parergon

Literature was for him no parergon, no mere way of escape from politics.

Imperfect Critics Thomas Stearns 1920

If we stop short of denying to Seneca the possession of any dramatic talent, it is at any rate hard to resist the conviction that he treated the plays as a _parergon_, spending little thought or care on their _ensemble_, though at times working up a scene or scenes with an elaboration and skill as unmistakable as it is often misdirected.

Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal Harold Edgeworth Butler 1914

Concerned above all else that their names should appear in the Book of Life, the brothers were to consider the making of gold as unimportant-although for the true philosophers (Occultists) this was an easy matter and a parergon.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 13: Revelation-Stock 1840-1916 1913

But since tradition offered to them a conception of a supernaturally renewed Empire, which they did not renounce the hope of realising on earth, they conceived an almost invincible mistrust of the ‘parergon,’ which the Roman Bishop held out and for which he strove.

Monasticism: Its Ideals and History and The Confessions of St. Augustine 1851-1930 1911

In old days -- in Captain Cai's young days -- it ran up for half a mile or more to an embanked mill-pool and a mill-wheel lazily turning: and Rilla Farm had in those days been Rilla Mill, with a farmstead attached as the miller's _parergon_.

Hocken and Hunken Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch 1903

Beside these collections, which were in their origin and inception chiefly musical, and literary, as it were, only by parergon, there are successors of the earlier Miscellanies in which, as in _England's Helicon_ and the celebrated _Passionate Pilgrim_, there is some of the most exquisite of our verse.

A History of Elizabethan Literature George Saintsbury 1889

I prefer Italy to England, but as by way of parergon, or by-work, as every man should have both his profession and his hobby.

Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino 1881

But that was a mere parergon; to secure Richard Mutimer was the great end steadily held in view.

Demos George Gissing 1880

This opinion seems the less improbable, as the person to whom Chettle is most apologetic excels in a quality or profession, which is contrasted with, and is not identical with, "his facetious grace in writing" -- a parergon, or "bye-work," in his case.

Shakespeare, Bacon, and the Great Unknown Andrew Lang 1878

It was intended to be merely a _parergon_ -- a "second subject," upon which daylight energies might be spent, while the hours of night were reserved for cataloguing those stars that "are bereft of the baths of ocean."

A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century Fourth Edition 1874