Vulgar words in A Book of Prefaces (Page 1)
This book at a glance
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~ ~ ~ Sentence 277 ~ ~ ~
What is Captain MacWhirr, hero or simply ass?
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,185 ~ ~ ~
Phelps cites, in particular, an ass named Professor Richardson, whose "American Literature," it appears, "is still a standard work" and "a deservedly high authority"--apparently in colleges.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,189 ~ ~ ~
), Mark is dismissed by this Professor Balderdash as a hollow buffoon....
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,269 ~ ~ ~
They turn out to be _God damn_ and _Jesus Christ_--three of the latter and five or six of the former.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,294 ~ ~ ~
When criticism is not merely an absurd effort to chase him out of court because his ideas are not orthodox, as the Victorians tried to chase out Darwin and Swinburne, and their predecessors pursued Shelley and Byron, it is too often designed to identify him with some branch or other of "radical" poppycock, and so credit him with purposes he has never imagined.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,379 ~ ~ ~
Beside, the typical American critic of those days was not Poe, but his arch-enemy, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, that almost fabulous ass--a Baptist preacher turned taster of the beautiful.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,712 ~ ~ ~
Of the two undoubted world figures that we have contributed to letters, one was allowed to die like a stray cat up an alley and the other was mistaken for a cheap buffoon.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,732 ~ ~ ~
One may at least speak of "Die Walküre" without being laughed at as a half-wit, and read Stirner without being confused with Castro and Raisuli, and argue that Huxley got the better of Gladstone without being challenged at the polls.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,887 ~ ~ ~
To call such an emission of graceful poppycock a literature, of course, is to mouth an absurdity, and yet, if the college professors who write treatises on letters are to be believed, it is the best we have to show.
~ ~ ~ Sentence 1,958 ~ ~ ~
Such ancient and innocent words as "bitch" and "bastard" disappeared from the American language; Bartlett tells us, indeed, in his "Dictionary of Americanisms,"[41] that even "bull" was softened to "male cow."