Explore "My Novel, Book I" by Edward Bulwer-lytton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
While the parson and his wife are entertaining their guest, I propose to regale the reader with a small treatise /a propos/ of that "Charles dear," murmured by Mrs. Dale, -- a treatise expressly written for the benefit of The Domestic Circle.
It is an old jest that there is not a word in the language that conveys so little endearment as the word "dear. " But though the saying itself, like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much proportioned to its collocation in the sentence. When, gliding indirectly through the rest of the period, it takes its stand at the close, as in that "Charles dear" of Mrs. Dale, it has spilled so much of its natural bitterness by the way that it assumes even a smile, "amara lento temperet risu. " Sometimes the smile is plaintive, sometimes arch. For example: --