Mr Pickwick : main character of Dickens’ The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836-37); in a Pickwickian sense refers to words or epithets usually of a derogatory or insulting kind, which, in the circumstances in which they are employed, do not have quite the same force or implication as they normally would have.
... epic contained only 8800 lines, are ingenuities of this type. They are based on the Teutonic art of building a whole mammoth out of a single and often problematical bone, and remind one strongly of Mr Pickwick and the historic inscription which was so rudely, if in a Pickwickian sense, challenged by the refractory [Mr Blotton.] All these theorisings are idle enough; they are made of too airy a stuff to ...
... Goethe: did not she invite the Poet? - but then 'Oh no, not too close,' said she warningly! Only, while Goethe had for his flame to pay in poems, not in gold: This modern 'Pickwick' gave her with his 'love-sick' heart his cash untold. Then, bankrupt, hugging me in London blubbered he between his tears: 'O kindred spirit, who but you can ever divine what my ...
... smiled on Goethe: did not she Invite the Poet? — but then "Oh no, not too close," said she warningly! Only, while Goethe had for his flame to pay in poems, not in gold: This modern 'Pickwick' gave her with his 'love-sick' heart his cash untold. Page 177 Then, bankrupt, hugging me in London blubbered he between his tears: "O kindred spirit, who but you can ever divine ...
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