OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Allen, Colonel Ethan

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​Allen, Colonel Ethan, American politician. B. Jan. 10, 1737. As Colonel of the "Green Mountain Boys," Allen played an important part in the War of Separation, and he was afterwards a member of the Vermont State-Legislature. In 1781 he issued what seems to have been the first anti-Christian publication in America, Reason the Only Oracle of Man. A statue has been raised in his honour at Montpelier (Vermont). D. Feb. 13, 1789.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Allen, John

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​Allen, John, M.D., writer. B. Feb. 3, 1771. Ed. Edinburgh University. He ​practised and lectured at Edinburgh until 1801, when he accompanied Lord Holland and his family to Spain, remaining four years there with them. For the remainder of his life lie was one of the wits and most familiar habitués of Holland House, London. He was known as "Lady Holland's Atheist," and was "a complete sceptic," doubting if Christ had ever existed (Greville's Memoirs, v, 157). He contributed to the Edinburgh Review, and he wrote a standard Inquiry into the Rise and Growth of the Royal Prerogative in England (1830). From 1811 to 1820 he was Warden, and from 1820 to 1843 Master, of Dulwich College. D. Apr. 10, 1843.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Alembert, Jean le Rond d'

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​Alembert, Jean le Rond d', Encyclopedist. B. (Paris) Nov. 16, 1717. He was a foundling, an illegitimate son of the Commissioner of Artillery (who was facetiously known as "Canon" Destouches, so that some have wrongly represented him as a priest), and he received the name of the church, St. Jean le Rond, near which he was found. He afterwards adopted the name of D'Alembert. His father settled an annuity on him, and he made brilliant studies in mathematics, law, and medicine. At college he wrote an essay on the Epistle to the Romans, which moved his clerical masters to declare him a second Pascal. From college he returned to the home of his foster-mother, the wife of a Parisian workman, and lived there in extreme simplicity for thirty years. In his zeal for mathematics he refused to take up a profession, and he soon became one of the most distinguished mathematicians in Europe. His Mèmoire sur le calcul integral (1739) was written in his twenty-third year. Three years later "he published his famous Traite de dynamique, which revolutionized his science. He was admitted to the French Academy in 1741, and won the Prize Medal of the Berlin Academy in 1746. In 1749 he solved the great problem of the precession of the equinoxes, and he explained the nutation of the earth's axis. Frederick of Prussia and Catherine of Russia in vain tried to seduce him from his humble lodging in Paris. He joined Diderot in issuing the Dictionnaire Encyclopedique, for which he wrote the preliminary discourse. In his letters to Voltaire, which j were edited by Condorcet, he says that " scepticism " (or what is now called Agnosticism), not Atheism, is the correct attitude; though he is confident that the "soul" is material and mortal. D'Alembert's character and simple, generous life were as great as his learning, and he sketches a high social morality in his Ếlements de philosophie. D. Oct 29 1783.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Allbutt, Sir Thomas Clifford

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​Allbutt, Sir Thomas Clifford, K.C.B., M.A., M.D., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S., physician. B. July 20, 1836. Ed, St. Peter's, York, and Cambridge University (Caius), where he took first class in the Natural Science Tripos. Allbutt was physician to various institutions until 1889, when he was appointed Commissioner in Lunacy. In 1892 he resigned this position and became Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge. He was Vice-President of the Royal Society 1914-16. He has sat on many Royal Commissions, has written many volumes on medicine, and has been Lane Lecturer, Goulstonian Lecturer, and Harveian Orator. He invented the Short Clinical Thermometer. In his genial and learned Harveian Oration (Science and Medieval Thought, 1901) Sir Thomas expresses his mild but thorough dissent from the creeds. "I wonder," he says, "if we are glad that the riddle of the origin and issues of being, which tormented their eager hearts, is not solved, but proved insoluble."
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Allen, Charles Grant Blairfindie

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​Allen, Charles Grant Blairfindie, B.A., writer. B. (Canada) Feb. 24, 1848. Grant Allen was the son of a minister of the Irish Church who had emigrated to Canada. He was educated at first by his father, then by a tutor from Yale. In 1862 he was sent to Europe, and studied, successively, at the College Imperial of Dieppe, the King Edward's School at Birmingham, and Oxford University (Merton). From 1873 to 1876 he was professor of mental and moral philosophy in a college for the blacks at Spanish Town, Jamaica, where he developed his Agnostic and other radical views of life. On his return to England he devoted himself to journalism and letters. His Physiological Æsthetics (1877), which he dedicated to Herbert Spencer, won for him considerable regard among students of science and philosophy, and he sustained this by his Vignettes from Nature (1881), The Evolutionist at Large (1881) The Colours of Flowers (1882), Colin Clout's Calendar (1883), and The Evolution of the Idea of God (1897). He was greatly esteemed by Huxley and Darwin, and his refined character and wealth of culture endeared him to all the advanced thinkers of his day. After 1883 he wrote a number of novels and guide books, and published some verse. His Agnosticism is best seen in a posthumous collection of essays (The Hand of God, 1909) published by the R. P. A. D. Oct. 28, 1899.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Allman, Professor George Johnston

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​Allman, Professor George Johnston, LL.D., D.Sc., F.R.S., Irish mathematician. B. Sep. 28, 1824. Ed. Trinity College, Dublin, where he was senior moderator and gold medallist in mathematics, and Bishop Law's mathematical prize-man. He graduated in law in 1854, but he preferred mathematics, and was professor at Queen's College, Galway, from 1853 to 1893. He was also a member of the Senate of Queen's University and the Royal University of Ireland. Professor Allman was as an earnest and high-minded Positivist, but his academic position in an Irish college prevented him from taking open part in the movement (Positivist Review, July, 1904). D. May 9, 1904.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Alcott, Amos Bronson

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​Alcott, Amos Bronson, American reformer. B. Nov. 29, 1799. Ed. Wolcott common school. Adopting teaching as his profession, Mr. Alcott made such reforms in method that he won the title of "the American Pestalozzi." His outspoken Rationalism ruined his school at Boston, and he was in 1858 appointed Superintendent of the public schools of Concord, and in 1879 Dean of the Concord School of Philosophy. He was a prominent member of the Transcendentalist group, and was a more pronounced Theist than Emerson. In his later years he professed a vague ethical Christianity, but his writings and his eloquent and popular lectures con tributed materially to the growth of Rationalism in America. 1). Mar. 4, 1888.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Alfieri, Count Vittorio

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​Alfieri, Count Vittorio, Italian tragedian. B. Jan. 17, 1749. He spent six years (1766-72) travelling over Europe, and then devoted himself to the composition of tragedy. Between 1776 and 1782 he produced fourteen tragedies of such merit that he is classed as one of the greatest Italian tragedians. The complete edition of his works comprises twenty-two volumes (1805-15). Three volumes of his tragedies were published in English in 1815. Alfieri was a strong Republican and Rationalist, and a warm admirer of England. In his Della Tirannide (2 vols., 1801 see especially ch. viii) he rejects all religion, remarking that "the heretics are as stupid as the Catholics." D. Oct 8 1803.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Allingham, William

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​Allingham, William, Irish poet. B. Mar. 19, 1824. Ed. private schools in Ireland. At the age of fourteen he entered his father's bank, and in 1846 passed to the Irish Civil Service. His Poems (1850) and Day and Night Songs (1854) won him the friendship of Leigh Hunt, Rossetti, Tennyson, and other distinguished poets, and in 1863 he transferred to the English Customs. In 1865 he issued his chief volume of verse, Fifty Modern Poems. In 1870 he retired from the Civil Service and became sub-editor of Fraser's Magazine. He succeeded Froude as editor in 1874. His Diary (1907) is particularly interesting as a record of conversations (especially with Tennyson and Rossetti) which often turned on religion. He represents both himself and Tennyson as completely sceptical. "The secret [of man's condition and destiny] is kept from one and all of us," he says (p. 149); and he is disappointed "to find a great poet [Tennyson] with no better grounds of comfort than a common person " (p. 317). "I will have nothing to do with …… any form of Christianity," he says elsewhere; and, though he professed Theism, he maintained that " we cannot in the least describe, or comprehend, or even think Deity." He had, at his request, a secular funeral service, a friend reading his fine words:—
Body to purifying flame, Soul to the Great Deep whence it came, Leaving a song on earth below, An urn of ashes white as snow.
D. Nov. 18, 1889.
# A Desk-Book of Errors in English

STANDARD DESK-BOOK SERIES
A Desk-Book of
Errors in English
Including Notes on Colloquialisms and Slang to be Avoided in Conversation
By Frank H. Vizetelly, Litt.D., LL.D.
Managing Editor of "Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary of the English Language"; Author of "Essentials of English Speech and Literature," Etc.
A REVISED EDITION
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY NEW YORK and LONDON
Copyright, 1906 and 1920, by FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
[Printed in the United States of America]
Copyright Under the Articles of the Copyright Convention of the Pan-American Republics and the United States, August 11, 1910
Published January 1, 1920
All Rights Reserved
PREFACE
The fact that this little book has passed through many editions, and now enters on a new one in revised form, is ample answer to its writer's prayer when, with the aid of his Publishers, he launched it on an uncertain voyage over the seas of time—
"Go, little book, God send thee good passage.
And specially let this be thy prayer:
Unto them all that thee will read or hear.
Where thou art wrong, after their help to call,
Thee to correct in any part or all."
(Chaucer.)
It is with sincere gratitude to the Publishers that the author acknowledges the results achieved to have been due wholly to their kindly interest and indefatigable efforts. He ventures to hope that this new edition, and such subsequent editions as time may require, will be found to measure fully up to the expectations of the discriminating Public on which it depends for support.
F. H. V.
New York, January, 1920.
Introduction A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · Y · Z
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1938, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 85 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
# A Boy's Will/The Tuft of Flowers

From A Boy's Will, 1913.
THE TUFT OF FLOWERS
* I went to turn the grass once after one
* Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.
* The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
* Before I came to view the levelled scene.
* I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
* I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.
* But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
* And I must be, as he had been,—alone,
* 'As all must be,' I said within my heart,
* 'Whether they work together or apart.'
* But as I said it, swift there passed me by
* On noiseless wing a 'wildered butterfly,
* Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night
* Some resting flower of yesterday's delight.
* And once I marked his flight go round and round,
* As where some flower lay withering on the ground.
* And then he flew as far as eye could see,
* And then on tremulous wing came back to me.
* I thought of questions that have no reply,
* And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;
* But he turned first, and led my eye to look
* At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,
* A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
* Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.
* I left my place to know them by their name,
* Finding them butterfly weed when I came.
* The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
* By leaving them to flourish, not for us,
* Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
* But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.
* The butterfly and I had lit upon,
* Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,
* That made me hear the wakening birds around,
* And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,
* And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
* So that henceforth I worked no more alone;
* But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
* And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;
* And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
* With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.
* 'Men work together,' I told him from the heart,
* 'Whether they work together or apart.'
# A Boy's Will/Wind and Window Flower

From A Boy's Will, 1913.
WIND AND WINDOW FLOWER
* Lovers, forget your love,
* And list to the love of these,
* She a window flower,
* And he a winter breeze.
* When the frosty window veil
* Was melted down at noon,
* And the caged yellow bird
* Hung over her in tune,
* He marked her through the pane,
* He could not help but mark,
* And only passed her by,
* To come again at dark.
* He was a winter wind,
* Concerned with ice and snow,
* Dead weeds and unmated birds,
* And little of love could know.
* But he sighed upon the sill,
* He gave the sash a shake,
* As witness all within
* Who lay that night awake.
* Perchance he half prevailed
* To win her for the flight
* From the firelit looking-glass
* And warm stove-window light.
* But the flower leaned aside
* And thought of naught to say,
* And morning found the breeze
* A hundred miles away.
# A Boy's Will/The Vantage Point

From A Boy's Will, 1913.
THE VANTAGE POINT
If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
 Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,
 To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
There amid lolling juniper reclined,
Myself unseen, I see in white defined
 Far off the homes of men, and farther still,
 The graves of men on an opposing hill,
Living or dead, whichever are to mind.   And if by noon I have too much of these,
 I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,
 The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,
My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,
 I smell the earth, I smell the bruised plant,
 I look into the crater of the ant.
# A Boy's Will/Spoils of the Dead

From A Boy's Will, 1913. Removed from the 1930 edition.
SPOILS OF THE DEAD
* Two fairies it was
* On a still summer day
* Came forth in the woods
* With the flowers to play.
* The flowers they plucked
* They cast on the ground
* For others, and those
* For still others they found.
* Flower-guided it was
* That they came as they ran
* On something that lay
* In the shape of a man.
* The snow must have made
* The feathery bed
* When this one fell
* On the sleep of the dead.
* But the snow was gone
* A long time ago,
* And the body he wore
* Nigh gone with the snow.
* The fairies drew near
* And keenly espied
* A ring on his hand
* And a chain at his side.
* They knelt in the leaves
* And eerily played
* With the glittering things,
* And were not afraid.
* And when they went home
* To hide in their burrow,
* They took them along
* To play with to-morrow.
* When you came on death,
* Did you not come flower-guided
* Like the elves in the wood?
* I remember that I did.
* But I recognised death
* With sorrow and dread,
* And I hated and hate
* The spoils of the dead.
# A Boy's Will/Storm Fear

From A Boy's Will, 1913.
STORM FEAR
When the wind works against us in the dark,
And pelts with snow
The lower chamber window on the east,
And whispers with a sort of stifled bark,
The beast,
'Come out! Come out!— It costs no inward struggle not to go,
Ah, no!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep subdued to mark
How the cold creeps as the fire dies at length,— How drifts are piled,
Dooryard and road ungraded,
Till even the comforting barn grows far away
And my heart owns a doubt
Whether 'tis in us to arise with day
And save ourselves unaided.
# A Boy's Will/To the Thawing Wind

From A Boy's Will, 1913.
TO THE THAWING WIND
Come with rain, O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
Make the settled snow-bank steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate'er you do to-night,
Bathe my window, make it flow,
Melt it as the ices go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit's crucifix;
Burst into my narrow stall;
Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o'er;
Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out of door.
# A Boy's Will/Waiting—Afield at Dusk

From A Boy's Will, 1913.
WAITING
Afield at Dusk
* What things for dream there are when
* spectre-like,
* Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,
* I enter alone upon the stubble field,
* From which the laborers' voices late have died,
* And in the antiphony of afterglow
* And rising full moon, sit me down
* Upon the full moon's side of the first haycock
* And lose myself amid so many alike.
* I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,
* Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;
* I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,
* Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,
* Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;
* And on the bat's mute antics, who would seem
* Dimly to have made out my secret place,
* Only to lose it when he pirouettes,
* And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;
* On the last swallow's sweep; and on the rasp
* In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,
* That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,
* After an interval, his instrument,
* And tries once—twice—and thrice if I be
* there;
* And on the worn book of old-golden song
* I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold
* And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;
* But on the memory of one absent most,
* For whom these lines when they shall greet
* her eye.
# A Boy's Will/Stars

From A Boy's Will, 1913.
STARS
How countlessly they congregate
 O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
 When wintry winds do blow!—
As if with keenness for our fate,
 Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
 Invisible at dawn,—   And yet with neither love nor hate,
 Those stars like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
 Without the gift of sight.
# A Boy's Will/The Demiurge's Laugh

From A Boy's Will, 1913.
THE DEMIURGE'S LAUGH
It was far in the sameness of the wood;
 I was running with joy on the Demon's trail,
Though I knew what I hunted was no true god.
 It was just as the light was beginning to fail
That I suddenly heard all I needed to hear:
It has lasted me many and many a year.   The sound was behind me instead of before,
 A sleepy sound, but mocking half,
As of one who utterly couldn't care.
 The Demon arose from his wallow to laugh,
Brushing the dirt from his eye as he went;
And well I knew what the Demon meant.   I shall not forget how his laugh rang out.
 I felt as a fool to have been so caught,
And checked my steps to make pretence
 It was something among the leaves I sought
(Though doubtful whether he stayed to see).
Thereafter I sat me against a tree.
# A Boy's Will/The Trial by Existence

From A Boy's Will, 1913.
THE TRIAL BY EXISTENCE
* Even the bravest that are slain
* Shall not dissemble their surprise
* On waking to find valor reign,
* Even as on earth, in paradise;
* And where they sought without the sword
* Wide fields of asphodel fore'er,
* To find that the utmost reward
* Of daring should be still to dare.
* The light of heaven falls whole and white
* And is not shattered into dyes,
* The light for ever is morning light;
* The hills are verdured pasture-wise;
* The angel hosts with freshness go,
* And seek with laughter what to brave;—
* And binding all is the hushed snow
* Of the far-distant breaking wave.
* And from a cliff-top is proclaimed
* The gathering of the souls for birth,
* The trial by existence named,
* The obscuration upon earth.
* And the slant spirits trooping by
* In streams and cross- and counter-streams
* Can but give ear to that sweet cry
* For its suggestion of what dreams!
* And the more loitering are turned
* To view once more the sacrifice
* Of those who for some good discerned
* Will gladly give up paradise.
* And a white shimmering concourse rolls
* Toward the throne to witness there
* The speeding of devoted souls
* Which God makes his especial care.
* And none are taken but who will,
* Having first heard the life read out
* That opens earthward, good and ill,
* Beyond the shadow of a doubt;
* And very beautifully God limns,
* And tenderly, life's little dream,
* But naught extenuates or dims,
* Setting the thing that is supreme.
* Nor is there wanting in the press
* Some spirit to stand simply forth,
* Heroic in its nakedness,
* Against the uttermost of earth.
* The tale of earth's unhonored things
* Sounds nobler there than 'neath the sun;
* And the mind whirls and the heart sings,
* And a shout greets the daring one.
* But always God speaks at the end:
* 'One thought in agony of strife
* The bravest would have by for friend,
* The memory that he chose the life;
* But the pure fate to which you go
* Admits no memory of choice,
* Or the woe were not earthly woe
* To which you give the assenting voice.'
* And so the choice must be again,
* But the last choice is still the same;
* And the awe passes wonder then,
* And a hush falls for all acclaim.
* And God has taken a flower of gold
* And broken it, and used therefrom
* The mystic link to bind and hold
* Spirit to matter till death come.
* 'Tis of the essence of life here,
* Though we choose greatly, still to lack
* The lasting memory at all clear,
* That life has for us on the wrack
* Nothing but what we somehow chose;
* Thus are we wholly stripped of pride
* In the pain that has but one close,
* Bearing it crushed and mystified.