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Pretender   Listen
noun
Pretender  n.  
1.
One who lays claim, or asserts a title (to something); a claimant. Specifically, The pretender (Eng. Hist.), the son or the grandson of James II., the heir of the royal family of Stuart, who laid claim to the throne of Great Britain, from which the house was excluded by law. "It is the shallow, unimproved intellects that are the confident pretenders to certainty."
2.
One who pretends, simulates, or feigns.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pretender" Quotes from Famous Books



... Zoroastrian Studies, p. 236. Prexaspes says that "if the dead rise again" Smerdis maybe the son of Cyrus. He may mean that this is not probable. Smerdis, he would in that case say, is certainly dead, and this pretender can be the son of Cyrus only in case the dead come ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... remarkable. It is almost as if I had foreseen this; and I am thankful for your escape, though I am sincerely sorry for Giles. Had we not dismissed him already, we could hardly have found it in our hearts to dismiss him now. So I say, be thankful. I'll do all I can for him as a friend; but as a pretender to the position of my son-in law, that can never be ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... find a pert Bookseller give himself the Airs of Judging a Performance so far, as to Condemn the Correctness of what he knows nothing of these there's a pretender to Authorship in the City, who Rules the young Fry of ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe

... subscription, (ib. 185.) The old Jacobites maintained that the power did not descend to Mary, William, or Anne. It was for this reason that Boswell said that Johnson should have been taken to Rome; though indeed it was not till some years after he was 'touched' by Queen Anne that the Pretender dwelt there. The Hanoverian kings never 'touched.' The service for the ceremony was printed in the Book of Common Prayer as late as 1719. (Penny Cyclo. xxi. 113.) 'It appears by the newspapers of the time,' says Mr. Wright, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... secretary to James II.'s queen before the {456} Revolution. It also appears in the Prolegomena to the Life of James, that two royal warrants issued at St. Germains by the abdicated monarch and his son the Pretender in 1701 and 1707, are counter-signed Caryll as Secretary of State. Is there any doubt that this is the same person; and if not, is there any account of when and on what terms he returned to England? where he must have been again ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various

... yielded to the Puritans, whose temperament had already rather characterized it. James II., as Duke of York, made it his brief sojourn; "proud Cumberland," returning from Culloden after the defeat of the Pretender, visited the city and received its freedom for destroying the last hope of the Stuarts; perhaps the twenty-two rebels who were then put to death in York were executed in the very square where those wicked men thought I was wanting to play the horses. The ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... The pretender was accepted as an illustrious guest by Prince Wiszniowiecki, given clothes, horses, carriages, and suitable retinue, and presented to other Polish dignitaries. Dmitri, as he was thenceforth known, bore well the honors now showered upon him. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... you know that he is a pretender to the throne of Babbiano? You will remember that he ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini

... is not the filius nullius that has been among us, and this grandfather, if he has not actually stolen the name, has got it by these doubtful means. As for the Wycherly, it should pass for nothing. Learning that there is a line of baronets of this name, every pretender to the family would be apt to call ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... preemption who never intend to live on their quarter section. But they do it by fraud. They have a sort of mental reservation, I suppose, when they take the requisite oaths. In this way many valuable claims are taken up and held along from month to month, or from year to year, by mock improvements. A pretender will make just improvements enough to hinder the actual settler from locating on the claim, or will sell out to him at a good profit. A good deal of money is made by these fictitious claimants. It is rather hard to prevent it, too, inasmuch as it is difficult ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... the more likely to excite intestine, disorders, and by their emulation, rivalship, and animosities, to tear the bowels of their native country. But though these causes alone were sufficient to breed confusion, there concurred another circumstance of the most dangerous, nature: a pretender to the crown appeared: the tie itself of the weak prince who enjoyed the name of sovereignty, was disputed; and the English were now to pay the severe though late penalty of their turbulence under Richard II., and of their levity in violating, without any necessity ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... is Lady Rodomont, whose Wit surprizes, whose Beauty ravishes, and a clear Estate of Six thousand a Year distracts the admiring Train; but the Misfortune is, she has Travell'd, had Experience, well vers'd in Gallantries of various Courts; she admits Coquets, and rallies each Pretender, so resolutely fond of Liberty, she slights the most accomplish'd of Mankind, there Collonel is a Siege to prove a Roman ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker

... despises pretenders and charlatans of all sorts, while he is himself a pretender, as all men are who assume a character which does not belong to them and affect to be something which they are all the time conscious they are ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... subject of the treaty of the Barrier were in debate, the quadruple alliance was formed between Holland, England, France and the emperor, for reciprocal aid against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It was in virtue of this treaty that the pretender to the English throne received orders to remove from France; and the states-general about the same time arrested the Swedish ambassador, Baron Gortz, whose intrigues excited some suspicion. The death of Louis XIV. had once more changed the political system ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... Pugatscheff, which is sometimes spoken of as an outbreak against serfdom, which it was not in any proper sense, though the abuses of the owners of serfs may have contributed to swell the ranks of the pretender,—Pugatscheff calling himself Peter III. The Czar Paul would not allow serfs to be sold apart from the soil to which they belonged. It is a curious incident, that, when Paul restored Kosciusko to liberty, he offered to give him a number of Russian peasants. The Polish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various

... it, there are in it scenes and characters which only Congreve could have made. Brisk is a worthy forerunner of Witwoud, Sir Paul Plyant a delicious old credulous fool; while the tyrannical and vain Lady Plyant is so drawn that you almost love her. But the triumph is Lady Froth, 'a great coquet, pretender to poetry, wit, and learning,' and one would almost as lief have seen Mrs. Mountfort in the part as the Bracegirdle's Millamant. Her serious folly and foolish wisdom, her poem and malice and compliments and babbling vivacity—set off, it is fair to remember, by a pretty face—are ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve

... Wishart and Sir John Balchen. The former was made an admiral, and knighted by Queen Anne in 1703, and appointed one of the lords of the Admiralty, but was dismissed from the naval service by George I. for favouring the interests of the Pretender, and died at Little Chelsea on the 30th of May, 1723. In the 'Daily Courant,' Monday, July 15, 1723, the following ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... inurbane, uncivil, rude, disrespectful, pert, saucy, impertinent, impudent, insolent. Importance, consequence, moment. Impostor, pretender, charlatan, masquerader, mountebank, deceiver, humbug, cheat, quack, shyster, empiric. Imprison, incarcerate, immure. Improper, indecent, indecorous, unseemly, unbecoming, indelicate. Impure, tainted, contaminated, polluted, defiled, vitiated. Inborn, innate, inbred, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... Ferdinand VII died, and his daughter Isabel II ascended to the throne under the regency of her mother Cristina. As the conservatives espoused the cause of the pretender, Don Carlos, the regency was forced to favor the liberals. The rigid press censorship was abolished, and a general amnesty was granted all the victims of Ferdinand's tyranny. In politics the year 1833 marks the ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... supporting despots who in time of need might help them to confirm their own authority. With the same end in view, when the legitimate line of the Bentivogli was extinguished, Cosimo hunted out a bastard pretender of that family, presented him to the chiefs of the Bentivogli faction, and had him placed upon the seat of his supposed ancestors at Bologna. This young man, a certain Santi da Cascese, presumed to be the son of Ercole ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... merrily. "You are a very poor pretender, Jed," she declared. "Confess, you haven't the least idea what ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... habits and associates, roused the animosity of the people, and of the conservative party in the upper class. The Sultan's eldest brother, who had been set aside in his favour, was intriguing against him; the usual Cherifian Pretender was stirring up the factious tribes in the mountains; and the European powers were attempting, in the confusion of an ungoverned country, to ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... children forsake me!" The Queen had already fled to France, taking with her her infant son, the unfortunate Prince James Edward, whose birth (S490) had caused the revolution. Instead of a kingdom, he inherited nothing but the nickname of "Pretender," which he in turn transmitted to his son.[2] King ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... young pretender, have your fling! Though Fate forbade you to adorn The pompous pedigree of Ming, No particle of scorn Shall ever ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various

... naturally a vulgar soul, or that it is deemed necessary, from an excess of weakness, to support a position of an equivocal nature. A gentleman never derogates from his true position, let him be placed in whatever circumstances he may; and an over-fastidious traveller, or a pretender to great importance in a new country, is the most foolish of all ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... Mascarille, in Moliere's little comedy, tell the affected young ladies whom he is seeking to impress that all he did "was done without effort." By this the artists at once perceive the fellow to be a pretender, who had never accomplished anything and who never would. They know, as no others can know, that there is no cable-road to the tops of the twin-peaks of Parnassus, and that he who would climb to these remote heights must trudge afoot,—even if he is lucky enough ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... Bronx was not a physician, he was not altogether a pretender, for in the capacity of mate and temporary commander, he had done duty in the healing art in the absence of ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... Man-dragone were the only sights we saw in Frascati. We did, indeed, penetrate the chill interior of the local cathedral, but as we did not know at the time that we were sharing it with the memory of the young Stuart pretender Charles Edward, who died in Frascati, and whose brother, Cardinal York, placed a mural tablet to him in the church, we were conscious of no special claim upon our interest. We ought, of course, to have visited the Villa Aldobrandini and the Villa Ruffinella and the Villa Graziola and the ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells

... P. Marsh, in his "Lectures on the English Language," says that the deviser of the locution in question was "some grammatical pretender," and that it is "an awkward neologism, which neither convenience, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... if I was an English Marabout. I replied, "Yes;" for a Marabout, as in the Governor's own case, means sometimes a person who can tolerably read and write. In this sense I may claim the sacred title. I also dub myself occasionally tabeeb (doctor), but mostly taleb, a mere literary man or pretender to literature. I believe that coming without arms, and as poor as possible, has had a good effect upon the Touaricks. They see, if they were so disposed, they cannot maltreat a man in my circumstances ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... suspect that it was an entire fabrication on that man's part, and your firmness has foiled his wicked designs. Only think, I have discovered—I am sure of it—one of the Mortons; and he, too, though the younger, yet, in all probability, the sole pretender the fellow could set up. You remember that the child Sidney had disappeared mysteriously,—you remember also, how much that Mr. Spencer had interested himself in finding out the same Sidney. Well,—this gentleman at the Lakes is, as we suspected, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... their secret Penelope ran to him casting her arms about him and begging him to forgive her unbelief, for many a pretender had come, making her ever more and more suspicious. Thus reunited the two spent the night in recounting the agonies of their separation; Odysseus mentioned the strange prophecy of Teiresias, deciding to seek out ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... a precarious position. After showing himself so weak in the face of the long and ruthless British provocations, he has to play the strong man with Germany. Otherwise he will lose what prestige he has left, and he knows that in the background the pretender to the throne, Mr. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... made a marshal of France and Duke of Montebello, thus founding the family to which the French ambassador belonged. The show of coolness on the part of the imperial family evidently vexed the French pretender. He was, indeed, allowed to enter the room behind the imperial train; but he was not permitted to sit at the imperial table, being relegated to a distant and very modest seat. I was informed that, though the Emperor could, and did, have ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... later times erased their names from the Royal Canon, and placed Nabopolassar immediately after Assur-bani-pal, whom they called Kandalanu. But however feeble Assyria had become, the cities on the Lower Euphrates feared her still, and refused to ally themselves with the pretender. Nabopolassar might perhaps have succumbed, as so many before him had done, had he been forced to rely entirely on his own resources, and he might have shared the sad fate of Merodach-baladan or of Shamash-shumukin; but Marduk, who never failed to show favour to his faithful devotees, "raised ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... should, in imitation of her ancestress, have gone out with her pitcher on her head to draw water from the well, while in all her own courtyards pipe-led streams gushed forth, would have acted the part of the pretender; that had she insisted on resuscitating her loom and had sat up all night to spin, she could never have produced those fabrics which alone her household demanded, and would have been but a puerile actor; ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner

... is the right of the supreme authority alone to handle public matters, or choose officials to do so, it follows that that subject is a pretender to the dominion, who, without the supreme council's knowledge, enters upon any public matter, although he believe that his design will be to the best interest ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... followers of John Lyly. In "The Talisman" and in "Ivanhoe," of which the scenes are laid in the time of Richard Coeur de Lion, the reader recognises little realism of language. But as Scott's historical novels deal with periods extending from that of the crusades down to the Pretender's attempt in 1745, an intimate knowledge of the innumerable social changes and peculiarities ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... scraps of song—Mammy always "gave out" the words to herself before singing them—proverbs and sayings such as "Cow want her tail agin in fly-time" applied to an ingrate, or: "Dat's er high kick fer er low horse," by way of setting properly in place a pretender. ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams

... Napoleon himself and Mademoiselle Georges? Have not almost all the royal family of England—even those of the House of Hanover—been notorious for their connection with celebrated women? Has he never heard of Mrs. Walkinshaw, ostensible mistress of Charles Edward the Pretender, of Lucy Barlow, mistress of Charles II, mother of the Duke of Monmouth? Of Arabella Churchill and Katherine Sedley, mistresses of James II? Of the Countess of Kendal, mistress of George II, who was received ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... person of the emperor, and legists cherished a dim remembrance of the theory that he embodied the popular will, the fact was that he was the choice of a powerful army, ratified by the God of Battles, and maintaining his power as long as he could suppress any rival pretender. The break-up of the Empire through the continual repetition of military strife was accelerated, not caused, by the presence of barbarism both within and without the frontiers. To restore the elements of order a compromise between central and local jurisdictions was necessary, and the vassal ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse

... the walls, conversing on the ceremonies to be observed at the approaching coronation, and the persons to be invited to assist at it, when they were suddenly interrupted by the intelligence that the Padshah Begum, the adoptive mother of the late King, with a large armed force, and the young pretender, Moonna Jan, were coming on to seize upon the throne, and might soon be expected at the principal entrance to ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman

... very possible that by long experience, Christoforo—who has no regular diploma—has mastered the simpler elements of Materia Medica, and does in reality effect cures. I class him among what are popularly known as humbugs, however, for he is a pretender to more wisdom than he possesses. It was to me a strange and suggestive scene—the bald, beak-nosed, coal-eyed charlatan, standing in the market-place, so celebrated in history, peering through his gold spectacles at the upturned faces below him, while the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum

... the margrave, with a satisfied air. "Then I think we may hope to thwart this insolent pretender, who considers me incapable of directing ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... come down from the beginning, even before any of the earlier heresies, much more before Praxeas, who is of yesterday, the lateness of date of all heresies proves, as also the novelties of Praxeas, a pretender of yesterday. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... succession in Spain. The result of this edict was to leave the succession to his infant daughter Isabella instead of his brother Don Carlos, the leader of the Spanish absolutists. When Ferdinand died on September 29, 1833, Don Carlos was absent from the kingdom, supporting the cause of his fellow-pretender Dom Miguel. Isabella received the hearty support of the constitutional party and was almost universally acknowledged as queen. It was only in Biscay, where the centralising tendency of the Spanish constitution, published on April 10, 1834, seemed to entrench upon local liberty, that Don Carlos ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... new view of the subject. She had fancied that all regular practitioners were clever, and had only doubted Mr. Sheldon because he was not a regular practitioner. But how if she were to withdraw her husband from the hands of a clever man to deliver him into the care of an ignorant pretender, simply because she was over-anxious ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... one Dr. Galland was a candidate for the legislature in a district composed of Hancock, Adams, and Pike Counties. He resided in the county of Hancock, and, as he had in the early part of his life been a notorious horse thief and counterfeiter, belonging to the Massac gang, and was then no pretender to integrity, it was useless to deny the charge. In all his speeches he freely admitted the fact."—FORD's" "History of Illinois," ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... to understand and practice psychometry should avoid being duped by an ignorant pretender who professes to develop their psychometric faculties—a pretence ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various

... literature—unlike Homer, according to Mr Moore, he never nods, though in the light of great literature, poor Stevenson is always at his noddings, and more than that, in the words of Leland's Hans Breitmann, he has "nodings on." He is poor, naked, miserable—a mere pretender—and has no share in the makings of great literature. Mr Moore has stripped him to the skin, and leaves him to the mercy of rain and storm, like Lear, though Lear had a solid ground to go on in self-aid, which Stevenson had ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp

... I shall have a perfectly horrid time. Not only shall I be wincing under the degrading knowledge that I'm a base pretender, but I shall be wretchedly homesick and bored within an inch of my life. I shall be, in the sort of environment Ellaline describes, like a mouse in a vacuum—a poor, frisky, happy, out-of-doors field-mouse, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... for improvement," said the merchant. "In my eyes he is, at this time, only a hypocritical pretender. I hope, for the sake of the world and the church both, that his new associates will make something ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur

... as possible the miseries incident to a warfare so cruel as the present. When the dictates of humanity are in question, I know no difference between Turks and Greeks. It is enough that those who want assistance are men, in order to claim the pity and protection of the meanest pretender to humane feelings. I have found here twenty-four Turks, including women and children, who have long pined in distress, far from the means of support and the consolations of their home. The Government has consigned them to me; I transmit them to Prevesa, whither they desire ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... fellow creatures, how much stronger must be the feeling when the influence affects the soul! To the outsider, or layman, who simply uses a cab, or receives a letter, or goes to law, or has to be tried, these pretensions are ridiculous or annoying, according to the ascendancy of the pretender at the moment. But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible without breach of duty and sin, so are they more galling. ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... also the Battle of the Books, the Drapier's Letters and a score more of satires and lampoons. Of all these minor works the Bickerstaff Papers, which record Swift's practical joke on the astrologers, are most amusing. [Footnote: Almanacs were at that time published by pretender astrologers, who read fortunes or made predictions from the stars. Against the most famous of these quacks, Partridge by name, Swift leveled his "Predictions for the year 1708, by Isaac Bickerstaff." Among the predictions of coming events was this trifle: that Partridge was doomed ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... (1748) terminated one of the wars of England with Louis XIV. The renunciation by France of the cause of the Pretender was the most material advantage accruing to England from that treaty. But the ink was hardly dry with which it was written, before England took umbrage at France for efforts to rebuild her navy, which had been seriously reduced and crippled ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... non movere, and was taken by surprise. There are many historians and students of history who now admit, in looking back upon those times, that the fate of the established government hung upon a thread, and that the daring advance of the Pretender followed by another victory might have converted him into a Possessor and Defender. Had any one then asked as to the possibilities of a reconstruction of the severed Union, the answer would probably have been not much unlike the predictions of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... which you imagine. You have known me, you have known what my life has been; you see what I am, and it is no difficulty to you. You prefer believing that I, whom you call your friend, am a deceiver or a pretender, to admitting the possibility of the falsehood of your hypothesis. You will not listen to my assurance, and you are angry with me because I will not lie against my own soul, and acknowledge sins which I have not committed. You appeal to the course of the world in proof of your ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... gentleness and modesty, that it rather increases one's indignation against the presumption of his critic.) Since Lord Brougham assailed Dr. Young, the world has seen no such specimen of the insolence of a shallow pretender to a Master in Science as this remarkable production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... foreign enemies. When I was in the Coldstream, long before the Revolution, I used to hear enough about the Irish brigades kept by the French kings, to be a thorn in the side of the English whenever opportunity served. Old Sergeant Meredith once told me that in the time of the Pretender there were always, in London alone, a dozen of fellows connected with these brigades, with the view of seducing the king's soldiers from their allegiance, and persuading them to desert to France to join ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... came the Roquefort, a regal cheese we voted the best buy of the lot, even though it was the most expensive. A plump piece, pleasantly unctuous but not greasy, sharp in scent, stimulatingly bittersweet in taste—unbeatable. There is no American pretender to the Roquefort throne. Ours is invariably chalky and tasteless. That doesn't mean we have no good Blues. We have. But ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... pretender go hobbling. He changed his gait and hurried to the eastern side of Valhalla. There a great oak tree flourished and out of a branch of it a little bush of Mistletoe grew. Loki broke off a spray and with it in his hand he went to ...
— The Children of Odin - The Book of Northern Myths • Padraic Colum

... was succeeded by his son Dushratta, but a numerous party put forward another prince, named Artassumara, who was probably Gilukhipa's brother, on the mother's side;* a Hittite king of the name of Pirkhi espoused the cause of the pretender, and a civil ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... pounds more to be paid yearly to the culprit himself, so that at least he might not be induced to lighten his honest labors for a suitable subsistence by renewed villanies. With reference to the benefice of Somerset, which had been the ill-sought price of this base pretender to sanctity and truth, Sir Robert decided on presenting it to the exemplary Dr. Blackmore whenever it ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... She knew it had been a victory, and had often heard the guests of her patroness mention it with triumph; and she fancied their feelings would find a sympathetic chord in those of every British soldier. Unfortunately, M'Nab had fought throughout that luckless day on the side of the Pretender; and a deep scar that garnished his face had been left there by the sabre of a German soldier in the service of the House of Hanover. He fancied that his wound bled afresh at Mabel's allusion; and it is certain that the blood rushed ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... side of its enemies in the next war in which it might be engaged. [515] But the democratic and impassioned character of the agitation in the minor States in favour of the Schleswig-Holsteiners and their Augustenburg pretender had enabled Bismarck to represent this movement to the Austrian Government as a revolutionary one, and by a dexterous appeal to the memories of 1848 to awe the Emperor's advisers into direct concert with the Court of Berlin, as the representative of monarchical order, in dealing with ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... evenly balanced, to interfere in the affairs of that country, and under pretence of helping the legitimate monarch, to make himself master of several towns. In the following year he was still more fortunate. Having engaged, defeated, and slain the pretender to the Babylonian crown, he marched on to Babylon itself, where he was probably welcomed as a deliverer, and from thence proceeded into Chaldaea, or the tract upon the coast, which was at this time independent of Babylon, and forced its kings to become his ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... foreign travel he found himself among the stirring events of 1745. He was an ardent supporter of the Pretender, and made no attempt to conceal his views. Jacobite tendencies were indeed generally prevalent in the College at the time, and had this been the sum of his offending, it is probable that little notice would have ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner

... replied his companion with well-affected modesty; "I a fop! I a pretender to wit? No, no, my dear Sir Asinus, you do me injustice: I am the simplest of mortals, and a very child of innocence. But I was speaking of Shadynook and the fairies of that domain. Never have I seen Belinda, or rather Belle-bouche, so lovely, and I here disdainfully repel your ridiculous ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... the brow jutting out, and without wrinkles, is a man much inclined to suits of law, contentious, vain, deceitful, and addicted to follow ill courses. He whose forehead is very low and little, is of a good understanding, magnanimous, but extremely bold and confident, and a great pretender to love and honour. He whose forehead seems sharp, and pointed up in the corners of his temples, so that the bone seems to jut forth a little, is a man naturally weak and fickle, and weak in the intellectuals. He whose brow upon the temples is full of flesh, is a man of ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... he punished the offender by pursuing him around the schoolroom, sticking a pin into his shoulder whenever he could overtake him. And he had a fearful leather strap, which was sometimes used even upon the shrinking palm of a little girl. If he should find out that I was a pretender and deceiver, as I knew that I was, I could not guess what might happen to me. He never did, however. I was left unmolested in the ignorance which I deserved. But I never liked the girl who did my sums, and I fancied she had a decided ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... Louis VI. at Etampes to decide between the claims of the rival Popes in the Papal schism. The council opened by unanimous consent that Bernard's judgement should decide their views; and without hesitation he pronounced Innocent II. the lawful Pope, and Peter Leonis, or Anacletus II., a vain pretender. He bore the same testimony, in the presence of Innocent, before Henry I. of England, at Chartres, and before Lotharius, the German Emperor, at Liege. The Pope visited Clairvaux, where he was moved to tears at the sight of the tattered flock of "Christ's poor," ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... or at most mere speculative points. Yet is not this frequently the case between contending parties in a state? For instance: Do not the generality of Whigs and Tories among us, profess to agree in the same fundamentals, their loyalty to the Queen, their abjuration of the Pretender, the settlement of the crown in the protestant line, and a revolution principle? Their affection to the Church established, with toleration of dissenters? Nay sometimes they go further, and pass over into each other's ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... the Pretender, then resident in Rome, his advice is; never meet a Stuart at all if you can help it; but if you must, feign ignorance of him and his grievances. If he begins to talk politics, disavow any knowledge of events in England, and escape ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... she would have been with the loon that wranged her, who is, by your account, Dr. Gray, baith a papist and a rebel. The Jews are well attached to government; they hate the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender, as much as any ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... schism had come to an end; no one imagined that a restoration of the exiled house was possible, or seriously wished that it might take place. The remembrance of the rising of '45 strengthened the general feeling of loyalty to the reigning house; the Old Pretender had lost all interest in public affairs, and his son, Charles Edward, was a confirmed drunkard, and had alienated his friends by his disreputable life. Englishmen were determined not to have another Roman catholic king, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... "For the Popish Pretender," said the Doctor, who could speak no smooth things when it was a matter of the Revolution Settlement and the government of ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett

... restored. General Willshire, with the returning Bombay column, had in the previous November stormed Mehrab Khan's ill-manned and worse armed fort of Khelat, and the Khan, disdaining to yield, had fallen in the hopeless struggle. His son Nusseer Khan had been put aside in favour of a collateral pretender, and became an active and dangerous malcontent. All Northern Beloochistan fell into a state of anarchy. A detachment of sepoys escorting supplies was cut to pieces in one of the passes. Quetta was attacked with great resolution by Nusseer Khan, but was opportunely ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes

... aloud, NO FOREIGN CONNEXIONS!—OLD ENGLAND FOR EVER! This acclamation, however, was not so loud or universal, but that our adventurer could distinctly hear a counter-cry from the populace of, NO SLAVERY!—NO POPISH PRETENDER! an insinuation so ill relished by the cavaliers, that they began to ply their horsewhips among the multitude, and were, in their turn, saluted with a discharge or volley of stones, dirt, and dead cats; in consequence of which ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... the Royal Freemasons' Girls' School; The Increase of Freemasonry; On Benefit Societies, by the Rev. T. A. Buckley; Episodes in the Life of a Freemason; The Countess and the Serf, by Miss Pardoe; The Knights of St. Helen's; On Symbols and Symbolism; A Relic of the Pretender; Eleanora Ulfeld; The Prison Flower, by Miss Pardoe; Olden Holiday Customs; Si j'etais Roi; Correspondence. Masonic Intelligence:—Supreme Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons of England; United Grand Lodge; Grand ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various

... the battle of Culloden in 1746, when Colonel George Hunter was executed for his devotion to the cause of the Young Pretender. ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke

... attract the attention of the crocodile, and to induce it to move. In this he was immediately joined by the whole party, who yelled in chorus, while the large old males bellowed defiance, and descended to the lowest branches within eight or ten feet of the crocodile. It was of no use—the pretender never stirred, and I watched it until dark; it remained still inn the same place, waiting for some unfortunate baboon whose thirst might provoke his fate; but not one was sufficiently foolish, although the perpendicular ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... digression is often the cream of an article. However, as you dislike it, let us regress as fast as possible, and scuttle back from the occult art of boiling potatoes to the much more familiar one of painting in oil. Did Coleridge really understand this art? Was he a sciolist, was he a pretender, or did he really judge of it from a station of heaven-inspired knowledge? A hypocrite Coleridge never was upon any subject; he never affected to know when secretly he felt himself ignorant. And ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... deeply interested in the exclusion of Catholic principles. A Parliament composed of the nobles had already acknowledged Elizabeth to the exclusion of the Queen of Scots, and the former decision was reaffirmed as against a "female pretender" supported by ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... Here Mr. Carew met the rebels, but having no mind to join them, he pretended to be very sick and lame; however, he accosted them with, God bless you, noble gentlemen! and the rebels moving on to Carlisle, he hopped after them, and from thence to Manchester, and there had a sight of the Pretender's son, and other commanders. He afterwards accompanied them to Derby, where a report was spread, that the Duke of Cumberland was coming to fight them; upon which, their courage failing, though the Pretender's son was for fighting, they ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... Lion; "who art thou?" Echo as stern cried, "Who art thou?" "Know I'm a lion, hear and tremble!" Replied the king. Cried Echo, "Tremble!" "Come forth," says Lion, "show thyself!" Laconic Echo answered, "Elf!" "Elf dost thou call me, vile pretender?" Echo as loud replied, "Pretender?" At this, as jealous of his reign, He growled in rage—she growled again. Incensed the more, he chafed and foamed, And round the spacious forest roamed, To find the rival of his throne, Who ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various

... critics of yesterday becoming the ignorant adulators of to-day: his position was conceded, but the hostility to Ruskin was sustained with unabated bitterness on the new field. He was demolished anew, and proved, many useless times over and over, an ignorant pretender; the public in the meanwhile, even his opponents, taking up in turn his proteges, as he pointed them out to their notice. The effect of his criticisms in enhancing the value of the works they approved would be ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... the diabolical eye of a fiend she detected the woman who was wearing the dry-cleaned cast-off clothing of her sister in the city. What she saw the office knew, though she kept her conclusions out of the paper if they would do any harm or hurt anyone's feelings. No pretender ever dreamed that she was not fooling Miss Larrabee. She was willing to agree most sympathetically with Mrs. Conklin, who insisted that the "common people" wouldn't be interested in the list of names at her party; and the only place where we ever ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... wedding-day, of the dress that heightened her charms, and (shall I so soon acknowledge it?) of what would be becoming for herself on a like occasion, wherein she was to bear a principal part, and the too-fascinating Master Prout another. Let not the solemn pretender to decorum, who, in proportion to his demureness, is apt to be worse than others, with owlish visage quote, "frailty, thy name is woman," or, "e'er those shoes were old," or whatever musty apothegms besides, as stale and senseless. The name of Frailty is no more woman than man, ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... heroics; Chauvinism; exaggeration &c. 549. vanity &c. 880; vox et praeterea nihil[Lat]; much cry and little wool, brutum fulmen[Lat]. exultation; gloriation|, glorification; flourish of trumpets; triumph &c. 883. boaster; braggart, braggadocio; Gascon[Fr], fanfaron[obs3], pretender, soi-disant[Fr]; blower [U. S.], bluffer, Foxy Quiller[obs3]; blusterer &c. 887; charlatan, jack-pudding, trumpeter; puppy &c. (fop) 854. V. boast, make a boast of, brag, vaunt, Puff, show off, flourish, crake|, crack, trumpet, strut, swagger, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... deficient in this respect; nor is it singular that the humble citizen should have been a poor hand at spelling in an age when royal personages indulged in a phonetic style of orthography which would provoke the laughter of a modern charity-boy. That the pretender to the crown of England should murder the two languages in which he wrote seems a small thing; but that Frederick the Great, the most accomplished of princes, bosom-friend of Voltaire, and sworn patron of the literati, should not ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... book, for Mr. ARTHUR is evidently a thoughtful student of history, and he has drawn quite a vivid picture of the events leading up to the battle of Culloden. His sympathies are on the side of the PRETENDER and his cause, and he can see nothing to approve of in the ranks of the Hanoverians. I am content to take his word for the rights and wrongs of the case. The whole matter leaves me a little cold. I have no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various

... that. I actually turned tail and ran away from him;—not as we ordinarily do in society when we sneak off under some pretence, leaving the pretender to think that he has made himself very pleasant; but with a full declaration of my ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope

... mon maitre," said Antonio to me, in French, "those two fellows are Carlist priests, and are awaiting the arrival of the Pretender. Les imbeciles!" ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... the condition of 'you Mrs. Lisle, a gentlewoman of quality and of fortune, so far stricken in years, one who all your life-time have been a great pretender to, and professor of, religion, and of that religion which bears a very good name, the Protestant religion,' goes on to point out that 'there is no religion whatsoever (except that hypocritical profession ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... the Stuarts, which was frustrated by the Queen's death. On the arrival of George I. and the accession to power of the Whigs, B. was impeached, and his name erased from the Roll of Peers. He went to France, and became Sec. of State to the Pretender James, who, however, dismissed him in 1716, after which he devoted himself to philosophy and literature. In 1723 he was pardoned and returned to England, and an act was passed in 1725 restoring his forfeited estates, but still excluding him from the House of Lords. He thereupon ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... his rising power), which excluded from the freedom of the city those whose parents were not both Athenian. In the very year in which he attained the supreme administration of affairs, occasion for enforcing the law occurred: Psammetichus, the pretender to the Egyptian throne, sent a present of corn to the Athenian people (B. C. 444); the claimants for a share in the gift underwent the ordeal of scrutiny as to their titles to citizenship, and no less than five thousand persons were convicted of having fraudulently foisted themselves ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... differences occurred sometimes, and, when they did, Charles Wesley showed that he had a very decided will of his own; and he could generally make it felt. For instance, in 1744, when the Wesleys were most unreasonably suspected of inclining to Popery, and of favouring the Pretender, John Wesley wrote an address to the king, 'in the name of the Methodists;' but it was laid aside because Charles Wesley objected to any act which would seem to constitute them a sect, or at least would seem to allow that they were ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... be—unmaidenly to ask him to marry you," whispered that other self within her. Oh, if she could only guess which was the real self, which the pretender! "And there is no need. Look at ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... arrival from Scotland, Byron was placed by his mother under the care of an empirical pretender of the name of Lavender, at Nottingham, who professed the cure of such cases; and that he might not lose ground in his education, he was attended by a respectable schoolmaster, Mr Rodgers, who read parts of Virgil and Cicero with him. Of this gentleman he always entertained a ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... born at Apone, near Padua, in the year 1250. Like his friend Arnold de Villeneuve, he was an eminent physician, and a pretender to the arts of astrology and alchymy. He practised for many years in Paris, and made great wealth by killing and curing, and telling fortunes. In an evil day for him, he returned to his own country, with the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... the sun—are frequent complaints of the disordered state of the currency, and the project of a bank with a capital of five hundred thousand pounds, secured on lands. Here are literary essays, from the Gentleman's Magazine; and squibs against the Pretender, from the London newspapers. And here, occasionally, are specimens of New England honor, laboriously light and lamentably mirthful, as if some very sober person, in his zeal to be merry, were dancing a jig to the ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... God bless the Queen and the House of Hanover, And never may Pope or Pretender come over. ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... equal claim to the throne. Haichan was absent in Mongolia when his uncle died, and a faction put forward the pretensions of Honanta, prince of Gansi, who seems to have been Timour's natural son, but Aiyuli Palipata, acting with great energy, arrested the pretender and proclaimed Haichan as emperor. Haichan reigned five years, during which the chief reputation he gained was as a glutton. When he died, in 1311, his brother Palipata was proclaimed emperor, although Haichan left two sons. Palipata's reign of nine years ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... to join the new coalition in defence of the Hapsburg, whom in common with the rest of Europe she had for years been trying to pull down. But when Louis insolently espoused the cause of the exiled King James, and promised by force to place the pretender on the throne, then she needed no urging, and sent Marlborough and the flower of her army to join Prince Eugene ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... him, I alluded to the facility with which he had nullified the last 'Senatus-consulte'. He scarcely seemed to hear me, so completely was his mind absorbed in the subject on which he was meditating. At length, suddenly recovering from his abstraction, he said, "Bourrienne, do you think that the pretender to the crown of France would renounce his claims if I were to offer him a good indemnity, or even a province in Italy?" Surprised at this abrupt question on a subject which I was far from thinking of, I replied that I did not think the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... had gone abroad among the Areturion's crew, that at some indefinite period of my career, I had been a "nob." But Jarl seemed to go further. He must have taken me for one of the House of Hanover in disguise; or, haply, for bonneted Charles Edward the Pretender, who, like the Wandering Jew, may yet be a vagrant. At any rate, his loyalty was extreme. Unsolicited, he was my laundress and tailor; a most expert one, too; and when at meal-times my turn came round to look out at the mast-head, or stand at the wheel, he catered for me among the "kids" ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... only waited for a fitting leader to take up arms in the cause. According to Mr. Home, his example was decisive of the movement of his neighbours: "So when he who was so wise and prudent declared his purpose of joining Charles, most of the gentlemen in that part of the country who favoured the Pretender's cause, put themselves under his command, thinking they could not follow a better or safer guide than Lord Pitsligo." His Lordship's own account of the motives which urged him on is peculiar:—"I was grown a little old, and the fear of ridicule ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... shows us how bitter experience convinced successive generations of English statesmen of the dangers that lay in an independent Ireland. One of the very earliest conflicts between the two countries was caused by the action of the Irish Parliament in recognising and crowning a Pretender in Dublin Castle. Then the fact that the Reformation, which soon won the adherence of the English Government and the majority of the English people, never gained any great foothold in Ireland, caused the bitter religious wars which devastated Europe to ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... supposed twin brother of Louis XIV., whose birth Richelieu had concealed. Others make him the Count of Vermandois, an illegitimate son of Louis XIV.; the Duke of Beaufort, a hero of the Fronde; the Duke of Monmouth, the English pretender of 1685; Fouquet, Louis's disgraced minister of finance; a son of Cromwell, the English protector; and various other wild and unfounded guesses. After all has been said, the identity of the prisoner remains unknown. Mattioli, a diplomatic ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... more, thou art an understander, and then I trust thee. If thou art one that takest up, and but a pretender, beware of what hands thou receivest thy commodity; for thou wert never more fair in the way to be cozened, than in this age, in poetry, especially in plays: wherein, now the concupiscence of dances and of antics so reigneth, as to run away from nature, and ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson

... literature of ancient Greece is studied in any part of the world. This reply proved, not only that the letters ascribed to Phalaris were spurious, but that Atterbury, with all his wit, his eloquence, his skill in controversial fence, was the most audacious pretender that ever wrote about what he did not understand. But to Atterbury this exposure was matter of indifference. He was now engaged in a dispute about matters far more important and exciting than the laws ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... friendship which had bound him for thirty-six years to our greatest diplomat, the Prince de Talleyrand. It was in the course of this very evening that he made answer to some one who asked why the Prince showed such hostility to the Duc de Bordeaux, "The Pretender is too young!" ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac

... last through the hopeful period. But as soon as the remodelled pretender shall have a presentiment that his metamorphosis is unprofitable; as soon as the implacable voice of discouragement shall have pronounced those two magic words, by which flights are stayed, thoughts paralyzed, and hopeful hearts deadened, ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... to believe the tales from the south. Here is another complication, however. There is, as you know, Count Halfont, and perhaps all of you, for that matter, a pretender to the throne of Axphain, the fugitive Prince Frederic. He is described as young, good looking, a scholar and the next ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... instructed by the President to take command of an expedition on the coast of Barbary in connection with Hamet. It had been determined to furnish a few pieces of field-artillery, a thousand stand of arms, and forty thousand dollars as a loan to the Pretender. But when the President heard of Hamet's reverses, he withheld the supplies, and sent Eaton out as "General Agent for the several Barbary States," without special instructions. The Secretary of the Navy wrote at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... at the Opera House in Paris when the young Pretender was arrested, and being indignant at this breach of hospitality, and believing that the honour of the nation had been compromised, he wrote these bitter verses. His punishment was severe. He was arrested and conducted to the gloomy fortress of Mont-Saint-Michel, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield

... good old Irish whisky is as certainly among the 'things that were,' as are the Irish kings. Some have shrewdly thought that it was the only real Irish king. Well, then, it is owing to this cousin's loyalty to the usurper, or rather pretender, that I am the family chronicler. He was wonderfully ingenious; could from the slightest hint guess at the whole story; he was equal to those naturalists who from one bone can make out the animal. With the remains of an old family tradition for his clue, he traced the origin of the escutcheon. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... it were; it reminded me a good deal of the dreams of the old Jacobites, when they whispered their messages to the king across the water. I doubt, however, whether these less excusable visionaries will be able to secure the services of a Pretender, for I fear that in such a case he would encounter a still more fatal Culloden. I have given a good deal of time, as I told you, to the educational system, and have visited no fewer than one hundred and forty—three schools and colleges. It is extraordinary, the number ...
— The Point of View • Henry James

... breeding after coming to man's estate. It was shortly before the first rebellion in the 15, to speak as my informant spoke to me—and being young, and of an ardent nature, he was soon attracted to the court of the old Pretender, whose policy it was to gain every Scotch noble, by every means, to his views. The measures he took succeeded with the only son of M'Alister:—he returned to his native country, eager for the approaching contest, pledged heart ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various

... believer in judicial astrology, and an interpreter of dreams. Richelieu and Mazarin were so superstitious as to employ and pension Morin, another pretender to astrology, who cast the nativities of these two able politicians. Nor was Tacitus himself, who generally appears superior to superstition, untainted with this folly, as may be seen from his twenty-second chapter of the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... a harsh croaking voice, "was Dr. Johnson in the years 1745-6? He did not write anything that we know of, nor is there any account of him in Boswell during those two years. Was he in Scotland with the Pretender? He seems to have passed through the scenes in the Highlands in company with Boswell many years after 'with lack-lustre eye,' yet as if they were familiar to him, or associated in his mind with interests that he durst not explain. If so, it would be an additional reason for my liking ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... real statesman and the pretender is, that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts on expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... which one's mind is led in charmed subjection. Where can you find battles that kindle your fancy like Falkirk and Flodden and Culloden and Bannockburn? Where a sovereign that attracts, baffles, repels, allures, like Mary Queen of Scots,—and where, tell me where, is there a Pretender like Bonnie Prince Charlie? Think of the spirit in those old Scottish matrons ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... the lady. "I wonder if Lord Dudley would see me. Perhaps not. Ministers do not love pretenders. I knew him when I was not a pretender," added the lady, with the sweetest of smiles, "and thought him agreeable. He was witty. Ah! Sidney, those were happy days. I look back to the past with regret, but without remorse. One might have done more good, but one did some;" and ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... continued, "you have probably also heard of Don Pedro, Prince of Marsine, one time Pretender ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... apprehensive about Miss Howe. She has a confounded deal of wit, and wants only a subject, to shew as much roguery: and should I be outwitted with all my sententious boasting of conceit of my own nostrum-mongership—[I love to plague thee, who art a pretender to accuracy, and a surface-skimmer in learning, with out-of-the-way words and phrases] I should certainly ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... who presume to question or dare to differ, the church has driven millions of Godfearing men into passive indifference or overt opposition, and the number is rapidly increasing. The church does not realize how stupendous this army really is. Not every man who regards the church as but a pretender proclaims that fact on the housetops. It is not "good policy," and policy is the distinguishing characteristic of this day and age. Church people are very sensitive to criticism of their creed (perhaps the mother of a malformed or vicious child could tell why), and most men have ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... George I. had thoroughly settled into his kingdom, the Jacobites in the North of England and in Scotland began to make a stir, and invited James Stuart over to try to gain the kingdom. The Jacobites used to call him James III., but the Whigs called him the Pretender; and the Tories used, by way of a middle course, to call him the Chevalier—the French word for a knight, as that he certainly was, whether he were king or pretender. A white rose was the Jacobite mark, and the ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Suspicion rested on the birth of Frederick of Urbino. The houses of Este and Malatesta honored their bastards in the same degree as their lawful progeny. The great family of the Bentivogli at Bologna owed their importance at the end of the fifteenth century to an obscure and probably spurious pretender, dragged from the wool-factories of Florence by the policy of Cosimo de' Medici. The sons of popes ranked with the proudest of aristocratic families. Nobility was less regarded in the choice of a ruler than personal ability. Power once acquired was maintained by force, and the history of the ruling ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... promised, if he carried out successfully a certain mission upon which he was sent, and if Don Carlos became king, that he would be made a marquis. As Don Carlos is still a pretender, MacIver is still a general. Although in disposing of his sword MacIver never allowed his personal predilections to weigh with him, he always treated himself to a hearty dislike of the Turks, and we next find him fighting against them in Herzegovina with the Montenegrins. ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... in Thoresby's History of Leeds, page 255, that "he had two Christian names, James-Edward, supposed to have been bestowed upon him in compliment to the Pretender;" and he is so named on his sepulchral monument. But, as he always used but one; as he was enregistered on entering College at Oxford, simply James; and, as the double name is not inserted in any public act, commission, document, printed history, or mention of him ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... the catch-word Reaction—night, in which all cats are grey, and allows them to drawl out their drowsy commonplaces. Indeed, at first sight, the party of Order presents the appearance of a tangle of royalist factions, that, not only intrigue against each other, each aiming to raise its own Pretender to the throne, and exclude the Pretender of the Opposite party, but also are all united in a common hatred for and common attacks against the "Republic." On its side, the Mountain appears, in counter-distinction to the royalist conspiracy, as the representative of the "Republic." ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... provoked a smile. And yet, for all its grandiloquence, there was something in his speech that rang hard and true. Unquestionably Longorio was dangerous—a real personality, and no mere swaggering pretender. Alaire felt a certain reluctant respect for him, and at the same time a touch of chilling fear such as she had hardly experienced before. She faced him silently for a ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... rate, within three or four months of her death, he committed suicide. But before he did so, he formally executed a rather elaborate will, by which he left all his estates in England, 'now unjustly withheld from me contrary to the law and natural right by the rebel pretender Cromwell, together with the treasure hidden thereon or elsewhere by my late murdered father, Sir James de la Molle,' to John Geoffrey Dofferleigh, his cousin, and the brother of his late wife, and his heirs for ever, on condition only of his assuming ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... Buchan as the original form of this one of the many songs made when Prince Charles Edward made his attempt in 1745-6. The songs worked scraps of lively old tunes, with some old words of ballad, into declaration of goodwill to the Pretender. ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various

... victories, and lying in ruins upon every side of us. Burdened indeed we are with debt, but abounding with resources. We have a trade, not perhaps equal to our wishes, but more than ever we possessed. In effect, no pretender to the crown; nor nutriment for such desperate and destructive factions as have formerly shaken ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... your paid clergy! and your office-holding bishops! On the day when a pretender shall have employed in such enterprises the government, the magistracy, and the army; on the day when all these institutions shall drip with the blood shed by and for the traitor; when, placed between the man who has committed ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... turned out—whether the son of Tajo allowed it to pass quietly—whether he has met the fate of many an unfortunate European pretender, or survives to become the originator of a civil war, which may yet give another destiny to Tahaiti, remains to be learnt from the ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... contrived to make favorable terms with Roger; and a peace was agreed to, which was finally ratified by the death of Anaclete, in 1138. Another anti-pope having been set up, Bernard used his personal influence with the pretender, and induced him to yield. Thus the schism in the Church was healed, and the good abbot ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... fair and honorable maxims which he has learnt from infancy, and retains in the bodily memory: and he is particularly cautious, lest anything of the wild concupiscence prevalent in his spirit should discover itself. Hence every man who is not interiorly led by the Lord, is a pretender, a sycophant, a hypocrite, and thereby an apparent man, and yet not a man; of whom it may be said, that his shell or body is wise, and his kernel or spirit insane; also that his external is human, and his internal bestial. Such persons, with the ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... encouraged literature or learning; but this is partly explained by the fact that culture belonged chiefly to the orthodox caliphate; and its learned men could have no dealings with the heretical pretender. The city of Kayrawan, which dates from the Arab conquest in the eighth century, preserves the remains of some noble buildings, but of their other capitals or royal residences no traces of art or architecture remain to bear witness to the taste of their founders. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... whetstone. Harlequin, under the reforming hand of Goldoni, became a child of nature, the delight of his country; and he has commemorated the historical character of the great Harlequin Sacchi. It may serve the reader to correct his notions of one, from the absurd pretender with us who has usurped the title. "Sacchi possessed a lively and brilliant imagination. While other Harlequins merely repeated themselves, Sacchi, who always adhered to the essence of the play, contrived to give an air ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... Maximus Aemilianus, did hot proceed to the southern province, but turned against the Celtiberians. In the contest with them, and more especially during the siege of the town of Contrebia which was deemed impregnable, he showed the same ability which he had displayed in vanquishing the Macedonian pretender; after his two years' administration (611, 612) the northern province was reduced to obedience. The two towns of Termantia and Numantia alone had not yet opened their gates to the Romans; but in their case also a capitulation had been almost concluded, and the greater part of the conditions ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen



Words linked to "Pretender" :   phony, smoothy, beguiler, ringer, sweet talker, fraud, sham, trickster, shammer, deceiver, imposter, impostor, hypocrite, Tartufe, dissimulator, phoney, charmer, smoothie, faker, pseudo, whited sepulcher, cheater, pseud, slicker, Tartuffe, role player, pretend, name dropper, dissembler, claimant, fake, whited sepulchre



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