With him may be placed the Norman duke Robert, whose carelessness had lost him the crown of England, and who had now pawned his duchy for a pittance scarcely less paltry than that for which Esau bartered away his birthright.

His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day.

On the other hand, the grandest natural features seem almost dwarfed and paltry beside this overmastering interest.

Settle down behind the parapet, and the little incongruities of a trench, paltry without the intimacy of men and locality, make for humour no less than in a shop or a factory.