Billy was never afraid of him, looked at him so firmly even when threatened, holding up the pink and white face, with its soft unformed features and yet a determined set to the chin and mouth already-a real little man.
"The Devil's Garden"
W. B. Maxwell
I had done what I could to attain my own wishes; I was not one of those idle, clever fellows who imagine talent independent of work, and who are too lazy to throw into words and commit to paper the brilliant but vague, unformed inspirations that visit them between the circling rings of smoke from their cigar.
"To-morrow?"
Victoria Cross
While, therefore, it appears that the actual notices of the early commemorative poems do not imply that they were the products of imagination or poetical feeling, or that they excited much popular enthusiasm, and were an important element in the early State, their entire disappearance among a people so tenacious of all their gains, and, still more, the unformed and prosaic condition of the language and rhythm used by Naevius, Ennius, and the other early poets, lead to the presumption, that they were not much valued by the Romans at any time, and that they were not the creations of poetic genius and art.
"The Roman Poets of the Republic"
W. Y. Sellar