STALK. See he gathers up his spright, And begins to hunt for life. 275 BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, The Faithful Shepherdess, iv. 1. Ill fate assumed a body thee t'affright, I'll meet thee at Philippi said the spright.-COWLEY. Horace Walpole. He coins new words, destroys the senses of old words, and twists sentences into forms which make grammarians stare. But all this he does, not only with an air of ease, but as if he could not help doing it. His wit has in it essential properties of the same kind with that of Cowley and Donne. Like theirs it consisted in points of contrast and points of analogy too subtle for common observation. His tone was light and fleering, his topics were the topics of the club and ball-room, his strange combinations and sprightly allusions, though very closely resembling those which tire us to death in the poems of the time of Charles the First, are read with pleasure constantly new.-MACAULAY. Stalk. The old meaning, of a quiet or even stealthy walk, is still retained in 'deer-stalking.' But the word now generally implies a proud and stately step. She took the Princess by the hand, Madam, will ye stalk LYDGATE. Mrs. Siddons. Who shall sit majestic on the throne of Tragedy-a Goddess, a prophetess, and a muse-the lightning of her eye flash'd o'er the mind, startling its inmost thoughts, and the thunder of her voice circled through the labouring breast, rousing deep and scarce-known feelings from their slumber? Who shall stalk over the field of horrors, its presiding genius, or play the hostess at the banqueting scene of murder? Who shall walk in sleepless ecstasy of soul, and haunt the mind, aye, ever after, with the dread pageantry of suffering and guilt? While the stage lasts there will never be another Mrs. Siddons. Tragedy seemed to sit with her, and the rest are but blazing comets or fiery exhalations.-HAZLITT. 276 STARK-STARVE. Stark. The old meaning, of stiff and strong, is ob solete. Me carrying in his clawes starke, As lightly as I were a lark.-CHAUCER. Take from me, O Lord, this lukewarm or rather stark, cold manner of meditation, and this dulness of prayer. Sir T. MORE. Whom when the good Sir Guyon did behold, Many a nobleman lies stark and stiff SPENSER. SHAKSPEARE, 1 Henry IV, v. 3. As fast lock'd up in sleep as guiltless labour, Id., Measure for Measure, iv. 2. Stark beer, boy, stout and strong beer. BEAUMONT and FLETCHER. Tell me, ye naturalists, who sounded the first march and retreat of the tide? Why does not the water recover his right over the earth, being higher in nature? Whence came the salt, and who boiled it, which made so much brine? When the winds are not only wild in a storm, but even stark mad in a hurricane, who is it that restores them again to their wits, and brings them asleep in a calm ?—FULLER. Starve. To perish; now only by hunger or cold. Here starf the fair Narcissus. Narcissus was a bachelere, That love had caught in his dangere.-CHAUCER. The career of Genius is rarely one of fortune or happiness, and the father who may not himself be insensible to glory, dreads lest his son be found among that obscure multitude, that populace of mean artists, self-deluded, yet self-satisfied, who must starve at the barrier of mediocrity.-I. DISRAELI. STAY-STILL. 277 Stay. To omit. When you have done my message to them I require you not to stay to search thoroughly yourself, that I may be satisfied, and that with such convenient speed as you may.-Lord DUDLEY, on Amy Robsart's death. Let us stay to consider to whom we owe our ameliorated condition, to the successive few in every age, more indeed in one age than another, but relatively to the mass of mankind always few such men as the first Christians who proclaimed their doctrines to the pagan world, such lightnings as were flashed by Wickliff, Huss, Calvin, Zuinglius, Latimer, across the papal darkness, and such in our own times the agitating truths with which Thomas Clarkson and his excellent confederates, the Quakers, fought and conquered the legalised banditti of manstealers.-COLERIDGE. Stead. Used by Dryden for a bedstead. Thou hast a chamber stead Which Vulcan purposely contrived, there sleep It is a great convenience to those who want wit to furnish out a conversation that there is something or other, in all companies where it is wanted, substituted in its stead, which according to their taste does the business quite as well. That which we call punning is greatly affected by men of small intellects thus, if you talk of a candle, he can deal with you, and if you ask him for some bread, a punster should think himself very ill-bred if he did not give it; and if he is not as well-bred as yourself he hopes for grains of allowance. Spectator. Still. No longer used in the sense of always. I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick; nobody marks you.-SHAKSPEARE, Much Ado about Nothing, i. 1. Still quiring to the young-eyed Cherubins. Id., Merchant of Venice, v. I. Chymists would be rich if they could still do in great quan tities what they have sometimes done in little.-BOYLE. 278 STITCHES-STOMACH. What would I give not to have heard the calamities fallen on the heads of the King and Queen of France. I know no more yet than of their being betrayed and stopped at Clermont, and ordered back to Paris with their children. What superabundance of woe! To expect insult, ignominy, a prison, perhaps separation, or death, without a ray of comfortable hope for these infants. That their imprisonment and danger should have been grievous I do not wonder, but to await dissension and anarchy amongst their tyrants was the best chance they had in store. But though both will still happen in time, I still believe what advantage either or both will produce may be very doubtful.— HORACE WALPOLE. And many men at plough, that drave earth here and there, And turn'd up stitches orderly.-CHAPMAN. Thomson. Those parts of any author which are most liable to be stitched in worsted and framed and glazed are not by any means always the best. The moral descriptions and reflections in Thomson's Seasons are in an admirable spirit, and written with great force and fervour. His poem of Liberty is not equally good, his Muse was too easy and good-natured for the subject. Spleen is the soul of patriotism and of public good, but you would not expect a man who has been seen eating peaches off a wall with both hands in his pockets to be overcome with spleen, or to heat himself needlessly about an abstract idea.HAZLITT. Mr. Travers, whom your Lordship names in your letter, is to no man I think better known than to myself. I did elect him Fellow of Trinity, being before rejected by Mr. Beaumont for his intolerable stomach, whereof I had afterwards such experience that I was forced by due punishment so to weary him that he was fain to travel and depart from the college to Geneva.— Archbishop WHITGIFT to Lord Burleigh. He was a man Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking Himself with Princes.-SHAKSPEARE, Henry VIII, iv. 2. STRAIT-SUBSCRIBE. 279 Can you dress the boys' hair? No: then you won't do for a school. Have you had the small-pox? No: then you won't do for a school. Can you lie three in a bed? No: then you will never do for a school. Have you a good stomach? Yes? then you will by no means do for a school.-GOLDSMITH. Strait. Narrow. Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life.-Authorised Version, Matthew vii. 14. Irishman. He is a flying enemy, hiding himself in woods and bogs from whence he will not draw forth but into some strait passage or perillous foard.-SPENSER. Stranger. A foreigner. Queen Mary had made an odious marriage with a stranger, which is now in question whether your Majesty shall do so or no.-Sir PHILIP SIDNEY to Queen Elizabeth. I am a most poor woman and a stranger, SHAKSPEARE, Henry VIII, ii. 4. The facility with which we received the literature of foreign countries instead of being a reason for neglecting our own is a strong motive for its cultivation. It were better to have no literature than form ourselves unresistingly on a foreign one. The true sovereigns of a country are those who determine its mind, its modes of thinking, its tastes, its principles, and we cannot consent to lodge this sovereignty in the hands of strangers. A country, like an individual, has dignity and power only in proportion as it is self-formed. We say let others spin and weave for but let them not think for us.-W. E. CHANNING. us, Subscribe. To submit, obey. For Hector in his blaze of wrath subscribes To tender objects. SHAKSPEARE, Troilus and Cressida, iv. 5. |