Word: toadding
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Venomous Toad. Pope lived in a violent age. The celebrated Augustan calm was genuine marble, but it was a pavement laid over cellars where every violence flourished. Voltaire was cudgeled for his sharp tongue. Dr. Johnson was threatened by an offended duelist. Pope himself had seen his coreligionists, the Roman Catholic gentlemen of northern England, led, bound by halters, through the violent Protestant mobs of London. Such circumstances must give an edge of sincerity to satire. Pope's verses, light as dragonflies yet possessed of tempered strength, were written under the shadow of heavy penalties...
When McClelland applies his undiluted wit in a series of Boggie tales, "The Great Goodison Toad Hunt" and other cartoon stories it's hard to remember his calligraphy, quality of line, pictorial images or composition, because you're too busy laughing. But they're all still there, and more...
...literary artistic parts makes the distinctive McClelland style a wonderful one that might someday be widely significant. But implicit in such complexity is the hazard of too-muchness. Very rarely, McClelland interjects one little irrelevancy that is just too irrelevant--it is this that makes "The Great Goodison Toad Hunt" a chore to re-read for the fifth time (if that can be termed a fault...
CZAR NICHOLAS and the TOAD...
...these volumes, it is the nonpolitical pieces, diaries, letters and odd bits on diverse subjects that most hold the mind. Orwell was a classic Englishman, full of quirks. This shines through every line he wrote, whether on the puzzling sex life of the common toad who "salutes the coming of spring [and] after his long fast, has a very spiritual look, like a strict Anglo-Catholic towards the end of Lent," or on the "modern habit of some writers who describe lovemaking in detail. . .It is something that future generations will look back on as we do on things like...