A propos, when I first opened upon the just-mentioned poem, in a careless tone I said to Mary, as if putting a riddle, "What is good for a bootless bene?" To which, with infinite presence of mind (as the jest-book has it)

" The first line of the poem on Bolton Abbey: "'What is good for a bootless bene?'

As any one who may happen to take up this volume will very soon discover that there is other matter which it is necessary to know it may be as well to tell all such persons, in the commencement, therefore, that their reading will be bootless, unless they have leisure to turn to the pages of Homeward Bound for their cue.

The doctor glanced at his bootless feet.

Chaste maid Matilda, countess of account, Chase with thy bright eyes all these clouds of woe From these fair cheeks; I pray thee, sweet, do so: Think it is bootless folly to complain For that which never can be had again.

Laments are bootless, tears cannot restore Lost life, Matilda; therefore weep no more:

Again, when Insurrection them assists, Stirr'd by the French king and the wronged earl, Whose troth-plight wife King John had ta'en to wife, He only claps his hand upon his sword, Mocketh their threatenings, and in their attempts The harmless prince receives recureless death, Whom they too late with bootless tears lament.

This no and nay, this quenchless, bootless fire, This cold affection and this hot desire, The act itself shall tell; and the poor friar Your partial favours humbly doth require.

the bargain 'twixt me and the doctor, Concerning marriage with my only daughter, Whom I determined that my Lord of Kent Should have espoused: but I see her mind Is only set upon thy cousin Musgrave, And in her marriage to use constraint Were bootless; therefore thus we have devised.

400 [Bootless boad, dwelt unprofitably.

Adj. useless, inutile, inefficacious, futile, unavailing, bootless; inoperative &c 158; inadequate &c (insufficient) 640; inservient^, unsubservient; inept, inefficient &c (impotent) 158; of no avail &c (use) 644; ineffectual &c (failure) 732; incompetent &c (unskillful) 699; stale, flat and unprofitable; superfluous &c (redundant) 641; dispensable; thrown away &c (wasted) 638; abortive &c (immature) 674.

But Pompeius intercepted and slew 5,000 of them, and dispersed the rest, who, even if they had reached Etruria, would have found that they had come on a bootless errand.

I tried the heeling process, and earnestly endeavored to toe the mark; but to successfully start the thing on foot was a bootless effort.

Fair lady, thou travellest on a bootless errand, if I know the reason that tempts thee to cross the Alps at this late season of the year.

I much fear that a bootless speculation in thy usual trade has driven thee to repair the loss by the murder of this unhappy man, who left his home well supplied with gold, and, as it would seem, with a valuable store of jewelry, too.

Why don't you help me?" Valencia had not the heart to help, believing, as she did, that Lucia's journey would be as bootless as it would be dangerous to her health.

There is no man that is ignorant, that to humble yourself at the feet of the law is a bootless task; in her courts there is no room for amendment and reformation.

Oh! I divine; And grieve that you so far have journeyed, sir, Upon a bootless quest.

Knightly in arms he was; one grievous blot, So deem'd full many a courtly dame, I wot, Cross'd the full growth of his aspiring days, And dimm'd the lustre of meridian praise: With bootless artifice their lures they troll'd; Still, Gugemer lov'd not, or nothing told.

For, where the distant prospect fading dies, And sea and land seem mingling with the skies, A massy tower of polish'd marble rose; There dwelt the fair physician of his woes: Nogiva was the name the princess bore; Her spouse old, shrewd, suspicious evermore, Here mew'd his lovely consort, young and fair, And watch'd her with a dotard's bootless care.

had to deal when he went, in the name of a disputed right, three hundred leagues away from his own kingdom in quest of a bootless and ephemeral conquest.

But the distance was so great as obviously to render such an experiment bootless; and, after looking in that direction a few minutes, the head of la Divina Providenza was laid off shore, and she made every possible effort to put herself under the cover of the lugger.

This magnificent reasoning was of course unanswerable; and the rebuked petitioner abandoned her bootless errand in despair.

It was useless; and nearly a year had passed in the bootless struggle, when Lucy Stevens, who had vainly striven to blind herself to the nature of the emotions by which her cousin and guardian was animated towards her, intimated a wish to accept her sister Emily's invitation to pass two or three months with her.

Fining the impecunious doubtless grates On feelings such as yours; there's some disparity 'Twixt School-Board Draconism, and regard For parents penniless, and children bootless; But pedagoguesask HEADLAMmust be hard, Or pedagogy's purposes are fruitless.