Middlemarch vocabulary

By the bye, before I go, my dear, I must speak to your Mrs. Carter about pastry.

George Eliot. Middlemarch

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'By-the-bye, what became of the baby?' said the Cat. 'I'd nearly forgotten to ask.'

Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland (1865)

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By the bye, said Mr Dedalus at length, the rector, or provincial, rather, was telling me that story about you and Father Dolan. You’re an impudent thief, he said.

James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

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sketched my first cottage (whose walls, by-the-bye, outrivalled in slope those of the leaning tower of Pisa), on the same day.

Charlotte Brontë. Jane Eyre (1847)