Intolerable dulness.

It would be even finer than it is, were not the Florentine pietra serena of the stonework so repellent in its ashen dulness, the plaster so white, and the false architectural system so painfully defrauded of the plastic forms for which it was intended to subserve as setting.

*** HERR BATOCKI, Germany's first Food Dictator, is now on active service on the Western Front, where his remarks about the comparative dulness of the proceedings are a source of constant irritation to the Higher Command.

But, indeed, John had the art of diffusing a complacent equable dulness (which you knew not where to quarrel with) over a piece which he did not like, beyond any of his contemporaries.

He excludes no style, he prohibits no subject; only let him that writes to the Idler remember, that his letters must not be long; no words are to be squandered in declarations of esteem, or confessions of inability; conscious dulness has little right to be prolix, and praise is not so welcome to the Idler as quiet.

"Annie," said I, "suppose, to relieve the deadly dulness of the afternoon, that we go out and pull the big watermelon, and send for Colonel Pemberton's folks to come over and help us eat it.

If Pansy had only known what divine dulness, what ambrosial stupidity, often reclines on those Olympian heights called society!

He hates constancy as an earthen dulness, unfit for men of spirit, and loves to change his work and his place: neither yet can he be so soon weary of any place as every place is weary of him, for as he sets himself on work, so others pay him with hatred; and look how many masters he hath, so many enemies: neither is it possible that any should not hate him but who know him not.

But, indeed, John had the art of diffusing a complacent equable dulness (which you knew not where to quarrel with) over a piece which he did not like, beyond any of his contemporaries.

If I stay behind, An everlasting dulness, and the wind, That as he passeth by shuts up the stream Of Rhine or Volga, whilst the suns hot beam Beats back again, seise me, and let me turn To coldness more than ice:

I should be very glad too if you would take Notice, that a daily Repetition of the same over-bearing Insolence is yet more insupportable, and a Confirmation of very extraordinary Dulness.

" At other times, it was refreshing to see a drummer emerge from a week's carousal, take a drink of plain soda, and write a long letter to his employers concerning the extreme dulness of trade.

Sir William would have us believe that in later life Disraeli clung affectionately to dulnessto gentle dulness.

True genuine dulness moved his pity, Unless it offered to be witty.

In the case of the frog this may be due largely to the animal's headlong and harlequin-like character, but the toad is a steady personage, whose solemnity of deportment, not to speak of his stoutness, entitles him to high consideration in a world where grave dulness and personal circumference always attract reverence.

But what the author says of its happiness, seems applicable only to fatuity, or gross dulness; for that inferiority of understanding, which makes one man, without any other reason, the slave, or tool, or property of another, which makes him sometimes useless, and sometimes ridiculous, is often felt with very quick sensibility.

Every hour that I live, pent in by intolerable forms and immeasurable dulness, the maddening temper gains on me!

OSBORNE, Thomas, Coxeter's collection of poets, buys, iii. 158; Harleian Catalogue, publishes the, i. 28, 154, 158; Harleian Library, buys the, i. 154; Johnson dates a letter from his shop, i. 161; beats him, i. 154, 375, n. 1; iii. 344; describes his 'impassive dulness,' i. 154, n. 2. OSSIAN.

Imagine a Descartes or a Locke being recognised for nothing more than a good fellow and a perfect gentlemanwhat a painful view does such a picture suggest of impenetrable dulness in the society around them!

Such disconnected masses of facts are heaped together in these works, such incredible dulness is shown in presenting them, such careful avoidance of any generalization or of any interesting particular, such a bald and conceited style, and such a cockneyish and self-opinionated view of human history, as our soul wearies even to think of.

The reader must pardon the bitterness of our feelings; but we are just smarting from a prolonged perusal of all Mr. Latham's works, especially the two volumes whose title is given above; and that we may have sympathy, if only in a faint degree, from our friends, we quote a few passages, taken at random, though we cannot possibly thus convey an adequate conception of the infinite dulness of the work.

'I hope we need neither of us do anything to be ashamed of there; and as for seeing, I begin to agree with you, that what makes the whole thing most curious is its intense dulness.' 'What upon earth is that?'

Moral and religious enthusiasm, though undoubtedly poetical emotions, are at the same time but dangerous inspirers of poetry; nothing being so apt to run into interminable dulness or mellifluous extravagance, without giving the unfortunate author the slightest intimation of his danger.

Fly, fly, Cynthia, Since a terror and a woe Threatens us by far more fearful Than when late a horror froze All our words, and o'er our reason Strange lethargic dulness flowed.

But we recollect the time when the same dignified scholars who are now insensible to his defects were blind to his merits, and with majestic dulness classed him among the inglorious company of superficial, untrustworthy, brilliant declaimers.