lay-figure

“Happily your head rested against this lay-figure.”

The Purse 2007

Croiset remark, if the poet needed a lay-figure the ordinary practice was to introduce some mythological person — as, in fact, is done in the “Precepts of Chiron”.

Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, and Homerica 2007

“Happily your head rested against this lay-figure.”

The Purse 2007

And now the worthy Mrs Wilfer, having used her youngest daughter as a lay-figure for the edification of these Boffins, became bland to her, and proceeded to develop her last instance of force of character, which was still in reserve.

Our Mutual Friend 2004

You know what I mean, -- transient loss of sense, will, and motion; body and limbs taking any position in which they are put, as if they belonged to a lay-figure.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 24, October, 1859 Various

She sat in her father's study-chair as stiff and stolid as a lay-figure in a shop window, with her lips drawn primly over her teeth.

The Governess Julie Mathilde Lippmann

'Ah, my poor lay-figure,' he groans, 'he, who bore the drapery of

Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century George Paston

The polished rug-laid floor, the fluted folds of _toile-de-genes_ clothing the walls, the litter of sketches and pictures, casts and easels, the familiar lay-figure grotesquely attitudinising in a corner, above all the atmosphere carried him straight to Paris.

The Shadow of the East

In the absence of any lucrative employment he was only able to carry on his work by pawning his lay-figure, and borrowing off his butterman.

Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century George Paston

'I may do without a lay-figure for a time,' he writes, 'but not without old Homer.

Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century George Paston