The Heavens one large Black Letter only shew, And as a child beneath its master's blow Shrills out at once its task and its affright—[486:4] The groaning world now learns to read aright, 10 And with its Voice ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... maidens of popular rights were rescued; great deeds of valor done. Legends were created, the legend of Leonard Wood, somewhat damaged in the last campaign, the legend of the Tennis Cabinet, with its Garfields and its Pinchots, now to be read about only in the black letter books of the early twentieth century, and the legend of Elihu Root, still supported in a measure by the evidences of his highly acute intelligence, but still like everything else of those ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... found to be not sufficiently capacious. The tenor bell, said to have been the third bell, at Burscough, bears some apparent proof of its translation. Round the circle, below the ear, is the following inscription in black letter, except the initials of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... 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
... not know what good angel that watches over us collectors made me take up the thing, which I found to be nothing less than a copy of old Guillaume Coquillart. It was not Galliot du Pre's edition, in lettres rondes, but, still more precious had it only been complete, an example in black letter. I give you the whole title. First the motto, in the frieze of an architectural design, [Greek text]. Then, in small ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... Duerer could have given unto them on copperplate or canvas. The body of the stove itself was divided into panels, which had the Ages of Man painted on them in polychrome; the borders of the panels had roses and holly and laurel and other foliage, and German mottoes in black letter of odd Old-World moralizing, such as the old Teutons, and the Dutch after them, love to have on their chimney-places and their drinking-cups, their dishes and flagons. The whole was burnished with gilding in many parts, and was radiant everywhere with ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... amputated and laid away in it, with the parental library, which, we are sorry to say, is equally doubtful in point of both ornament and use. The good gossips slyly peep into the covers of Matthew Henry, and regard their retiring pastor as a more learned man than they had suspected, while the black letter-press of Lorenzo Dow, and John Bunyan, and Fox's "Book of Martyrs" touches them like so much necromancy. The faithful old clock, whose disorders are crises in our humdrum pastoral year, is stopped and disjointed, much to our marvel, and all the spare straw in the barn is brought to ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... broadside in black letter in the Pepysian Library at Cambridge; bound up at the end of a book ...
— Ballads of Mystery and Miracle and Fyttes of Mirth - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Second Series • Frank Sidgwick
... that 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 in arranging ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... century go by the name of incunabula. [7] Of the seven or eight million volumes which appeared before 1500 A.D., about thirty thousand are believed to be still in existence. Many of these earliest books were printed in heavy, "black letter" type, an imitation of the characters used in monkish manuscripts. It is still retained for most books printed in Germany. The clearer and neater "Roman" characters, resembling the letters employed for ancient Roman inscriptions, came into use in southern ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... question of printing. This great and admirable writer had one constant fault, which is so vulgar and trivial that it remains as much of a wonder as it is of an offence. He seeks emphasis by the expedient of big type and small type, of capitals and small capitals, of italics and black letter, and of tawdry little illustrations. Long before the reader arrives at the point at which it is intended that his emotions shall be stirred, his eye warns him that the shock is coming. He knows beforehand that the rhetorical bolt is to fall just there, and when it comes it is ten to one that ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... home hugging a volume of sermons, another with a bulky collection of catalogues, which would have distended the pockets even of the wide great-coat made for the purpose, that Charles Nodier used to wear when he went a book-hunting. Others are captivated by black letter, others by the plays of such obscurities as Nabbes and Glapthorne. But however various the tastes of collectors of books, they are all agreed on one point,—the love of printed paper. Even an Elzevir man can sympathise with Charles Lamb's ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... 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 were filled up apparently ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mendicant. There was a word and a number upon the plank, and the beggar made them more distinct by spitting upon his ragged blue handkerchief, and rubbing off the clay by which the inscription was obscured. It was in the ordinary black letter. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... once inhabited by the Viscount Albert de Morcerf was now a spacious library. The walls were lined with tall book-shelves, mounting to the lofty ceiling, and groaning under ponderous piles of volumes, from the huge black letter folio of the Middle Ages to the lightest duodecimo of the day; while in all parts of the chamber, on the floor, tables and chairs, and in the deep embrasures of the windows, were scattered huge masses of papers, pamphlets, ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... fragments preserved, and now in my possession, are a goodly portion of one of the most rare books from the press of Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's successor. The title is a curious woodcut with the words "Gesta Romanorum" engraved in an odd-shaped black letter. It has also numerous rude wood-cuts throughout. It was from this very work that Shakespeare in all probability derived the story of the three caskets which in "The Merchant of Venice" forms so integral a portion ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... same proportion as the assiduous study of the law was next to invigorate and quicken it. In conversation with his brother he remarked, "that Blackstone's Commentaries would have saved him seven years' labor pouring over and delving in black letter." He appears to have formed a very correct judgment respecting the nature of professional education and the best means of mastering its abstruse details. He constantly inculcated upon the young men who came to study in his office the maxim, ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... written in pencil, in a fine but very peculiar handwriting, which was hard to read: it was just like black letter. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... had been shut up all their lives in their studies, poking their noses into saucepans full of cookeries, which did not resemble savory soups or well-flavored ragouts, wearing their eyes out with reading books printed in the crabbedest black letter possible, and shrivelling up their brains with thinking, until they quite rattled inside their skulls, all in ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... into French by an Irish Catholic of the name of O'Neil. From this expurgated French edition the Spanish copy now before me was translated. From this Spanish edition I had made the several translations that are found in this, and the following chapters. I have since found a black letter copy of the original, printed at London, in 1677; but I have concluded to use the translations, as furnishing a more official character to the picture therein drawn of the grossly immoral state of the clergy, and of the religious orders. ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... quarter of the letters have other forms. But the changes, though few, give to a printed page a very different appearance. Under William the Conqueror, this alphabet was superseded by the modern Gothic, Old English, or Black letter; which, in its turn, happily gave place to the present Roman. The Germans still use a type similar to the Old English, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... existing spire steeple was found to be not sufficiently capacious. The tenor bell, said to have been the third bell, at Burscough, bears some apparent proof of its translation. Round the circle, below the ear, is the following inscription in black letter, except the initials ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... 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
... got out on the front seat Wych Hazel found that a flood of bright, slant sunbeams were searching out all the beauty there was in the land, and winning it into view. It was one of those illuminated hours, that are to the common day as an old painted and jewelled missal to an ordinary black letter. ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... the extent of sedition and conspiracy? He who has 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
... entirely useless he had gained some skill in illumination, or limning as he preferred to call it, always choosing the obscurer word as the obscurer arts. First he set himself to the sever practice of the text; he spent many hours and days of toil in struggling to fashion the serried columns of black letter, writing and rewriting till he could shape the massive character with firm true hand. He cut his quills with the patience of a monk in the scriptorium, shaving and altering the nib, lightening and increasing the pressure and flexibility of the points, till the pen satisfied him, and gave ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... found in the library of an ancient Catholic family in the north of England. It was printed at Naples, in the black letter, in the year 1529. How much sooner it was written does not appear. The principal incidents are such as were believed in the darkest ages of Christianity; but the language and conduct have nothing that savours of barbarism. The ...
— The Castle of Otranto • Horace Walpole
... new edition of his Collections (Oxf. Hist. Soc. vol. X. p. 442) he tells us under date July 31, 1731, that "Mr West lately met with a small Pamphlet in 4to bound up with the Arminian Nunnery, at Little Gidding, and intituled 'Collectarium mansuetudinum (etc.).' 'Tis printed in the old black Letter by Cowpland, with the figure of a king in his Robes,... I do not remember to have ever seen this Book. Archbishop Usher had seen John Blacman's MSS Collections wch probably contained a great many other things relating to the Carthusians ...
— Henry the Sixth - A Reprint of John Blacman's Memoir with Translation and Notes • John Blacman
... that this foolish will (after giving him a great deal of amusement, and perhaps producing a supernatural chuckle, if such an expression of feeling is possible in the spiritual region where old Trevor might be supposed to be) would be henceforward like a testament in black letter, voided by good sense and better knowledge and time, the most certain agency of all. And his conviction had been more than carried out in the first years of his married life. Lucy forgot what was required of her. She thought no more of her father's will. It glided away into the unseen along with ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... 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
... 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
... issued a reprint of a black letter tract, entitled "A manifest Detection of the most Vyle and Detestable Use of Dice Play," which exhibits a curious picture of the tricks in vogue amongst the gamesters of the sixteenth century, and, as the Editor very justly observes, "comprises fuller explanations of terms used by Shakspeare ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... 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 de Worde ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... character, and most desperately addicted to book-hunting. Because his own house was not large enough, he hired London House, in Aldersgate Street, for the reception of his library; and here he used to regale himself with the sight and the scent of innumerable black letter volumes, arranged in "sable garb," and stowed perhaps "three deep," from the bottom to the top of his house. He died in 1725; and Catalogues of his books for sale continued, for nine succeeding years, to meet the public eye. The following is a list of all the parts which I have ever met ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Coletae vita, Paris, in 8vo, black letter, undated, leaf 8 on the reverse side. Bollandistes, Acta sanctorum, March, vol. ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
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