Written English (part 3)

Camaralzaman, Prince.—Arabian Nights.—One of the stories of the Arabian Nights and the name of a prince who fell in love with Badoura, princess of China, the moment he saw her.

Camancho (kä-mä´chō).—Don Quixote, Cervantes. A character in an episode in Don Quixote, who gets cheated out of his bride after having made great preparations for their wedding.

Camballo (kam-bal´o), or Cambel.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. A brother of Candace. He challenged every suitor to his sister’s hand, and overthrew all except Triamond, who married the lady.

Cambalu.—In the Voyages of Marco Polo the chief city of the province of Cathay.

Cambuscan (kam-bus-kan´, or kam-bus´kan).—A Tartar king identical with Genghis Khan. The king of the Far East sent Cambuscan a “steed of brass, which, between sunrise and sunset, would carry its rider to any spot on the earth.” All that was required was to whisper the name of the place in the horse’s ear, mount upon his back, and turn a pin set in his ear. When the rider had arrived at the place required, he had to turn another pin, and the horse instantly descended, and, with another screw of the pin, vanished till it was again required. This story is begun by Chaucer in the Squire’s Tale, but was never finished.

Camelot (kam´e-lot).—A parish in Somersetshire, England (now called Queen’s Camel), where King Arthur is said to have held his court. In this place there are still to be seen vast intrenchments of an ancient town or station—called by the inhabitants “King Arthur’s Palace.”

Camilla (ka-mil´ä).—(1) The virgin queen of the Volscians, famous for her fleetness of foot. She aided Turnus against Æneas. (2) Wife of Anselmo of Florence in Don Quixote. Anselmo, in order to rejoice in her incorruptible fidelity, induced his friend Lothario to try to corrupt her. This he did, and Camilla was not trial-proof, but fell. Anselmo for a time was kept in the dark, but at the end Camilla eloped with Lothario. Anselmo died of grief, Lothario was slain in battle, and Camilla died in a convent.

Camille (kä-mēl´).—(1) In Corneille’s tragedy of Les Horaces. When her brother meets her and bids her congratulate him for his victory over the three curiatii, she gives utterance to her grief for the death of her lover. Horace says, “What! can you prefer a man to the interests of Rome?” Whereupon Camille denounces Rome, and concludes with these words: “Oh, that it were my lot!” (2) Whitehead dramatized the subject and called it The Roman Father.

Canace (kan´a-se).—Faërie Queene, Spenser. A paragon among women, the daughter of King Cambuscan, to whom the king of the East sent as a present a mirror and a ring. The mirror would tell the lady if any man on whom she set her heart would prove true or false, and the ring (which was to be worn on her thumb) would enable her to understand the language of birds and to converse with them. Canace was courted by a crowd of suitors, but her brother gave out that anyone who pretended to her hand must encounter him in single combat and overthrow him. She ultimately married Triamond, son of the fairy, Agapë.

Candide (käN-dēd´), ou l’Optimisme (ōō lop-tē-mēzm´).—A philosophical novel by Voltaire, published in 1759. It is named from its hero, who bears all the worst ills of life with a cool, philosophical indifference, laughing at its miseries. Written ostensibly to ridicule philosophical optimism, and on the spur given to pessimist theories by the Lisbon earthquake, Candide is really as comprehensive as it is desultory. Religion, political government, national peculiarities, human weakness, ambition, love, loyalty—all come in for the unfailing sneer. The moral, wherever there is a moral, is, “Be tolerant, and cultivez vôtre jardin”; that is to say, Do whatsoever work you have to do diligently.

Candor, Mrs.—A most energetic slanderer in Sheridan’s School for Scandal.

Canterbury Tales, The, by Geoffrey Chaucer, consist of a Prologue and twenty-four narratives of which only two, Chaucer’s Tales of Melibœus and The Parson’s Tale, are in prose, the remainder being written in couplets of ten syllables, which have laid the foundation for the most popular form of English verse.

The plan of the poem is as follows: The author supposes that, on the evening before he starts on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas-à-Becket, at Canterbury, he stops at the Tabard Inn, in Southwark, where he finds himself in the midst of a company of twenty-one, of all ranks and ages and both sexes, who are also bound for the same destination. After supper, the host of Tabard, Harry Baillie by name, proposes that, to beguile the journey there and back, the pilgrims shall each of them tell two tales as they come and go; and that he who by the general voice shall have told his story best, shall, on their return to the hostelry, be treated to a supper at the common cost. This is agreed to with acclamation; and, accordingly, the pilgrims start next morning on their way, listening, as they ride, to the heroic tale of the brave and gentle knight who has been chosen to narrate the first tale.

It will be understood that Chaucer does not profess to give to the world all the stories told. As a matter of fact, he gives only twenty-four, of which two have been already named, the remainder being those told by the Knight, the Miller, the Reeve, the Cook, the Man of Law, the Wife of Bath, the Friar, the Sompnour, the Clerk, the Squire, the Franklin, the Doctor, the Pardoner, the Shipman, the Prioress, the Monk, the Nun’s Priest, the second Nun, the Canon’s Yeoman, the Manciple, and Chaucer himself (Sir Topas). Unfinished, as it is, however, the poem was immensely popular, even in the author’s time; and it was one of the first books that was issued from the press of Caxton, probably in 1475.

Caora (kä´ō-rä).—Description of Guiana, Raleigh. A river on the banks of which are a people whose heads grow beneath their shoulders. Their eyes are in their shoulders, and mouths in the middle of their breasts. The original picture is found in Hakluyt’s Voyages, 1598.

Capulet (kap´ū-let).—The head of a noble Veronese house in Shakespeare’s tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, hostile to the house of Montague. He is at times self-willed and tyrannical, but a jovial and testy old man.

Capulet, Lady.—The proud and stately wife of Capulet, and mother of Juliet.

Caradoc (kar´a-dok).—A knight of the Round Table. Also, in history, the British chief whom the Romans called Caractacus. Caradoc is the hero of an old ballad entitled The Boy and the Mantle.

Carker (kär´ker).—A scoundrelly clerk in Dickens’ Dombey and Son.

Carton, Sidney.—A hero transformed by unselfish love in Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. He voluntarily goes to the guillotine to save his successful rival in love.

Casca (kas´kä).—Julius Cæsar, Shakespeare. A blunt-witted Roman, one of the conspirators against Julius Cæsar.

Cassandra (ka-san´drä).—A daughter of Priam, king of Troy, gifted with the power of prophecy; but Apollo, whom she had offended, brought it to pass that no one believed her predictions. Shakespeare makes use of this character in Troilus and Cressida.

Cassibelan.—Great uncle to Cymbeline, in Shakespeare’s play by that name.

Cassio (kash´iō).—A Florentine, and lieutenant of Othello, and a tool of Iago, in Shakespeare’s tragedy of Othello. Iago made Cassio drunk, and then set on Roderigo to quarrel with him. Cassio wounded Roderigo. Othello suspended Cassio, but Iago induced Desdemona to plead for his restoration. This interest in Cassio confirmed the jealous rage of Othello to murder Desdemona and kill himself. After the death of Othello, Cassio was appointed governor of Cyprus.

Castle Dangerous.—A keep belonging to the Douglas family, which gives its name to one of Sir Walter Scott’s Tales of My Landlord. It was so called by the English because it was always retaken from them by the Douglas.

Castle of Indolence.—The title of a poem by Thomson, and the name of a castle, described in it as situated in a pleasing land of drowsiness, where every sense was steeped in the most luxurious and enervating delights.

Castlewood, Beatrix.—The heroine of Thackeray’s novel Henry Esmond, a picture of splendid, lustrous, physical beauty.

Caudle, Mrs. Margaret.—The feigned author of a series of curtain lectures by Douglas Jerrold, published in Punch, purporting to be the lectures delivered by Mrs. Margaret Caudle to her patient husband, Job Caudle, between the hours of ten at night and seven in the morning.

Cauline, Sir.—A knight in Percy’s Reliques, who served the wine to the king of Ireland. He fell in love with Christabelle, the king’s daughter, and she became his troth-plight wife, without her father’s knowledge. When the king knew of it, he banished Sir Cauline. After a time the soldain asked the lady in marriage, but Sir Cauline challenged his rival and slew him. He himself, however, died of the wounds he had received, and the Lady Christabelle, out of grief, “burst her gentle hearte in twayne.”

Cecilia, St.—A patron saint of the blind, also patroness of musicians, and “inventor of the organ.” According to tradition, an angel fell in love with her for her musical skill, and used nightly to visit her.

Celadon (sel´a-don) and Amelia.—Lovers of matchless beauty and most devoted to each other. Being overtaken by a thunderstorm, Amelia became alarmed, but Celadon, folding his arm about her, said, “’Tis safety to be near thee, sure”; but while he spoke Amelia was struck by lightning and fell dead in his arms.

Celia.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. (1) Mother of Faith, Hope and Charity. She was herself known as Heavenliness and lived in the hospices Holiness. (2) Celia, cousin to Rosalind in Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It. Celia is a common poetical name for a lady or a lady-love.

Chadband (chad´band), The Rev.—A clerical character in Dickens’ Bleak House. He will always stand as a type of hypocritical piety.

Chanticleer (chan´ti-klēr).—The cock in the tale of Reynard the Fox, and in Chaucer’s Nonne Prestes Tale.

Charlemagne (chär´le-män).—The romance of Charlemagne and his paladins is of French origin, as the romances of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table is of Celtic or Welsh origin. According to one tradition Charlemagne is not dead, but waits, crowned and armed, in Odenberg, near Saltzburg, till the time of the antichrist, when he will wake up and deliver Christendom. According to another tradition, Charlemagne appears in seasons of plenty. He crosses the Rhine on a golden bridge, and blesses both cornfields and vineyards.

Charmian (chär´mi-an).—A kind-hearted but simple-minded female attendant on Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s play of Antony and Cleopatra.

Cheeryble (chēr´i-bl) Brothers, The.—A firm of benevolent London merchants in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby.

Chery and Fair-Star.—Countess d’Aulnoy’s Fairy Tales. Two children of royal birth, whom their father’s brothers and their mother’s sisters cast out to sea; they are found and brought up by a corsair and his wife. Ultimately they are told of their birth by a green bird and marry each other. A similar tale is found in The Arabian Nights.

Chibiabos.—The musician in Longfellow’s Hiawatha, personifying harmony in nature.

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.—A poem, in the Spenserian stanza, by Lord Byron. It consists of four cantos, of which the first and second were published in 1812, the third in 1816, and the fourth in 1818; and the preface to the first two cantos contained the following explanation of the origin and purpose of the poem.

“It was written,” says Lord Byron, “for the most part, amid the scenes which it attempts to describe. It was begun in Albania; and the parts relative to Spain and Portugal were composed from the author’s observations in those countries.... the scenes attempted to be sketched are in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, Acarnania, and Greece (the third canto describes scenes in Belgium, Switzerland, and the Valley of the Rhine; and canto four is chiefly occupied with Rome).... A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of giving some connection to the piece, which, however, makes no pretensions to regularity. It has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opinion I set a high value, that in this fictitious character, Childe Harold, I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real personage; this I beg leave, once for all, to disclaim. Harold is the creation of imagination, for the purpose I have stated. In some trivial particulars, and those merely local, there might be grounds for such a notion; but in the main points, I should hope, none whatever. It is almost superfluous to mention that the appellation ‘Childe’ is used as more consonant with the old structure of versification which I have adopted.”

Children in the Wood.—Two characters in an ancient and well-known ballad entitled The Children in the Wood, or The Norfolk Gent’s Last Will and Testament. This is said to be a disguised recital of the alleged murder of his nephews by Richard III.

Chillingly, Kenelm.—The hero in a novel by this name by Bulwer.

Chillon (shē-yôn), The Prisoner of.—A poem by Lord Byron, founded on the story of Francois de Bonnivard, the hero of Genevan independence, and published in 1816. Bonnivard was born in 1496, and died in 1571. An account of his life, in France, is prefixed to the poem.

Chingachgook.—A sagamore of the Mohicans and father of Uncas, in Cooper’s Leather-Stocking Tales.

Chloe (klō´ē).—Daphnis and Chloe, Longus. (1) The shepherdess loved by Daphne. (2) Paul and Virginia by St. Pierre is founded on this romance. (3) Chloe is also a shepherdess in Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

Chœreas.—The lover of Callirrhoë, in Chariton’s Greek romance.

Chriemhild, or Kriemhild (krēm´hild).—The heroine of the German epic poem, the Nibelungenlied. She is represented as a woman of the rarest grace and beauty, and rich beyond conception. By the treacherous murder of her husband she is transformed into a furious creature of revenge. For plot of this epic cycle, see “Kriemhild.”

Christabel (kris´ta-bel).—(1) The subject and heroine of an old romance by Sir Eglamour of Artois. (2) The heroine of an ancient ballad Sir Cauline. (3) The lady in Coleridge’s poem Christabel.

Christian (kris´tian).—The hero of John Bunyan’s allegory Pilgrim’s Progress. He flees from the “City of Destruction,” and journeys to the “Celestial City.” He starts with a heavy burden on his back, but it falls off when he stands at the foot of the cross. All his trials on the way are depicted.

Christiana (kris-tē-ä´nä).—The wife of Christian, who, starting with her children and Mercy from the “City of Destruction,” forms the subject of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, part II. She was placed under the guidance of Mr. Great-Heart, and met her husband at the Celestial City.

Christmas Carol, A.—A ghost story of Christmas, by Charles Dickens, published in 1843, with illustrations by John Leech. “We are all charmed,” wrote Lord Jeffrey to the author, “with your Carol, chiefly, I think, for the genuine goodness which breathes all through it, and is the true inspiring angel by which its genius has been awakened. The whole scene of the Cratchits is like the dream of a benevolent angel, in spite of its broad reality, and little Tiny Tim in life and death almost as sweet and touching as Nelly.”

Christmas Eve.—A poem by Robert Browning, in which, “after following through a long course of reflection the successive phases of religious belief, he arrives at the certainty that, however confused be the vision of Christ, where His love is, there is the Life; and that, the more direct the revelation of that Love, the deeper and more vital is its power.”

Christopher, St.—The giant that carried a child over a brook, and said, “Chylde, thou has put me in grete peryll. I might bere no greater burden.” The Chylde was the Christ and the burden was the “Sin of the World.” This has been a favorite theme for painters.

Chrysalde (krē-zäld´).—A character in Molière’s L’Ecole des Femmes; a friend of Arnolphe.

Chrysale (krē-zäl´).—An honest, simple-minded, henpecked tradesman, in the same comedy by Molière.

Chuzzlewit, Martin.—The hero of Dickens’ novel of the same name. The story is remarkable for the attention it directed to the system of ship hospitals and to the workhouse nurses whose prototype in Sarah Gamp has become famous all over the world.

Chuzzlewit, Jonas.—A miser and a murderer, the opposite type of character from Martin.

Cimmerians (si-mē´ri-anz).—A people described by Homer dwelling “beyond the ocean stream,” in a land where the sun never shines.

Cinderella.—Heroine of a fairy tale. She is the drudge of the house, while her elder sisters go to fine balls. At length a fairy enables her to go to the prince’s ball; the prince falls in love with her, and she is discovered by means of a glass slipper which she drops, and which will fit no foot but her own. She is represented as returning good for evil and heaping upon her half-sisters every kindness a princess can show.

Cipango (si-pang´gō).—A marvelous island, described in the Voyages of Marco Polo, the Venetian traveler. It is represented as lying in the Eastern seas, some one thousand five hundred miles from land, and of its beauty and wealth many stories are related. Columbus made a diligent search for this island.

Clärchen (klār´chen).—A female character in Goethe’s Egmont, noted for her constancy and devotion.

Clare, Ada.—The wife of Carstone, and one of the most important characters in Dickens’ Bleak House.

Clavileño (klä-vē-lān´yō), El Alígero.—The wooden horse on which Don Quixote got astride in order to disenchant the Infanta Antonomasia, her husband, and the Countess Trifaldi. It was “the very horse on which Peter of Provence carried off the fair Magalona, and was constructed by Merlin.” This horse was called Clavileño, or Wooden Peg, because it was governed by a wooden pin in the forehead.

Cléante (klā-ont´).—Brother-in-law of Orgon in Molière’s Tartuffe. He is distinguished for his genuine piety, and is both high-minded and compassionate. The same name occurs in two other plays by Molière.

Cleishbotham (klēsh´boTH-am), Jedediah.—Schoolmaster and parish clerk of Gandercleuch, who employed his assistant teacher to arrange and edit the tales told by the landlord of the Wallace inn of the same parish. These tales the editor disposed in three series, called by the general title of The Tales of My Landlord. Of course the real author is Sir Walter Scott.

Clementina, Lady.—A beautiful and accomplished woman, deeply in love with Sir Charles Grandison, in Richardson’s novel of this name.

Cleon (klē´on).—(1) In Shakespeare’s Pericles, governor of Tarsus, burned to death with his wife Dionysia by the enraged citizens, to revenge the supposed murder of Marina, daughter of Pericles, prince of Tyre. (2) The personification of glory in Spenser’s Faërie Queene.

Clifford, Paul.—An attractive highwayman and an interesting hero in Bulwer’s novel by the same name. He is familiar with the haunts of low vice and dissipation, but afterward is reformed and elevated by the power of love.

Clinker, Humphrey.—A novel by Smollett. The hero, by the same name, a philosophic youth, meets many adventures. Brought up in the workhouse, put out by the parish as apprentice to a blacksmith, he was afterward employed as a hostler’s assistant. Having been dismissed from the stable, and reduced to great want, he at length attracts the notice of Mr. Bramble who takes him into his family as a servant. He becomes the accepted lover of Winifred Jenkins, and at length turns out to be a natural son of Mr. Bramble.

Cloten (klō´ten).—A rejected lover of Imogen, in Shakespeare’s play of Cymbeline.

Clorinda (klō-rin´dä).—Jerusalem Delivered, Tasso. Clorinda, the heroine of this poem, is represented as an Amazon inspiring the most tender affection in others, especially in the Christian chief Tancred; yet she is herself susceptible of no passion but the love of military fame.

Clouds, The.—A famous comedy by Aristophanes. Strepsiades (“Turncoat”) sends his spendthrift son Phidippides to the phrontistery (“thinking shop”) of Socrates, who appears as a sophist, to be reformed by training in rhetoric. Phidippides refuses to go; so Strepsiades goes himself, and finds Socrates swinging in a basket, observing the sun and ether. Socrates summons the Clouds, his new deities, and undertakes to make a sophist of him and free him from the religion of his fathers. Unfortunate results of his new knowledge show Strepsiades his error, and he abandons Socrates and sets the phrontistery on fire.

Cock, The.—A famous tavern in Fleet street, London, opposite the Temple. Tennyson has immortalized it in his Will Waterproof’s Lyrical Monologue.

Cœlebs (sē´lebz).—The hero of a novel by Hannah More, Cœlebs in Search of a Wife.

Colada. (kō-lä´THä).—The sword taken by the Cid from Ramon Berenger, count of Barcelona. This sword had two hilts of solid gold.

Colin Clout (kol´in klout).—A name that Spenser applies to himself in the Faërie Queene and Shepherd’s Calendar. Colin Clout also is introduced into Gay’s pastorals.

Cologne (kō-lōn´), The Three Kings of.—The three magi who visited the Infant Savior, and whose bodies are said to have been brought by the Empress Helena from the East to Constantinople, whence they were transferred to Milan. Afterward they were removed to Cologne and placed in the principal church of the city. Their names are commonly said to be Jaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar.

Comedy of Errors.—A comedy by Shakespeare. Twin brothers of exact likeness named Antipholus are served by attendant slaves named Dromio also of striking resemblance. The humor of the play lies in the complications that arise. The two brothers are lost at sea with their servants and are picked up by different vessels. After long separation they all reappear in Ephesus. There is great entanglement of plot until both brothers face each other in a trial before the duke and all is explained.

Complete Angler, The (or, The Contemplative Man’s Recreation. “A discourse, of Fish and Fishing, not unworthy the Perusal of most Anglers”).—A famous treatise by Izaak Walton, published in 1653. “Whether,” says Sir John Hawkins, “we consider the elegant simplicity of the style, the ease and unaffected humor of the dialogue, the lovely scenes which it delineates, the enchanting pastoral poetry which it contains, or the fine morality it so sweetly inculcates, it has hardly its fellow in any of the modern languages.”

Comus.—A masque, or dramatic poem, by John Milton, published in 1637. It was written for the earl of Bridgewater, and acted at his residence, Castle Ludlow, in Shropshire, on Michaelmas night, 1634. The music is by Henry Lawes. Comus (a revel) was the Roman god of banqueting and festive amusements; but in Milton’s poems he appears as a lewd enchanter, whose pleasure it is to deceive and ruin the chaste and innocent.

Coningsby (kon´ingz-bi).—A novel by B. Disraeli. The characters are meant for portraits: thus, “Rigby” represents Croker; “Monmouth,” Lord Hertford; “Eskdale,” Lowther; “Ormsby,” Irving; “Lucretia,” Mme. Zichy; “Countess Colonna,” Lady Strachan; “Sidonia,” Baron A. de Rothschild; “Henry Sidney,” Lord John Manners; “Belvoir,” duke of Rutland, second son of Beaumanoir.

Consuelo (kôN-sü-ā-lō´).—A noted novel by George Sand. The heroine has the same name, and is an impersonation of noble purity sustained amidst great temptations.

Cophetua (kō-fet´ū-ä).—An imaginary African king, of whom a legendary ballad told that he fell in love with a beggar maid and married her. This ballad is found in Percy’s Reliques. Tennyson has given us a modern version in The Beggar Maid.

Copperfield, David.—A novel by Charles Dickens. David is Dickens himself, and Micawber is Dickens’ father. According to the tale, David’s mother was nursery governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield visited. At the death of Mr. Copperfield, the widow married Edward Murdstone, a hard, tyrannical man, who made the home of David a dread and terror to the boy. When his mother died, Murdstone sent David to lodge with the Micawbers, and bound him apprentice to Messrs. Murdstone and Grinby, by whom he was put into the warehouse, and set to paste labels upon wine and spirit bottles. David soon became tired of this dreary work, and ran away to Dover, where he was kindly received by his [great-]aunt Betsy Trotwood, who clothed him, and sent him as day-boy to Dr. Strong, but placed him to board with Mr. Wickfield, a lawyer, father of Agnes, between whom and David a mutual attachment sprang up. David’s first wife was Dora Spenlow, but at the death of this pretty little “child-wife,” he married Agnes Wickfield.

Cordelia (kôr-dē´liä).—King Lear, Shakespeare. The youngest of Lear’s three daughters, and the one that truly loved him.

Corinne (ko-rēn´).—The heroine of a novel, of the same name, by Madame de Staël.

Coriolanus (kō´ri-ō-lā´nus).—An historical play by William Shakespeare. In the plot, and in many of the speeches, Shakespeare has followed Sir Thomas North’s Life of Coriolanus, included in his translation of Amyot’s Plutarch. “The subject of Coriolanus,” says Prof. Dowden, “is the ruin of a noble life through the sin of pride. If duty be the dominant ideal with Brutus, and pleasure of a magnificent kind be the ideal of Antony and Cleopatra, that which gives tone and color to Coriolanus is an ideal of self-centered power. The greatness of Brutus is altogether that of the moral conscience; his external figure does not dilate upon the world through a golden haze like that of Antony, nor bulk massively and tower like that of Coriolanus. A haughty and passionate personal feeling, a superb egoism, are with Coriolanus the sources of weakness and of strength.”

Corsair, The.—A poem, in three cantos, by Lord Byron, published in 1814. The hero is called Conrad, and is described, in a well-known passage, as leaving

“a Corsair’s name to other times,
Link’d with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.”

The heroines are Medora, whom Conrad loves, and Gulnare, “the Harem queen,” whose love is given to Conrad, and who kills her master, Seyd, in order that Conrad may be free.

Corydon (kor´i-don).—A shepherd in one of the Idylls of Theocritus, and one of the Eclogues of Vergil. Used by Shakespeare and later poets to designate a rustic swain.

Costard (kos´tärd).—A clown, in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost, who apes the display of wit, and misapplies, in the most ridiculous manner, the phrases and modes of combination in argument that were then in vogue.

Cotter’s Saturday Night, The.—A poem by Robert Burns of which his brother remarks: “Robert had frequently remarked to me that there was something particularly venerable in the phrase, ‘Let us worship God,’ used by a decent, sober head of a family introducing family worship. To this sentiment of the author the world is indebted for the Cotter’s Saturday Night. The hint of the plan and title of the poem are taken from Ferguson’s Farmer’s Ingle.”

Count of Monte Cristo.—A celebrated romance by Alexander Dumas, in which Edmond Dantes, the hero, suffers unjust imprisonment for many years. He finally escapes, only to be apprised of the death of his father and the marriage of his former sweetheart. From information derived from a fellow prisoner, he then comes into possession of great riches through the successful discovery of hoards of treasure in the island of Monte Cristo. His remaining years are given over to a vindication of his former life.

Coverly (papers by Steele and Addison), Sir Roger de, was a member of a hypothetical club, and was noted for his modesty, generosity, hospitality, and eccentric whims. He was most courteous to his neighbors, most affectionate to his family, most amiable to his domestics. Sir Roger, who figures in thirty papers of the Spectator, is the very beau-ideal of an amiable country gentleman of Queen Anne’s time.

Crabtree.—A character in Smollett’s novel, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle.

Crane, Ichabod.—The name of a Yankee schoolmaster, whose adventures are related in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, in Irving’s Sketch-Book.

Crawley (krâ´li), Rawdon.—The husband of Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, Thackeray’s novel without a hero.

Creakle (krē´kl), Mr.—A tyrannical and cruel schoolmaster in Dickens’ David Copperfield.

Cressida (kres´i-dä).—The heroine of Shakespeare’s play, Troilus and Cressida, also the heroine of one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Croaker.—A character in Goldsmith’s comedy, The Good-Natured Man.

Crummles (krum´lz), Vincent.—A theatrical head of a theatrical family in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby.

Crusoe, Robinson.—Title and hero of a novel by Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe is a shipwrecked sailor, who leads a solitary life for many years on a desert island, and relieves the tedium of life by ingenious contrivances (1719). The story is based on the adventures of Alexander Selkirk, a Scotch sailor, who in 1704 was left by Captain Stradding on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez. Here he remained for four years and four months, when he was rescued by Captain Woodes Rogers and brought to England.

Cuttle, Captain.—A character in Dickens’ Dombey and Son, good-humored, eccentric, pathetic in his simple credulity.

Cymbeline (sim´be-lin).—Title and hero of Shakespeare’s play. Imogen, daughter of Cymbeline, king of Britain, married clandestinely Posthumus Leonatus; and Posthumus, being banished for the offense, retired to Rome. One day, in the house of Philario, the conversation turned on the merits of wives, and Posthumus bet his diamond ring that nothing could tempt the fidelity of Imogen. Through the villainy of Iachimo, Cymbeline was forced to believe Imogen untrue. The villainy was in time disclosed, and the beautiful character of Imogen revealed.

D

Dalgetty (dal´get-i), Captain Dugald.—A soldier of fortune in Sir Walter Scott’s Legend of Montrose, distinguished for his pedantry, conceit, valor, vulgar assurance, knowledge of the world, greediness, and a hundred other qualities, making him one of the most amusing, admirable, and natural characters ever drawn by the hand of genius.

Damocles (dam´ō-klēz).—A flatterer in the court of Dionysius of Syracuse. By way of answer to his constant praises of the happiness of kings, Dionysius seated him at a royal banquet, with a sword hung over his head by a single horsehair. In the midst of his magnificent banquet, Damocles, chancing to look upward, saw a sharp and naked sword suspended over his head. A sight so alarming instantly changed his views on the felicity of kings. The phrase signifies now evil foreboding or dread, a tantalizing torment.

Damon and Pythias (pith´i-as).—(1) A play by Richard Edwards, printed in 1571. Its main subject is tragic, but it calls itself a comedy. (2) A tragedy by John Banim and Richard Lalor Sheil, produced in 1821. (3) Two noble Pythagoreans of Syracuse, who have been remembered as models of faithful friendship. Pythias having been condemned to death by Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse, begged to be allowed to go home, for the purpose of arranging his affairs, Damon pledging his own life for the reappearance of his friend. Dionysius consented, and Pythias returned just in time to save Damon from death. Struck by so noble an example of mutual affection, the tyrant pardoned Pythias, and desired to be admitted into their sacred fellowship.

Dandie Dinmont.—A jovial, true-hearted store-farmer, in Sir Walter Scott’s Guy Mannering.

Daphnis (daf´nis) and Chloe (klō´ē).—A prose-pastoral love story in Greek, by Longus, a Byzantine. Gessner has imitated the Greek romance in his idyll called Daphnis. In this love story Longus says he was hunting in Lesbos, and saw in a grove consecrated to the nymphs a beautiful picture of children exposed, lovers plighting their faith, and the incursions of pirates, which he now expresses and dedicates to Pan, Cupid and the nymphs. Daphnis, of course, is the lover of Chloe.

Darby and Joan.—This ballad is frequently called The Happy Old Couple. The words are sometimes attributed to Prior. Darby and Joan are an old-fashioned, loving couple, who are wholly averse to change of any sort. It is generally said that Henry Woodfall was the author of the ballad, and that the originals were John Darby (printer, of Bartholomew Close, who died 1730) and his wife Joan. Woodfall served his apprenticeship with John Darby.

Dares (dā´rēz).—One of the competitors at the funeral games of Anchises in Sicily, described in the fifth book of Vergil’s Æneid.

David.—(1) He was the uncle of King Arthur. St. David first embraced the ascetic life in the Isle of Wight, but subsequently removed to Menevia, in Pembrokeshire, where he founded twelve convents. (2) One of the Israelite kings. (3) In Dryden’s satire called Absalom and Achitophel, represents Charles II.; Absalom, his beautiful but rebellious son, represents the duke of Monmouth.

Davy.—Henry IV., Shakespeare. The varlet of Justice Shallow, who so identifies himself with his master that he considers himself half host, half varlet. Thus when he seats Bardolph and Page at table, he tells them they must take “his” good will for their assurance of welcome.

Dawfyd.—The Betrothed, Scott. The one-eyed freebooter chief.

Dawkins (dâ´kinz).—Oliver Twist, Dickens. Known by the sobriquet of the Artful Dodger. He is one of Fagin’s tools. Jack Dawkins is a scamp, but of a cheery, buoyant temper.

Dayonet, Sir.—In the romance Le Mort d’Arthur he is called the fool of King Arthur.

Deans, Douce Davie.—A poor herdsman at Edinburgh, and the father of Effie and Jeanie Deans, in Sir Walter Scott’s novel, The Heart of Midlothian.

Deans, Effie.—A beautiful but unfortunate character in Sir Walter Scott’s Heart of Midlothian.

Deans, Jeanie.—The heroine of Sir Walter Scott’s Heart of Midlothian, described as a perfect model of sober heroism, of the union of good sense and strong affections, firm principles, and perfect disinterestedness; and of calm superiority to misfortune, danger, and difficulty which such a union must create.

Decameron (de-kam´e-ron), The.—A collection of romances by Giovanni Boccaccio. It derives its name from its framework. Seven gentlemen and three ladies retire from Florence, during the plague, to a pleasant garden retreat, where they beguile the time by narrating various stories of love adventure.

Dedlock, Lady.—Wife of Sir Leicester, beautiful, and apparently cold and heartless, but suffering constant remorse. The daughter’s name is Esther Summerson, the heroine of the novel.

Dedlock, Sir Leicester.—A character in Bleak House, by Charles Dickens. An honorable and truthful man, but of such fixed ideas that no man could shake his prejudices. He had an idea that the one thing of greatest importance to the world was a certain family by the name of Dedlock. He loved his wife, Lady Dedlock, and believed in her implicitly. His pride had a terrible fall when he learned the secret of her life before her marriage and knew the terrible fact she had been hiding from him that she had a daughter.

Deerslayer, The.—The title of a novel by J. F. Cooper, and the nickname of its hero, Natty, or Nathaniel Bumppo. He is a model uncivilized man, honorable, truthful, and brave, pure of heart and without reproach. He is introduced in five of Cooper’s novels: The Deerslayer, The Pathfinder, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pioneers, and The Prairie. He is called “Hawk-Eye” in The Last of the Mohicans; “Leather-Stocking” in The Pioneers; and “The Trapper” in The Prairie, in which last book he dies.

Defarge (da-färzh´), Mme.—Wife of the following, a dangerous woman, everlastingly knitting.

Defarge, Mons.—Tale of Two Cities, Dickens. Keeper of a wine shop in the Faubourg St. Antoine in Paris. He is a bull-necked, implacable-looking man.

Della Crusca Accademia (del´lä krös´kä äk-kä-dā´mē-ä).—Applied in England to a brotherhood of poets, at the close of the eighteenth century, under the leadership of Mrs. Piozzi. This school was conspicuous for affectation and high-flown panegyrics on each other. It was stamped out by Gifford, in The Baviad, in 1794, and The Mæviad, in 1796. Robert Merry, who signed himself Della Crusca, James Cobb, a farce-writer, James Boswell, biographer of Dr. Johnson, O’Keefe, Morton, Reynolds, Holcroft, Sheridan, Colman the Younger, Mrs. H. Cowley, and Mrs. Robinson were its best exponents.

Delphin Classics.—For the use of the dauphin, son of Louis XIV. the writings of thirty-nine Latin authors were collected and published in sixty volumes. Notes and an index were added to each work. An edition of the Delphin Classics was published in London in the year 1818.

Delphine, Madame.—Old Creole Days, George W. Cable. A free quadroon connected with the splendor of Lafitte, the smuggler and patriot. Madame Delphine disowned her beautiful daughter Olive in order to assure to her the rights of a white woman.

Demetrius (de-mē´tri-us).—Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare. The young Athenian to whom Egeno promised his daughter Hermia in marriage.

Dempster, Janet.—A character from George Eliot’s Scenes From Clerical Life. She was a woman of generous impulse, succumbed to drink through the brutality of her husband, but was restored by a clergyman to a life of nobility.

De Profundus.—Out of the Depths. The one hundred and thirtieth Psalm is so called from the first two words in the Latin version. In the Catholic liturgy it is sung when the dead are committed to the grave.

Deronda, Daniel.—One of George Eliot’s strongest character sketches in her novel of the same name.

Deserted Village, The.—A poem by Oliver Goldsmith. It was “instantaneously popular. Two new editions of it were called for in the following month, and a fourth in August, and passages from the poem were in every mouth, and the topics which it suggested, of depopulation, luxury, and landlordism, were discussed in connection with it.”

The Deserted Village has been identified with Lissoy, a quaint Irish village in the parish of Kilkenny West, of which Goldsmith’s father was the pastor, and whose natural features are accurately described in the poem.

Desmas.—The repentant thief is so called in The Story of Joseph of Arimathea. Longfellow, in The Golden Legend, calls him Dumachus. The impenitent thief is called Gestas, but Longfellow calls him Titus.

Dhu, Roderick.—A highland chieftain and outlaw in Scott’s poem Lady of the Lake, cousin of Ellen Douglas, and also her suitor. He is slain by James Fitz-James.

Diana.—In Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, daughter of the widow of Florence with whom Helena lodged on her way to the shrine of St. Jacques le Grand. Count Bertram wantonly loved Diana, but she brought about a reconciliation between Bertram and his wife Helena.

Diggon (dig´on), Davie.—A shepherd in the Shepherd’s Calendar, by Spenser. He drove his sheep into foreign lands, hoping to find better pasture; but was amazed at the luxury and profligacy of the shepherds whom he saw there.

Diggory (dig´ō-ri).—In Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer, a barn laborer, employed on state occasions for butler and footman by Mr. and Mrs. Hardcastle. He is both awkward and familiar, laughs at his master’s jokes and talks to his master’s guests while serving.

Dimmesdale (dimz´dāl), Arthur.—In Hawthorne’s romance, The Scarlet Letter, a Puritan minister of great eloquence, whose conscience compels him to make a public confession of sin.

Dinah.—(1) St. Ronan’s Well, Scott, Daughter of Sandie Lawson, landlord of the Spa hotel. (2) A character in Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Dinah, Aunt.—In Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. She leaves Mr. Walter Shandy one thousand pounds, which he fancies will enable him to carry out all the schemes that enter into his head.

Dinah Friendly.—The Bashful Man, Moncrieff. Daughter of Sir Thomas Friendly.

Dingley Hall.—Pickwick Papers, Dickens. The home of Mr. Wardle and his family.

Divina Commedia (dē-vē´nä kom-mā´dē-ä), (or, Divine Comedy).—The first poem of note ever written in the Italian language. It is an epic by Danté Alighieri, and is divided into three parts: Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Danté called it a comedy, because the ending is happy; and his countrymen added the word divine from admiration of the poem. The poet depicts a vision, in which he is conducted, first by Vergil (human reason) through hell and purgatory; and then by Beatrice (revelation), and finally by St. Bernard through the several heavens, where he beholds the Triune God.

“Hell” is represented as a funnel-shaped hollow, formed of gradually contracting circles, the lowest and smallest of which is the earth’s center. “Purgatory” is a mountain rising solitary from the ocean on that side of the earth which is opposite to us. It is divided into terraces, and its top is the terrestrial paradise. From this “top” the poet ascends through the seven planetary heavens, the fixed stars, and the “primum mobile.”

In all parts of the regions thus traversed there arise conversations with noted personages. The deepest questions of philosophy and theology are discussed and solved; and the social and moral condition of Italy, with the corruptions of church and state, are depicted with indignation. Fifty-two years after the poet’s death the republic of Florence set apart an annual sum for public lectures to explain the Divine Comedy to the people in one of the churches, and Boccaccio himself was appointed first lecturer.

Doctor Syntax.—The hero of a work entitled The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque. Doctor Syntax is a simple-minded, pious, hen-pecked clergyman, but of excellent taste and scholarship, who left home in search of the picturesque. His adventures are told in eight-syllable verse by William Combe.

Dods.—The old landlady in Scott’s novel called St. Ronan’s Well. An excellent character, a mosaic of oddities, all fitting together and forming an admirable whole. She was so good a housewife that a cookery book of great repute bears her name.

Dodson and Fogg.—The lawyers employed by the plaintiff in the famous case of “Bardell vs. Pickwick,” in the Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens.

Doeg (dō´eg).—Absalom and Achitophel, Dryden. Doeg was Saul’s herdsman, who had charge of his mules and asses. He told Saul that the priests of Nob had provided David with food; whereupon Saul sent him to put them to death, and eighty-five were ruthlessly massacred.

Dogberry (dog´ber-i) and Verges (ver´gēz).—Two ignorant conceited constables, in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

Dolla Murrey.—A character in Crabbe’s Borough who was devoted to playing cards. She died at the card table.

Dolly Varden (vär´den).—Barnaby Rudge, Dickens. Daughter of Gabriel Varden, locksmith. Dolly dressed in the Watteau style, and was lively, pretty, and bewitching.

Dombey and Son.—A novel by Dickens. Mr. Dombey is a self-sufficient, purse-proud, frigid merchant who feels satisfied there is but one Dombey in the world, and that is himself. When Paul was born, his ambition was attained, his whole heart was in the boy, and the loss of the mother was but a small matter. The boy’s death turned his heart to stone.

Dombey, Florence.—A motherless child, hungering and thirsting to be loved, but regarded with indifference by her father, who thinks that sons alone are worthy of regard.

Domesday Book (or, Doomsday Book),—The name of one of the oldest and most valuable records of England, containing the results of a statistical survey of that country made by William the Conqueror, and completed in the year 1086. The origin of the name—which seems to have been given to other records of the same kind—is somewhat uncertain; but it has obvious reference to the supreme authority of the book in doom or judgment on the matters contained in it.

Dominie Sampson.—Guy Mannering, Scott. A village schoolmaster and scholar, poor as a church mouse, and modest as a girl. He cites Latin like a porcus literarum and exclaims “prodigious!” He is no uncommon personage in a country where a certain portion of learning is easily attained by those who are willing to suffer hunger and thirst in exchange for acquiring Greek and Latin.

Don Adriano de Armado.—A pompous, fantastical Spaniard in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost, who had a mint of phrases in his brain.

Donatello (don-ä-tel´lō).—The hero of Hawthorne’s romance The Marble Faun. He is a young Italian with a singular likeness to the Faun of Praxiteles. He leads an innocent but purely animal existence, until a sudden crime awakens his conscience and transforms his whole nature.

Don Cherubim.—The Bachelor of Salamanca, in Le Sage’s novel of this name; a man placed in different situations of life, and made to associate with all classes of society, in order to give the author the greatest possible scope for satire.

Donegild.—Man of Law’s Tale, Chaucer. The mother of Alla, king of Northumberland, hating Constance, the wife of Alla, because she was a Christian, she put her on a raft with her infant son and turned her adrift. When Alla returned from Scotland and discovered this cruelty of his mother, he put her to death. The tradition of St. Mungo resembles the Man of Law’s Tale in many respects.

Don Juan (don jū´an; Sp. pron. dōn Hö-än´).—Typifies in literature a profligate. He gives himself up so entirely to the gratification of sense, especially to the most powerful of all the impulses, that of love, that he acknowledges no higher consideration, and proceeds to murder the man that stands between him and his wish, fancying that in so doing he had annihilated his very existence. He then defies that Spirit to prove to his senses his existence. The Spirit returns and compels Don Juan to acknowledge the supremacy of spirit, and the worthlessness of a merely sensuous existence. The traditions concerning Don Juan have been dramatized by Tirso de Molina. Glück has a musical ballet, Don Juan, and Mozart has immortalized the character in his opera Don Giovanni; and Byron in a half-finished poem.

Don Quixote (dōn kē-hō´tā).—A celebrated Spanish romance by Cervantes. Don Quixote is represented as “a gaunt country gentleman of La Mancha, full of genuine Castilian honor and enthusiasm, gentle and dignified in his character, trusted by his friends, and loved by his dependents,” but “so completely crazed by long reading the most famous books of chivalry that he believes them to be true, and feels himself called on to become the impossible knight-errant they describe, and actually goes forth into the world to defend the oppressed and avenge the injured, like the heroes of his romances.” The fame of Cervantes will always rest upon this incomparable satire.

Dorrit.—See Little Dorrit.

Doorm.—Idylls of the King (Enid), Tennyson. An earl called “the Bull,” who tried to make Enid his handmaid; but, when she would neither eat, drink, nor array herself in bravery at his bidding, “he smote her on the cheek”; whereupon Geraint slew the “russet-bearded earl” in his own hall.

Dora.—David Copperfield, Dickens. The child-wife to David, affectionate and tender-hearted. She was always playing with her poodle and saying simple things to her “Dody.” She could never be his helper, but she looked on her husband with idolatrous love. When quite young she died.

Dorastus.—The hero of an old popular “history” or romance, upon which Shakespeare founded his Winter’s Tale. It was written by Robert Greene, and was first published in 1588, under the title of Pandosto, the Triumph of Time.

Dorothea.—The heroine of Goethe’s celebrated poem of Herman und Dorothea.

Dory, John.—A character in Wild Oats or The Strolling Gentleman, a comedy by John O’Keefe.

Dotheboys Hall (dö´the-boiz hâl).—Nicholas Nickleby, Dickens. A school for boys kept by a Mr. Squeers, a puffing, ignorant, overbearing brute, whose system of education consisted of alternately beating and starving.

Doubting Castle.—The castle of the giant Despair, in which Christian and Hopeful were incarcerated, but from which they escaped by means of the key called “Promise,” which was able to open any lock in the castle.

Dousterswivel (dös´ter-swiv-el), Herman.—Scott, The Antiquary. A German schemer, who obtains money under the promise of finding hidden wealth by a divining rod.

Drawcansir (drâ´kan-ser).—A bragging, blustering bully, in George Villiers, duke of Buckingham’s The Rehearsal, who took part in a battle, and killed everyone on both sides, “sparing neither friend nor foe.”

Driver.—Guy Mannering, Scott. Clerk to Mr. Pleydell, advocate, Edinburgh.

Dromio.—The Brothers Dromio. Twin brothers exactly alike, who serve two brothers exactly alike, in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, based on the Menæchmi of Plautus.

Dry-as-dust, The Rev.—An imaginary personage who serves to introduce Scott’s novels to the public.

Dudu.—One of the three beauties of the harem, into which Juan, by the sultana’s order, had been admitted in female attire.

Duessa (dū-es´sa).—A foul witch, in Spenser’s Faërie Queene, who under the assumed name of Fidessa, and the assumed character of a distressed and lovely woman, entices the Red-cross Knight into the House of Pride.

Duff, Jamie.—Guy Mannering, Scott. The idiot boy attending Mrs. Bertram’s funeral.

Dulcinea del Toboso (dul-sin´ē-ä del tō-bō´zō).—A country girl whom Don Quixote courts as his lady love.

Dumain (dū-mān´).—A lord attending on the king of Navarre in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost.

Duncan.—(1) A king of Scotland immortalized in Shakespeare’s tragedy of Macbeth. Shakespeare represents him as murdered by Macbeth, who succeeds to the Scottish throne, but according to history he fell in battle. (2) A highland hero in Scott’s Lady of the Lake.

Dunder, Sir David, of Dunder Hall.—A conceited, whimsical old gentleman, who forever interrupts a speaker with “Yes, yes, I know it,” or “Be quiet, I know it.” Ways and Means, by Colman.

Dundreary (dun-drēr´i), Lord.—A grotesque character in Taylor’s comedy, Our American Cousin, noted for his aristocratic haughtiness of manner. The character is said to have been created by the actor Sothern.

Durandana (dö-rän-dä´nä).—The name of the marvelous sword of Orlando, the renowned hero of romance, said to have been wrought by the fairies, who endued it with such power that its owner was able to cleave the Pyrenees with it at a blow.

Durandarte (dö-rän-där´te).—A fabulous hero of Spain. Cervantes has introduced him, in Don Quixote, in the celebrated adventure of the knight in the cave of Montesinos.

Durden (der´den), Dame.—(1) The heroine of a popular English song. She is described as a notable housewife, and the mistress of five serving-girls and five laboring men. The five men loved the five maids. (2) A sobriquet playfully applied to Esther Summerson, the heroine of Dickens’ Bleak House.

Durward (der´wārd), Quentin.—A novel by Scott. Quentin Durward is a young archer of the Scottish guard in the service of Louis XI. of France. When Liège is assaulted, Quentin Durward and the Countess Isabelle, who has been put into his charge, escape on horseback. The countess publicly refuses to marry the Duc d’Orléans, to whom she has been promised, and ultimately marries the young Scotchman.

Dwarf, Alberich.—In the Nibelungen Lied the dwarf “Alberich” is the guardian of the famous hoard won by Siegfried from the Nibelungs. The dwarf is twice vanquished by the hero, who gets possession of his “Tarn-Kappe” (cloak of invisibility).

Dwarf, The Black.—A novel by Sir Walter Scott. The dwarf is a fairy of the most malignant character; a genuine northern Duergar, and once held by the dalesmen of the border as the author of all the mischief that befell their flocks and herds. In Scott’s novel the black dwarf is introduced under the aliases of Sir Edward Mauley; Elshander, the recluse; Cannie Elshie; and the Wise Wight of Mucklestane Moor.

E

Ecce Homo (ek´sē hō´mō).—The title of a semi-theological work, attributed to Professor Seeley, and published in 1865, in which the humanity of Christ is considered and enforced, apart from his divinity. The phrase, “The enthusiasm of humanity,” was originated in this work; to which, it may be mentioned, Dr. Joseph Parker replied in his Ecce Deus published in 1866.

Eckhardt, The Faithful.—A legendary hero of Germany, represented as an old man with a white staff, who, in Eisleben, appears on the evening of Maundy Thursday, and drives all the people into their houses, to save them from being harmed by a terrible procession of dead men, headless bodies, and two-legged horses, which immediately after passes by. Other traditions represent him as the companion of the knight Tannhäuser, and as warning travelers from the Venusberg, the mountain of fatal delights in the old mythology of Germany. Tieck has founded a story upon this legend, which has been translated into English by Carlyle, in which Eckhardt is described as the good servant who perishes to save his master’s children from the seducing fiends of the mountain. The German proverb, “Thou art the faithful Eckhardt; thou warnest everyone,” is founded upon this tradition.

Eclecta.—The “Elect” personified in The Purple Island, by Phineas Fletcher. She is the daughter of Intellect and Voletta (free-will).

Ector, Sir.—The foster-father of King Arthur, and lord of many parts of England and Wales. Father of Sir Kay, seneschal to King Arthur.

Edenhall, The Luck of.—A painted goblet in the possession of the Musgrave family of Edenhall, Cumberland, said to have been left by the fairies on St. Cuthbert’s Well. The tradition runs that the luck of the family is dependent on the safe-keeping of this goblet. The German poet Uhland embodied the legend in a ballad, translated into English by Longfellow.

Edgar.—Son to Gloucester, in Shakespeare’s tragedy of Lear. He was disinherited for his half-brother Edmund.

Edgar, or Edgardo.—Master of Ravenswood, in love with Lucy Ashton in Scott’s Bride of Lammermoor.

Edith.—The Maid of Lorn in Scott’s Lord of the Isles, who married Ronald when peace was restored after the battle of Bannockburn.

Edith, The Lady.—Ivanhoe, Scott. Mother of Athelstane “the Unready” (thane of Coningsburgh).

Edith Granger.—Daughter of the Hon. Mrs. Skewton, married to Colonel Granger of Ours, who died within two years. Edith became Mr. Dombey’s second wife, but the marriage was altogether unhappy.

Edith Plantagenet (plan-taj´e-net), The Lady.—The Talisman, Scott. Called “The Fair Maid of Anjou,” a kinswoman of Richard I., and attendant on Queen Berengaria.

Edmund.—A bastard son of Gloucester in Shakespeare’s tragedy of King Lear.

Edward, Sir.—The Iron Chest, Colman. He commits a murder, and keeps a narrative of the transaction in an iron chest. Later, he trusts the secret to his secretary, Wilfred, and the whole transaction now becomes public.

Edward.—Count Robert of Paris, Scott. Brother of Hereward, the Varangian guard. He was slain in battle.

Edwin.—(1) The hero of Goldsmith’s ballad entitled The Hermit. (2) The hero of Mallet’s ballad Edwin and Emma. (3) The hero of Beattie’s Minstrel.

Edyrn.—Idylls of the King (Enid), Tennyson. Son of Nudd. A suitor for the hand of Enid and an evil genius of her father, who opposed him. Later, Edyrn went to the court of King Arthur and became quite a changed man—from a malicious “sparrow-hawk” he was converted into a courteous gentleman.

Egeus (ējē´us).—Father of Hermia in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Eglamour.—A character, in Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, who is an agent of Silvia in her escape.

Eglamour (eg´la-mör), Sir.—A valiant knight of the Round Table, celebrated in the romances of chivalry, and in an old ballad.

Eglantine (eg´lan-tīn), Madame.—The prioress in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, who was “full pleasant and amiable of port.” She was distinguished for the ladylike delicacy of her manners at table, and for her partiality to “small hounds,” and a peculiar mixture in her manner and dress of feminine vanity and slight worldliness, together with an ignorance of the world.

Egyptian Thief.—A personage alluded to by the Duke in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The reference is to the story of Thyamis, a robber-chief and native of Memphis.

Elvir.—Harold the Dauntless, Scott. A Danish maid, who assumes boy’s clothing, and waits on Harold “the Dauntless,” as his page.

Elaine.—A mythical lady in the romances of King Arthur’s court. She is called “the lily maid of Astolat” in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. She died for love of Sir Launcelot, and then at her request was borne on a barge to the castle of King Arthur, holding a lily in one hand, and a letter to Launcelot in the other.

Elbow.—A constable, in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, modest and well-meaning, though of simple mind and the object of wit among those who are wiser but not better.

El Dorado.—A name given by the Spaniards to an imaginary country, supposed, in the sixteenth century, to be situated in the interior of South America, and abounding in gold and all manner of precious stones.

Electra.—The daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and the heroine of a tragedy by Sophocles and of another by Euripides.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.—By Thomas Gray. Dr. Johnson gives 1750 as the date of publication; and declares that the piece “abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.” The churchyard was that of Stoke Poges, near Eton.

Elim.—The Messiah, Klopstock. The guardian angel of Libbeus the Apostle. Libbeus, the tenderest and most gentle of the apostles, at the death of Jesus also died from grief.

Elissa.—Step-sister of Medina and Perissa, in Spenser’s Faërie Queene. They could never agree upon any subject.

Elliott, Hobbie.—There are seven by this name in the Black Dwarf, by Sir Walter Scott. The farmer Elliott himself and his bride-elect, Grace Armstrong; Mrs. Elliott, Hobbie’s grandmother; John and Harry, Hobbie’s brothers; Lilias, Jean, and Arnot, Hobbie’s sisters.

Elops.—Milton gives this name to the dumb serpent which gives no warning of its approach.

Elsie.—The daughter of Gottlieb, a farm tenant of Prince Henry of Hohenneck, who offered her life as a substitute for the prince. She was rescued as she was about to make the sacrifice. Longfellow has told this story in The Golden Legend.

Elspeth (el´speth).—(1) A character in Sir Walter Scott’s Antiquary. (2) An old servant to Dandie Dinmont in Scott’s Guy Mannering.

Elvira.—(1) In Cibber’s Love Makes a Man, sister of Don Duart, and niece of the governor of Lisbon. She marries Clodio, the coxcomb son of Don Antonio. (2) The young wife of Gomez, a rich old banker, in Dryden’s The Spanish Fryer. She carries on a liaison with Colonel Lorenzo, by the aid of her father-confessor Dominick, but is always checkmated, and it turns out that Lorenzo is her brother.

Emelye.—The sister-in-law of “Duke Theseus,” beloved by the two knights, Palamon and Arcyte.

Emile (ā-mēl´).—A philosophical romance on education by Jean Jacques Rousseau (1762). Emile, the chief character, is the author’s ideal of a young man perfectly educated, every bias but that of nature having been carefully withheld.

Emilia (ē-mil´i-ä).—(1) A lady attending Hermione in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale. (2) Wife to Iago, and waiting woman to Desdemona, in the tragedy of Othello, a woman of thorough vulgarity and loose principles, united to a high degree of spirit, energetic feeling, strong sense, and low cunning. (3) The sweetheart of Peregrine Pickle in Smollett’s novel The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle.

Em’ly, Little.—David Copperfield, Dickens. Daughter of Tom, the brother-in-law of Dan’el Peggotty, a Yarmouth fisherman, by whom the orphan child was brought up. David Copperfield and Em’ly were at one time playfellows. While engaged to Ham Peggotty (Dan’el’s nephew) Little Em’ly runs away with Steerforth, a friend of David’s, who was a handsome but unprincipled gentleman. Being subsequently reclaimed, she emigrates to Australia with Dan’el Peggotty and old Mrs. Gummidge.

Empyrean.—According to Ptolemy, there are five heavens, the last of which is pure elemental fire and the seat of Deity; this fifth heaven is called the empyrean.

Endell, Martha.—David Copperfield, Dickens. A poor girl, to whom Em’ly goes when Steerforth deserts her.

Endymion (en-dim´i-on).—A beautiful shepherd boy whom Diana kissed while he lay asleep on Mount Latmus. The story was made the subject of an English poem by Keats, in memory of his much loved friend, the poet Shelley. Shelley pronounced it “full of some of the highest and the finest gleams of poetry.”

Also a lyric by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow founded on the old mythic story of the mortal youth who was beloved by Diana, and received her kiss—

When, sleeping in the grove,
He dreamed not of her love.

Enid.—A mythical lady mentioned in a Welsh triad as one of the three celebrated ladies of Arthur’s court—a beautiful picture of conjugal patience and affection. Her story is told in the Mabinogion and in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. In the midst of an impure court she is the personification of purity.

Eolian Harp.—Baruch. There is a rabbinical story of the aërial harmony of the harp of David, which, when hung up at night, was played upon by the north wind.

Epigram.—A short, pointed or antithetical poem; or any short composition happily or antithetically expressed.

Epithalamium (ep´i-thā-lā´mi-um).—Was a species of poem which it was the custom among the Greeks and Romans to sing in chorus near the bridal-chamber of a newly married couple. Anacreon, Stesichorus, and Pindar composed poems of this kind, but only scanty fragments have been preserved. Spenser’s Epithalamium, written on the occasion of his marriage, is one of the finest specimens of this kind of verse.

Eppie.—(1) St. Ronan’s Well, Scott. One of the servants of the Rev. Josiah Cargill. In the same novel is Eppie Anderson, one of the servants at the Mowbray Arms, Old St. Ronan’s, held by Meg Dods. (2) In George Eliot’s Silas Marner the child of Godfrey Cass, brought up and adopted by Silas Marner, whose love transformed him from a miser into a tender, loving father.

Ermangarde of Baldringham, Lady.—The Betrothed, Scott. Aunt of the Lady Eveline Berenger, “the Betrothed.”

Ermeline.—The wife of Reynard, in the tale of Reynard the Fox.

Ermina.—The heroine of Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, who fell in love with Tancred. When the Christian army besieged Jerusalem, she dressed herself in Clorinda’s armor to go to Tancred, but, being discovered, fled, and lived awhile with some shepherds on the banks of the Jordan. Meeting with Vafrino, sent as a secret spy by the crusaders, she revealed to him the design against the life of Godfrey, and, returning with him to the Christian camp, found Tancred wounded. She cured his wounds, so that he was able to take part in the last great day of the siege.

Ernest, Duke.—A poetical romance by Henry of Veldig (Waldeck), contemporary with Frederick Barbarossa. It is a mixture of Greek and oriental myths and hero adventures of the crusader.

Error.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. A monster who lived in a den in “Wandering Wood,” and with whom the Red-cross Knight had his first adventure. She had a brood of one thousand young ones of sundry shapes, and these cubs crept into their mother’s mouth when alarmed, as young kangaroos creep into their mother’s pouch. The knight was nearly killed by the stench which issued from the foul fiend, but he succeeded in “rafting” her head off, whereupon the brood lapped up the blood, and burst with satiety.

Escalus (es´ka-lus).—An ancient and kind hearted lord, in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, whom Vincentio, the duke of Vienna, joins with Angelo as his deputy during a pretended absence on a distant journey.

Escanes (es´ka-nēz).—A lord of Tyre, in Shakespeare’s Pericles.

Esmeralda.—Notre Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo. A beautiful gypsy girl, who, with tambourine and goat, dances in the “place” before Notre Dame.

Esmond, Henry.—A cavalier and fine-spirited gentleman in the reign of Queen Anne. Hero of Thackeray’s novel by the same name.

Esmond.—A novel by W. M. Thackeray, published in 1852. Its most striking feature is its elaborate imitation of the style and even the manner of thought of the time of Queen Anne’s reign, in which its scenes are laid.

Esprit des Lois [es-prē´ dâ lwa (or, Spirit of the Laws)].—A celebrated philosophical work by Montesquieu, published at Geneva in 1748. The author begins somewhat formally with the old division of politics into democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy. He discusses the principles of each, and their bearings on education, on positive law, on social conditions, on military strength (offensive and defensive) on individual liberty, on taxation and finance. Then an abrupt return is made from the effects to the causes of constitutions and polity. The theory of the influence of physical conditions, and especially of climate, on political and social institutions—a theory which is perhaps more than any other identified with the book—received special attention, and a somewhat disproportionate space is given to the question of slavery in this connection. From climate Montesquieu passes to the nature of the soil as in its turn affecting civil polity. He then attacks the subject of manners and customs as distinct from laws of trade and commerce, of the family, of jurisprudence, of religion. The book concludes with an elaborate examination of the feudal system in France.

Essay on Man.—A poem by Alexander Pope, in four epistles: Of the Nature and State of Man With Respect to the Universe; Of the Nature and State of Man With Respect to Himself as an Individual; Of the Nature and State of Man With Respect to Society; and Of the Nature and State of Man With Respect to Happiness. Its fundamental idea is to the effect that the system of the universe is a “benevolent system, in which every virtue, as well as every passion, has its object and end.”

“If,” says Professor Ward, “the Essay on Man were shivered into fragments, it would not lose its value; for it is precisely its details which constitute its moral as well as literary beauties. Nowhere has Pope so abundantly displayed his incomparable talent of elevating truisms into proverbs, in his mastery over language and poetic form.”

Essays (or, Counsels Civil and Moral).—By Francis, Lord Bacon. In the dedication to his brother Anthony, the author says he published the Essays “because many of them had been stolen abroad in writing,” and he desired to give the world a correct version of his work. The word Essays, he says, “is late; but the thing is ancient, for Seneca’s Epistles to Lucilius, if you mark them well, are but essays, that is, dispersed meditations, though conveyed in the form of epistles.” “The transcendent strength of Bacon’s mind is visible.” says Hallam, “in the whole tenor of these Essays, unequaled as they must be, from the very nature of such compositions. They are deeper and more discriminating than any earlier, or almost any later, work, in the English language; full of recondite observations, long matured, and carefully sifted.”

Estella.—The heroine of Dickens’ novel of Great Expectations.

Estotiland, or Estotilandia.—An imaginary region in America, near the arctic circle, referred to by Milton as “cold Estotiland,” and variously fabled to have been discovered by Frisian fishermen in the fourteenth century, and by a Pole named John Scalve, in 1477.

Etzel (et´sel), i. e., Attila.—King of the Huns, a monarch ruling over three kingdoms and more than thirty principalities; being a widower, he married Kriemhild, the widow of Siegfried. In the Nibelungenlied, where he is introduced, he is made very insignificant.

Eugénie Grandet (u-zhā-nē´ gron-dā´).—A novel by Balzac, written in 1833, published in 1834. The heroine, Eugenie, is sacrificed to the cold-blooded avariciousness of her father. This is one of Balzac’s best novels.

Eulalia (ū-lā´li-ä), St.—In the calendar of saints there is a virgin martyr called Eulalia. She was martyred by torture February 12, 308. Longfellow calls Evangeline the Sunshine of St. Eulalia.

Eulenspiegel (oi´len-spē-gel).—The hero of a German tale, which relates the pranks and drolleries of a wandering cottager of Brunswick.

Euphrasy.—Paradise Lost, Milton. The herb eye-bright, so called because it was once supposed to be efficacious in clearing the organs of sight. Hence, the Archangel Michael purged the eyes of Adam with it, to enable him to see into the distant future.

Evan Dhu M’Combich.—Waverley, Scott. The foster-brother of M’Ivor.

Evan Dhu of Lochiel.—Legend of Montrose, Scott. A Highland chief in the army of Montrose.

Evangeline.—The title and heroine of a tale in hexameter verse by Longfellow, in two parts. Evangeline was the daughter of Benedict Bellefontaine, the richest farmer of Acadia (now Nova Scotia). At the age of seventeen she was legally betrothed by the notary-public to Gabriel, son of Basil the blacksmith; but next day all the colony was exiled by the order of George II., and their houses, cattle, and lands were confiscated. Gabriel and Evangeline were parted, and now, sustained by the brightness of hope, she wandered from place to place to find her betrothed. Basil had settled in Louisiana; but when Evangeline reached that distant land, Gabriel had gone. She sought him on the prairies, and, again far north, in Michigan, but ever a few days, a few weeks, too late. At length, grown old in this hopeless quest, she came to Philadelphia and became a sister of mercy. The plague broke out; and, as she visited the almshouse in ministration, she saw an old man who had been smitten with the pestilence. It was Gabriel. He tried to whisper her name; but death closed his lips. “All was ended now;” and “Side by side, in nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping.”

Evangelist.—In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, represents the effectual preacher of the gospel who opens the gate of life to Christian.

Evans, Sir Hugh.—In Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, a Welsh parson and school-teacher, ignorant but pedantic, who has a ludicrous quarrel with Dr. Caius.

Excalibur (eks-kal´i-bẽr), or Excalibar, or Escalibor.—The sword of the mythical King Arthur. Arthur received it from the hands of the Lady of the Lake. It had a scabbard the wearer of which could lose no blood. There seems, however, to have been also another sword called Excalibur in the early part of the story. This was the sword, plunged deep into a stone, which could be drawn forth only by the man who was to be king. After two hundred knights had failed, Arthur drew it out without difficulty.

Excursion, The.—A poem, in blank verse, by William Wordsworth, published in 1814, and forming the second part of a poem in three parts, to be entitled The Recluse, which the author had at one time contemplated. It consists of nine books, respectively entitled The Wanderer, The Solitary, Despondency, Despondency Corrected, The Pastor, The Churchyard Among the Mountains, The Same Subject Continued, The Parsonage, Discourse of the Wanderer, and An Evening Visit to the Lake.

Eyre (âr), Jane.—A novel by Charlotte Brontë, published in 1847, with a dedication to William Makepeace Thackeray, as “the first social regenerator of the day.” The early scenes are laid in the Lowood Institution, which has been identified with a school established by the Rev. W. Carus Wilson, at Cowen’s Bridge, near Leeds, and which is described with stern but unpleasing realism. Much of the book was derived from the author’s own personal experience.

Ezzelin, Sir.—Lara, Byron. The gentleman who recognizes Lara at the table of Lord Otho, and charges him with being Conrad the Corsair. A duel ensues, and Ezzelin is never heard of more. A serf used to say that he saw a huntsman one evening cast a dead body into the river which divided the lands of Otho and Lara, and that there was a star of knighthood on the breast of the corpse.

F

Faa, Gabriel.—Guy Mannering, Scott. Nephew of Meg Merrilies. One of the huntsmen at Liddesdale.

Fadladeen.—The hypercritical grand chamberlain in Moore’s poem Lalla Rookh. Fadladeen’s criticism upon the several tales which make up the romance are very racy and full of humor; and his crestfallen conceit when he finds out that the poet was the prince in disguise is well conceived.

Faerie Queene (fā´e-ri kwēn), The.—A poem by Edmund Spenser, published in 1590. This great allegorical epic is divided into six books, of which the first contains the Legend of the Knight of the Red Cross, or Holiness; the second the Legend of Sir Guyon, or Temperance; the third the Legend of Britomartis, or Chastity; the fourth the Legend of Cambal and Telamond, or Friendship; the fifth the Legend of Artegall, or Justice; and the sixth the Legend of Sir Calidore, or Courtesy. There originally existed twelve books, but the last six, excepting two cantos on Mutability, were lost by the poet’s servant in crossing from Ireland to England—a circumstance to be deeply regretted by every lover of true poetry. The finest things in Spenser are the character of Una, in the first book, the House of Pride, the Cave of Mammoth, and the Cave of Despair; the account of Memory; the description of Belphœbe; the story of Florimel and the Witch’s Son; the gardens of Adonis and the Bower of Bliss; the Mask of Cupid; and Colin Clout’s Vision, in the last book.

Fag.—A lying servant to Captain Absolute in Sheridan’s Rivals.

Fagin.—An old Jew in Dickens’ Oliver Twist, who employs young persons of both sexes to carry on a systematic trade of robbery.

Fainall, Mr. and Mrs.—Noted characters in Congreve’s comedy The Way of the World.

Faineant, Le Noir (The Black Idler).—In Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, a name applied to Richard Cœur de Lion in disguise, by the spectators of a tournament, on account of his indifference during a great part of the action, in which, however, he was finally victorious.

Fair Maid of Perth.—The title of a novel by Sir Walter Scott, and the name of the heroine.

Fair Rosamond.—Prototype of many heroines of fiction, a daughter of Walter de Clifford. According to a popular legend, which has no foundation in fact, Henry II. built a labyrinth or maze to conceal her from Queen Eleanor, who discovered her by means of a silken clew and put her to death. She is commonly, though erroneously, stated to have been the mother of William Longsword and Geoffrey, archbishop of York.

Fairservice, Andrew.—A shrewd Scotch gardener at Osbaldistone Hall in Rob Roy, Sir Walter Scott.

Fairy of the Mine.—A malevolent being, supposed to live in mines, busying itself with cutting ore, turning the windlass, etc., and yet effecting nothing.

Faithful.—One of the allegorical personages in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, who dies a martyr before completing his journey.

Faithful, Jacob.—The title and hero of a sea tale, by Captain Marryat (1835).

Fakenham Ghost.—A ballad by Robert Bloomfield, author of The Farmer’s Boy. The ghost was a donkey.

Fakreddin’s Valley.—Over the several portals of bronze were these inscriptions: (1) The Asylum of Pilgrims; (2) The Traveler’s Refuge; (3) The Depository of the Secrets of All the World.

Falkland.—In Godwin’s novel called Caleb Williams. He commits murder, and keeps a narrative of the transaction in an iron chest. Williams, a lad in his employ, opens the chest, and is caught in the act by Falkland. The lad runs away, but is hunted down. This tale, dramatized by Colman is entitled The Iron Chest.

Falstaff (fâl´stȧf), Sir John.—A famous character in Shakespeare’s comedy of the Merry Wives of Windsor, and in the first and second parts of his historical drama of Henry IV. He is as perfect a comic portrait as was ever sketched. In the former play he is represented as in love with Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Page, who make a butt and a dupe of him; in the latter he figures as a soldier and a wit; in both he is exhibited as a monster of fat—sensual, mendacious, boastful, and cowardly. In Henry V. his death is described by Mrs. Quickly.

Fang.—(1) A sheriff’s officer, in the second part of Shakespeare’s King Henry IV. (2) Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens. A bullying insolent magistrate, who would have sent Oliver Twist to prison, on suspicion of theft, if Mr. Brownlow had not interposed.

Fata Alcina.—Orlando Innamorato, Bojardo. Sister of Fata Morgana. She carried off Astolfo on the back of a whale to her isle, but turned him into a myrtle tree when she tired of him.

Fata Morgana (fä´tä mor-gä´nä).—The name of a potent fairy, celebrated in the tales of chivalry, and in the romantic poems of Italy. She was a pupil of the enchanter Merlin, and the sister of Arthur, to whom she discovered the intrigue of his queen, Geneura, or Guinever, with Lancelot of the Lake. In the Orlando Innamorato of Bojardo, she appears at first as a personification of fortune, inhabiting a splendid residence at the bottom of a lake, and dispensing all the treasures of the earth, but she is afterward found in her proper station subject to the all potent Demogorgon. Also, as sister to King Arthur and pupil of Merlin. She lived at the bottom of the lake and dispensed good fortune as she liked.

Fat Boy, The.—A laughable character in Dickens’ Pickwick Papers; a youth of astonishing obesity whose employment consists in alternate eating and sleeping.

Fathom, Ferdinand, Count.—The title of a novel by Smollett, and the name of its principal character, a complete villain, who proceeds step by step to rob his benefactors and finally dies in misery and despair.

Fatima (fä´tē-mä).—(1) A female worker, in the story of Aladdin, in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. (2) The last of the wives of Bluebeard, and the only one who escaped being murdered by him.

Faust (foust).—A celebrated tragedy by Goethe, the materials of which are drawn in part from the popular legends of Dr. Faustus, a famous magician of the sixteenth century. A rich uncle having left him a fortune, Faust ran to every excess, and, when his fortune was exhausted, made a pact with the devil (who assumed the name of Mephistopheles, and the appearance of a little gray monk), that, if he might indulge his propensities freely for twenty-four years, he would at the end of that period consign to the devil both body and soul. The compact terminated in 1550, when Faust disappeared. His sweetheart was Margherita, whom he seduced, and his faithful servant was Wagner.

Faustus (fâs´tus).—A tragedy name; represented as a vulgar sorcerer tempted to sell his soul to the devil (Mephistopheles), on condition of having a familiar spirit at his command, the possession of earthly power and glory, and unlimited gratification of his sensual appetites, for twenty-four years; at the end of which time, when the forfeit comes to be exacted, he shrinks and shudders in agony and remorse, imploring yet despairing of the mercy of heaven. This has been the theme of many writers. It is the subject of an opera by Gounod.

Femmes Savantes (fam sȧ-väN´), Les (or, The Learned Women).—Comedy by Molière. These women go in for women’s rights, science, and philosophy, to the neglect of domestic duties and wifely amenities. The “blue-stockings” are (1) Philaminte, the mother of Henriette, who discharges one of her servants because she speaks bad grammar; (2) Armande, sister of Henriette, who advocates platonic love and science; and (3) Bélise, sister of Philaminte, who sides with her in all things, but imagines that everyone is in love with her. Henriette, who has no sympathy with these “lofty flights,” is in love with Clitandre; but Philaminte wants her to marry Trissotin, a bel esprit. However, the father loses his property through the “savant” proclivities of his wife, Trissotin retires, and Clitandre marries Henriette, the “perfect” or thorough woman.

Fenella.—A fairy-like creature, a deaf and dumb attendant on the countess of Derby, in Sir Walter Scott’s Peveril of the Peak.

Fenton (fen´ton).—A character in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, who wooes the rich Anne Page for her money, but soon discovers inward treasures in her which quite transform him.

Feramorz (fer´a-mōrz).—Lalla Rookh, Thomas Moore. Feramorz in Lalla Rookh is the young Cashmerian poet, who relates poetical tales to Lalla Rookh, in her journey from Delhi to Lesser Bucharia. Lalla Rookh is going to be married to the young sultan, but falls in love with the poet. On the wedding morn she is led to her future husband, and finds that the poet is the sultan himself, who had gallantly taken this course to win the heart of his bride and beguile her journey.

Ferdinand (fer´di-nand).—(1) A character in Shakespeare’s Tempest. He is a son of the king of Naples, and falls in love with Miranda, the daughter of Prospero, a banished duke of Milan. (2) King of Navarre, character in Love’s Labor’s Lost.

Ferrers (fer´erz)—Endymion. The hero of Benjamin Disraeli’s novel Endymion.

Ferrex and Porrex.—Two sons of Gorboduc, a mythical British king. Porrex drove his brother from Britain, and when Ferrex returned with an army he was slain, but Porrex was shortly after put to death by his mother. One of the first, if not the very first, historical plays in the English language was Ferrex and Porrex, by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville.

Fib.—Nymphidia, Drayton. One of the fairy attendants to Queen Mab.

Fidele (fi-dē´lē, or fi-dāl´).—Subject of an elegy by Collins.

Fidelie.—Cymbeline, Shakespeare. The name assumed by Imogen, when, attired in boy’s clothes, she started for Milford Haven to meet her husband Posthumus.

Fidessa.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. The companion of Sansfoy; but when the Red-cross Knight slew that “faithless Saracen,” Fidessa turned out to be Duessa, the daughter of Falsehood and Shame. See “Duessa.”

Figaro (fē´gä-rō).—A character introduced by Beaumarchais in his plays Le Barbier de Seville, Le Mariage de Figaro, and La Mère Coupable, used later by Mozart, Paisiello, and Rossini in operas. In the Barbier he is a barber; in the Mariage he is a valet. In both he is gay, lively, and courageous; his stratagems are always original, his lies witty, and his shrewdness proverbial. In the Mère Coupable he has become virtuous and has lost his nerve. He also appears in Holcroft’s Follies of a Day, taken from Beaumarchais’ Mariage de Figaro.

Finetta (fi-net´tä).—The Cinder Girl. A fairy tale by the Comtesse d’Aulnoy. This is merely the old tale of Cinderella slightly altered.

Fingal (fing´gal).—A mythical hero, whose name occurs in Gaelic ballads and traditions, and in Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian.

Fleance (flē´ans).—A son of Banquo, in Shakespeare’s tragedy of Macbeth. The legend relates that after the assassination of his father he escaped to Wales, where he married the daughter of the reigning prince, and had a son named Walter. This Walter afterward became lord high steward of Scotland, and called himself Walter the Steward. From him proceeded in a direct line the Stuarts of Scotland, a royal line which gave James VI. of Scotland, James I. of England. This myth has been seriously accepted by some as fact.

Fledgeby.—Our Mutual Friend, Dickens. An overreaching, cowardly sneak who pretends to do a decent business under the trade name of Pubsey & Co.

Florentius.—A knight whose story is related in the first book of Gower’s Confessio Amantis. He bound himself to marry a deformed hag, provided she taught him the solution of a riddle on which his life depended.

Florian (flō-ryon´).—The Foundling of the Forest, W. Dimond. Discovered in infancy by the Count de Valmont, and adopted as his own son, Florian is lighthearted and volatile, but with deep affection, very grave, and the delight of all who know him.

Florimel (flor´i-mel).—A female character in Spenser’s Faërie Queene, of great beauty, but so timid that she feared the “smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,” and was abused by everyone. She was noted for sweetness of temper amid great trials. The word Florimel signifies “honey-flower.”

Florizel (flor´i-zel).—A prince of Bohemia, in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale, in love with Perdita.

Fluellen (flö-el´en).—A Welsh captain, who is an amusing pedant, in Shakespeare’s Henry V.

Flying Dutchman.—A spectral ship, seen in stormy weather off the Cape of Good Hope, and considered ominous of ill-luck. Captain Marryat has taken this theme for his novel The Phantom Ship.

Folk.—Fairies, also called “people,” “neighbors,” “wights.” The Germans have their kleine volk (little folk), the Swiss their hill people and earth people. See Fairies.

Ford.—Mr. and Mrs. Ford are characters in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Mrs. Ford pretends to accept Sir John Falstaff’s protestations of love, in order to punish him by her devices.

Fortinbras (fôr´tin-bras).—Prince of Norway, in Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet.

Fortunatus (fôr-tū-na´tus).—The hero in one of Straparolla’s fairy tales. The nursery tale of Fortunatus records that he had an inexhaustible purse. It is from the Italian fairy tales.

Fortunio’s (fôr-tu´ni-o) Horse.—Comrade not only possessed incredible speed, but knew all things, and was gifted with human speech.

Francesco.—The Iago of Massinger’s Duke of Milan.

Francesca da Rimini (frȧn-ches´kȧ dȧ rē´mē-nē).—A dramatic poem by James Henry Leigh Hunt published in 1816. Francesca was the daughter of Guido da Polenta, Lord of Ravenna, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and was married to Lanciotto, son of Malatesta da Rimini, who, discovering her criminal intercourse with his brother, revenged himself by putting them both to death. Her story forms an episode in Dante’s Inferno.

Frankenstein (fräng´ken-stīn) (or, the Modern Prometheus).—A novel by Mrs. Shelley, published in 1818. It was commenced in the summer of 1816, when Byron and the Shelleys were residing on the banks of the Lake of Geneva, and when, “during a week of rain, having amused themselves with reading German ghost stories, they agreed at last to write something in imitation of them. ‘You and I,’ said Lord Byron to Mrs. Shelley, ‘will publish ours together.’ He then began his tale of the Vampire;” but “the most memorable result,” writes Moore, “of their storytelling compact, was Mrs. Shelley’s wild and powerful romance of Frankenstein, one of those original conceptions that take hold of the public mind at once and forever.”

The hero of the book, a native of Geneva, and a student, constructs a monster of grewsome human remains and gives it life by galvanism. The monster feels that he is unlike all other human beings, and in revenge for the injury inflicted upon him by his creator, murders his friend, his brother, and his bride, and finally seeks out Frankenstein himself, with a view to wreaking a similar revenge on him. The hero, however, happily escapes his enemy, who retires to the utmost extremity of the globe, in order to put an end to his miserable life; and Frankenstein himself falls ill and dies on his way home after his last final flight from the monstrosity whom he has himself brought into the world.

Freeport, Sir Andrew.—The name of one of the members of the imaginary club under whose direction the Spectator was professedly published. He is represented as a London merchant of great eminence and experience, industrious, sensible and generous.

French Revolution, The.—A history, in three parts, by Thomas Carlyle, published in 1837, and described by Lowell as “a series of word-pictures, unmatched for vehement power, in which the figures of such sons of earth as Mirabeau and Danton loom gigantic and terrible as in the glare of an eruption; their shadows swaying far and wide, grotesquely awful. But all is painted by eruptive flashes in violent light and shade. There are no half tints, no gradations, and we find it impossible to account for the continuance in power of less Titanic actors in the tragedy, like Robespierre, on any theory, whether of human nature or of individual character, supplied by Mr. Carlyle.”

Friar Lawrence.—The Franciscan monk who attempted to befriend the lovers in Romeo and Juliet.

Friar Tuck.—Chaplain and steward of Robin Hood. Introduced by Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe. He is a self-indulgent, combative Falstaff, a jolly companion to the outlaws in Sherwood forest.

Friday.—Robinson Crusoe’s faithful man Friday pictured by Defoe.

Froissart (froi´särt).—The Cronicles of England, Fraunce, Spayne, Portyugale, Scotlande, Bretayne, Flanders, and other places adjoynynge, translated out of Frenche into our maternalle Englysche Tonge, by “John Bourchier, knight, Lord Berners.” Printed in 1523. The history extends from 1326 to 1400. Froissart resided in England as secretary to Queen Philippa from 1361 to 1366, and visited it again in 1395, when he paid a visit to Scotland.

Frollo, Archdeacon Claude.—A noted character in Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris, absorbed in a bewildering search for the philosopher’s stone.

Front de Bœuf.—Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott. A follower of Prince John of Anjou, and one of the knight’s challengers.

Froth, Master.—A foolish gentleman in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. His name explains his character.

Fusbos (fus´bos).—Utopia, Sir Thomas More. Minister of state to Artaxaminous, king of Utopia.

Fyrapel, Sir.—The Leopard, the nearest kinsman of King Lion, in the beast epic of Reynard the Fox.

G

Gadshill.—A companion of Sir John Falstaff, in the first part of Shakespeare’s King Henry IV.

Galahad (gal´a-had), Sir.—A celebrated knight of the Round Table who achieved the quest of the Holy Grail. Tennyson has made him the subject of one of his idylls. In Malory he is also represented as the perfect knight, clad in wonderful armor. He was the only knight who could sit in the “Siege Perilous” a seat reserved for the “knight without a flaw,” who achieved the quest of the “Holy Grail.”

Galapas (gal´a-pas).—A giant of marvelous height in the army of Lucius, king of Rome. He was slain by King Arthur.

Galaphrone, or Galafron.—A king of Cathay and father of Angelica in Bojardo’s Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto’s Furioso.

Gamp, Mrs.—A nurse who is a prominent character in Dickens’ novel of Martin Chuzzlewit. She is celebrated for her constant reference to a certain Mrs. Harris, a purely imaginary person, for whose feigned opinions and utterances she professes the greatest respect, in order to give the more weight to her own.

Gan, Ganelone, Ganelon, or Gano.—The character of Sir Ganelon was marked with spite, dissimulation, and intrigue, but he was patient, obstinate, and enduring. He loved solitude, disbelieved in the existence of moral good, and has become a byword for a false and faithless friend. Dante has placed him in his Inferno.

Gander-Cleugh.—“Folly-Cliff,” that mysterious place where a person make a goose of himself, in Tales of My Landlord, Sir Walter Scott.

Garcia, Pedro.—A mythical personage, of whom mention is made in the preface to Gil Bias, in which is related how two scholars of Salamanca discovered a tombstone with the inscription “Here lies interred the soul of the Licentiate Pedro Garcia,” and how, on digging beneath the stone, was found a leathern purse containing a hundred ducats.

Gareth.—In Arthurian Romance a knight of the Round Table, who was first a scullion in King Arthur’s kitchen, but afterward became champion of the Lady Linet, or Lynette, whose sister Lionès, or Lyonors, he delivered from Castle Perilous.

Garganelle (gär-ga-nel´).—The mother of Gargantua in Rabelais’ celebrated romance of this name.

Gargantua (gär-gan´tū-ä).—Rabelais’ celebrated romance, the hero of which is a gigantic personage, about whom many wonderful stories are related. He lived for several centuries, and at last begot a son, Pantagruel, as wonderful as himself. The Pleasant Story of the Giant Gargantua and of his Son Pantagruel, so satirized the monastic orders of his time that it was denounced by the spiritual authorities. Francis I., however, protected the author, and allowed him to print the third part of it in 1545.

Gargery (gar´jer-i), Mrs. Joe.—Great Expectations, Dickens. Pip’s sister. A virago, who kept her husband and Pip in constant awe. Joe Gargery, a blacksmith, married to Pip’s sister. A noble-hearted, simple-minded young man, who loved Pip sincerely. Joe Gargery was one of nature’s gentlemen.

Gaspar, or Caspar.—(The white one), one of the three magi or kings of Cologne. His offering to the infant Jesus was frankincense, in token of divinity.

Gaunt, Griffith.—Hero of a novel by Charles Reade, of same title.

Gavotte.—Name given to a certain dance common among people in the upper Alps.

Gawain, or Gawayne (gä´wān), Sir.—A nephew of King Arthur, and one of the most celebrated knights of the Round Table; noted for his sagacity and wonderful strength. He was surnamed “the courteous.” His brothers were Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth.

Gebir (gā´bēr).—A legendary eastern prince, said to have invaded Africa and to have given his name to Gibraltar. He is the subject of a poem of the same name by Walter Savage Landor.

Gellatley (gel´at-li), Davie.—The name of a poor fool in Sir Walter Scott’s novel of Waverley.

Geneviève (zhen-vyāv´).—(1) The heroine of a ballad by Coleridge. (2) Under the form Genovefa, the name occurs in a German myth as that of the wife of the Count Palatine Siegfried, in the time of Charles Martel. Upon false accusations her husband gave orders to put her to death, but the servant intrusted with the commission suffered her to escape into the forests of Ardennes, where she lay concealed, until by accident his husband discovered her retreat, and recognized her innocence.

Genevra.—A lady in Aristo’s Orlandos’ Furioso. Her honor is impeached, and she is condemned to die unless a champion appears to do combat for her. Her lover, Ariodantes, answers the challenge, kills the false accuser, and weds the dame. Spenser has a similar story in the Faërie Queene, and Shakespeare availed himself of the main incident in his comedy of Much Ado About Nothing.

Geraint (ge-rānt), Sir.—One of the knights of the Round Table. His story is told in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King under Geraint and Enid.

Geraldine.—A name frequently found in romantic poetry, especially Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel. The name is said to have been adopted from the heroine connected with Surrey, whose praises are celebrated in a famous sonnet.

Gertrude of Wyoming.—Heroine of a poem by Thomas Campbell.

Gesta Romanorum (jes´tä rō-ma-nō´rum).—A collection of old romances compiled by Pierre Bercheure, prior of the Benedictine convent of St. Eloi, Paris. Shakespeare, Spenser, Gower, and many later writers have gone to this source. It took its present form in England about the beginning of the fourteenth century, the foundation coming from Roman writers, to which were added religious and mystical tales.

Giaour (jour), The.—Byron’s tale called The Giaour is represented as told by a fisherman, a Turk, who had committed a crime which haunted him all his life. See Hassan.

Gibbie, Goose.—A half-witted boy in Scott’s Old Mortality.

Gibbie, Sir.—A simple-hearted, fine character in George Macdonald’s novel by the same name.

Giant Despair.—Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan. A giant who is the owner of Doubting Castle, and who, finding Christian and Hopeful asleep upon his grounds, takes them prisoners, and thrusts them into a dungeon.

Giant Grim.—Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan. A giant who seeks to stop the march of the pilgrims to the Celestial City, but is slain in a duel by Mr. Great-heart, their guide.

Giant Slay-good.—Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan. A giant slain in a duel by Mr. Great-heart.

Gil Blas (zhēl bläs).—A romance by Le Sage. The hero is the son of Blas of Santillanê squire or “escudero” to a lady, and brought up by his uncle, Canon Gil Perês. Gil Blas went to Dr. Godinez’s school of Oviedo and obtained the reputation of being a great scholar. He had fair abilities, a kind heart, and good inclinations, but was easily led astray by his vanity. Full of wit and humor, he was lax in his morals. Duped by others at first, he afterward played the same devices on those less experienced. As he grew in years, however, his conduct improved, and when his fortune was made, he became an honest, steady man.

Glaucus (glâ´kus).—A fisherman of Bœotia who has become the fisherman’s patron deity.

Glaucus.—Son of Hippolytus. Being smothered in a tub of honey, he was restored to life by Æsculapius.

Gloriana.—In Spenser’s Faërie Queene, the “greatest glorious queen of Faëry land.”

Glumdalca (glum-dal´kä).—Tom Thumb, Fielding. Queen of the giants, captive in the court of King Arthur.

Glumdalclitch (glum-dal´klich).—Gulliver’s Travels, Swift. A girl nine years old “and only forty feet high.” Being such a “little thing,” the charge of Gulliver was committed to her during his sojourn in Brobdingnag.

Glumms.—Peter Wilkins, Robert Pullock. The male population of the imaginary country Nosmubdsgrsutt, visited by Peter Wilkins. Both males and females had wings which served both for flying and for clothes.

Godiva (gō-dī´vä).—A poem by Alfred Tennyson. The story of the lady and Peeping Tom of Coventry is told in full by Dugdale. Godiva was the wife of Leofric, earl of Mercia, and undertook to ride naked through the town if he would remit a tax under which the people groaned. The earl consented and the lady kept her word.

Golden Ass, The.—A romance in Latin by Apuleius. It is the adventures of Lucian, a young man who had been transformed into an ass, but still retained his human consciousness. It tells us the miseries which he suffered at the hands of robbers, eunuchs, magistrates, and so on, till the time came for him to resume his proper form. It is full of wit, racy humor, and rich fancy, and contains the exquisite episode of Cupid and Psyche.

Golden Legend, The.—The title of an ecclesiastical work in one hundred and seventy-seven sections, dating from the thirteenth century, written by one James de Voragine, a Dominican monk, and descriptive of the various saints’ days in the Roman calendar. It is deserving of study as a literary monument of the period, and as illustrating the religious habits and views of the Christians of that time.

Goneril (gon´er-il).—The oldest of the three daughters to King Lear, in Shakespeare’s tragedy. Having received her moiety of Lear’s kingdom, the unnatural daughter first abridged the old man’s retinue, then gave him to understand that his company was not wanted and sent him out a despairing old man to seek refuge where he could find it. Her name is proverbial for filial ingratitude.

Gonzalo (gon-zä´lō).—An honest old counselor in Shakespeare’s Tempest, a true friend to Prospero.

Goody Blake.—A character in Wordsworth’s poem entitled Goody Blake and Harry Gill. A farmer forbids old Goody Blake to carry home a few sticks, which she had picked up from his land, and in revenge she invokes upon him the curse that he may “never more be warm;” and ever after “his teeth they chatter, chatter still.”

Goody Two-Shoes.—The name of a well-known character in a nursery tale by Oliver Goldsmith. Goody Two-Shoes was a very poor child, whose delight at having a pair of shoes was unbounded. She called constant attention to her “two-shoes” which gave her the name.

Gradgrind (grad´grīnd).—A hardware merchant in Dickens’ Hard Times. He is a man of hard facts and cultivates the practical. His constant demand in conversation is for “facts.” He allows nothing for the weakness of human nature, and deals with men and women as a mathematician with his figures.

Gradgrind, Mrs.—Wife of Thomas Gradgrind. A little, thin woman, always taking physic, without receiving from it any benefit.

Gradgrind, Tom.—Son of the above, a sullen young man, much loved by his sister.

Gradgrind, Louise.—A faithful daughter and sister.

Grandison, Sir Charles.—The hero of Richardson’s novel The History of Sir Charles Grandison. Designed to represent his ideal of a perfect hero—a union of the good Christian and the perfect English gentleman.

Gratiano (grä-tē-ä´no).—(1) A friend to Antonio and Bassanio in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. He “talks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in Venice.” (2) Brother to Brabantio, in Shakespeare’s tragedy of Othello. (3) A character in the Italian popular theater called Commedia dell’ Arte. He is represented as a Bolognese doctor, and has a mask with a black nose and forehead and red cheeks.

Great-Heart, Mr.—In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the guide of Christian’s wife and children upon their journey to the Celestial City.

Gremio (grē´mi-ō).—In Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, an old man who wishes to wed Bianca.

Griffin-feet.—Fairy Tales, Comtesse d’Aulnoy. The mark by which the Desert Fairy was known in all her metamorphoses.

Grimalkin.—A cat, the spirit of a witch. Any witch was permitted to assume the body of a cat nine times.

Grimwig.—Oliver Twist, Dickens. An irascible old gentleman, who hid a very kind heart under a rough exterior. He was always declaring himself ready to “eat his head” if he was mistaken on any point on which he passed an opinion.

Griselda (gri-zel´dä), The Patient.—A lady in Chaucer’s Clerk of Oxenford’s Tales, immortalized by her virtue and her patience. The model of womanly and wifely obedience, she comes victoriously out of cruel and repeated ordeals. The story of Griselda is first told in the Decameron. Boccaccio derived the incidents from Petrarch, who seems to have communicated them also to Chaucer, as the latter refers to Petrarch as his authority.

Grub Street, London, is thus described in Dr. Johnson’s dictionary: “Originally the name of a street near Moorfields, in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any production is called Grub street.” The name was freely used by Pope, Swift, and others.

Grundy.—“What will Mrs. Grundy say?” (What will our rivals or neighbors say?) The phrase is from Tom Morton’s Speed the Plough, but “Mrs. Grundy” is not introduced into the comedy as one of the dramatis personæ. The solicitude of Dame Ashfield, in this play, as to “what will Mrs. Grundy say?” has given the latter great celebrity, the interrogatory having acquired a proverbial currency.

Gudrun (gö-drön´).—Edda, Sämund Sigfusson. A lady, married to Sigurd by the magical arts of her mother and on the death of Sigurd to Atli (Attila), whom she hated for his cruelty, and murdered. She then cast herself into the sea, and the waves bore her to the castle of King Jonakun, who became her third husband.

Gudrun.—North-Saxon poem. A model of heroic fortitude and pious resignation. She was the daughter of King Hettel (Attila), and the betrothed of Herwig, king of Heligoland.

Guendolen (gwen´dō-len).—A fairy whose mother was a human being.

Guildenstern.—The name of a courtier in Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet.

Guinevere (gwin´e-ver), or Guenever.—A corrupt form of Guanhumara, daughter of King Leodegrance of the land of Camelyard. She was the most beautiful of women, was the wife of King Arthur, but entertained a liaison with Sir Launcelot du Lac. Arthur, when informed of the conduct of Launcelot, went with an army to Brittany to punish him. Mordred, left as regent, usurped the crown, proclaimed that Arthur was dead, and tried to marry Guinevere; but she shut herself up in the Tower of London, resolved to die rather than marry the usurper. When she heard of the death of Arthur, she stole away to Almesbury, and became a nun.

Gulliver, Lemuel.—The imaginary hero of Swift’s celebrated satirical romance known as Gulliver’s Travels. He is represented as being first a surgeon in London, and then a captain of several ships. After having followed the sea for some years he makes in succession four extraordinary voyages.

Gummidge (gum´ij), Mrs.—In Dickens’ novel of David Copperfield, described herself as a “lone, lorn, creetur, and everythink that reminds me of creeturs that ain’t lone and lorn goes contrairy with me.”

Gurton, Gammer.—The heroine of an old English comedy, long supposed to be the earliest in the language.

Guy Mannering.—The second of Scott’s historical novels, published in 1815, just seven months after Waverley. The interest of the tale is well sustained; but the love scenes, female characters, and Guy Mannering himself are quite worthless. Not so the character of Dandy Dinmont, the shrewd and witty counselor Pleydell, the desperate, sea-beaten villainy of Hatteraick, the uncouth devotion of that gentlest of all pedants, poor Dominie Sampson, and the savage, crazed superstition of the gypsy-dweller in Derncleugh.

Guyon (gī´on).—The impersonation of Temperance or Self-government in Spenser’s Faërie Queene. He destroyed the witch Acrasia, and her bower, called the “Bower of Bliss.” His companion was Prudence. Sir Guyon represents the quality of temperance in the largest sense; meaning the virtuous self-government which holds in check not only the inferior sensual appetites but also the impulses of passion and revenge.

Guy, Sir, Earl of Warwick.—The hero of a famous English legend, which celebrates the wonderful achievements by which he obtained the hand of his ladylove, the fair Felice, as well as the adventures he subsequently met with in a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He is reputed to have lived in the reign of the Saxon King Athelstan. The romance of Sir Guy, mentioned by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales, cannot be traced further back than the earlier part of the fourteenth century. His existence at any period is very doubtful.

H

Hadad.—One of the six wise men led by the guiding star to Jesus.

Hagen.—The murderer of Siegfried, in the German epic, the Nibelungenlied. He is a pale-faced dwarf, who knows everything and whose sole desire is mischief. After the death of Siegfried he seized the “Nibelung hoard,” and buried it in the Rhine, intending to appropriate it. Kriemhild invited him to the court and had him slain.

Haidee (hī-dē´).—A beautiful young Greek girl in Byron’s poem, Don Juan. She is called the “beauty of the Cyclades.”

Hakim.—The Talisman, Scott. Saladin, in the disguise of a physician, visited Richard Cœur de Lion in sickness; gave him a medicine in which the “talisman” had been dipped, and the sick king recovered.

Hamlet.—A tragedy by Shakespeare. The chief character is Hamlet, prince of Denmark. The ghost of his father appears to him, and urges him to avenge his murder upon his uncle. But the prince feigns madness, and puts off his revenge from day to day by “thinking too precisely on the event.” Hamlet’s mother had married Claudius, king of Denmark, after the death of her former husband. Claudius prepared poisoned wine, which he intended for Hamlet; but the queen, not knowing it, drank it, was poisoned and died. Hamlet, seeing his mother fall dead, rushed on the king and killed him almost by accident, and is killed himself by a poisoned rapier in the hands of Laertes.

Hanswurst (häns´vŏrst).—A pantomimic character formerly introduced into German comedies. It corresponds to the Italian Macaroni, the French Jean Potage, and the English Jack Pudding.

Hardcastle, Mr.—A character in Goldsmith’s comedy of She Stoops to Conquer, represented as prosy and hospitable.

Hardcastle, Mrs.—A very “genteel” lady indeed. Tony Lumpkin is her son by a former husband.

Hard Times.—A novel by Dickens. Bounderby, a street Arab, raised himself to banker and cotton prince. When past fifty years of age he married Louisa, daughter of Thomas Gradgrind. The bank was robbed, and Bounderby believed Stephen Blackpool to be the thief, because he had dismissed him from his employ. The culprit was Tom Gradgrind, the banker’s brother-in-law, who escaped out of the country. In the dramatized version, the bank was not robbed, but Tom removed the money to another drawer for safety.

Harlequin (här´le-kin, or -´kwin).—The name of a well-known character in the popular extemporized Italian comedy.

Harlowe, Clarissa.—The heroine of Richardson’s novel entitled The History of Clarissa Harlowe. In order to avoid a marriage urged upon her by her parents, she casts herself on the protection of Lovelace, who grossly abuses the confidence thus reposed in him. He subsequently proposes to marry her, but Clarissa rejects the offer.

Haroun-al-Raschid (hä-rŏn´äl-rash´id).—Caliph of the Abbasside race, contemporary with Charlemagne, and, like him, a patron of literature and the arts. Many of the tales in the Arabian Nights are placed in the caliphate of Haroun-al-Raschid.

Harpagon (är-pä-gôn´).—The hero of Molière’s comedy of L’Avare, represented as a wretched miser.

Harpier, or Harper.—Some mysterious personage referred to by the witches in Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth.

Hassan (häs´sän).—The Giaour, Byron. Caliph of the Ottoman empire, noted for his hospitality and splendor. In his seraglio was a beautiful young slave named Leila, who loved a Christian called the Giaour. Leila is put to death by an emir, and Hassan is slain by the Giaour. Caliph Hassan has become the subject of popular romance.

Hassan, Al.—The Arabian emir of Persia, father of Hinda, in Moore’s Fire Worshipers.

Hatto (hät´tō).—In German legend, an archbishop of Mentz in the tenth century, who, for his hardheartedness to the poor in time of famine, was eaten by mice in the “Mouse Tower” on an island in the Rhine near Bingen. Robert Browning has made this legend the subject of a poem.

Havelock the Dane (hav´e-lok).—A fisherman, known as Grim, rescued an infant named Havelock, whom he adopted. This infant was the son of the king of Denmark, and when the boy was restored to his royal sire Grim was laden with gifts. He built the town which he called after his own name. This is the foundation of the mediæval tales about Havelock the Dane.

Hazlewood, Sir Robert.—The old baronet of Hazlewood.

Hazlewood, Charles.—Guy Mannering, Scott. Son of Sir Robert. In love with Lucy Bertram, whom he marries.

Heart of Midlothian, The.—A novel by Sir Walter Scott, published in 1818. It has for heroines Jeanie and Effie Deans. Among the other characters are Dumbiedykes and Madge Wildfire. It has often been dramatized. “The Heart of Midlothian” was the popular name for the tollbooth at Edinburgh, the capital of the county of Midlothian.

Heep, Uriah.—David Copperfield, Dickens. A detestable character, who, under the garb of the most abject humility, conceals a diabolic malignity. Mrs. Heep, Uriah’s mother, was a character equally to be despised for her hypocritical assumption of humility.

Helena.—(1) A lady in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, in love with Demetrius. (2) The heroine of Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, in love with Bertram, who marries her against his will and leaves her, but is finally won by the strength of her affection. (3) A character in an old popular tale, reproduced in Germany by Tieck.

Hermann and Dorothea.—The hero and heroine of Goethe’s poem of the same name.

Hermengyld (her´men-gild).—Canterbury Tales, Chaucer. The wife of the lord-constable of Northumberland. She was converted by Constance, but was murdered by a knight. Hermengyld at the bidding of Constance restored sight to a blind Briton.

Hermia (her´mi-ä).—A lady in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, in love with Lysander.

Hermione.—The heroine of the first three acts of Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale.

Hernani, or Ernani.—The hero of Victor Hugo’s tragedy of the same name, and of Verdi’s opera, founded on the play. He was a Spanish noble in revolt against the Emperor Charles V. and killed himself from a high sense of honor.

Hiawatha (hi-a-wâ´tä, or hī-a-wâ´thä), The Song of.—A poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, written in the following peculiar measure:

Should you ask me, “Whence these stories?”
. . . . .
I should answer, I should tell you,
. . . . .
“I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer.”

The poem is entirely devoted to a description of life among the aboriginal tribes of America. It was published in 1855. Hiawatha is a mythical person believed by some of the North American Indians to have been sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds, and to teach them the arts of peace. When the white man came, then Hiawatha knew that the time of his departure was at hand, when he must go

To the kingdom of Ponemah,
The land of the Hereafter.

Highland Mary.—A song by Robert Burns, which Burns himself thought was in his happiest manner, and which refers, he says, to one of the most interesting passages of his youthful days. By this he means his attachment to Mary, a servant in the family of Mr. Hamilton, “who will be remembered,” says Alexander Smith, “with Dante’s Beatrice and Petrarch’s Laura.” It was arranged that the lovers should become man and wife, and that Mary should go to her friends to prepare for the wedding. But before her departure came the farewell scene so touchingly described in the poem:

Our parting was fu’ tender;
And, pledging aft to meet again,
We tore oursels asunder:
But oh! fell death’s untimely frost
That nipt my flower sae early!
Now green’s the sod, and cauld’s the clay,
That wraps my Highland Mary!

Hilda.—A New England girl of the most sensitive delicacy and purity of mind, in Hawthorne’s romance, The Marble Faun. She is an artist, living in Rome, and typifies, perhaps, the conscience.

Hildebrand (hil´de-brand).—The Nestor of German romance, a magician and champion.

Hildesheim (hil´des-hīm).—In an old German legend, the monk of Hildesheim, doubting how a thousand years with God could be “only one day,” listened to the melody of a bird, as he supposed, for only three minutes, but found that he had been listening to it for a hundred years.

Hobbididance.—The name of one of the fiends mentioned by Shakespeare in Lear, and taken from the history of the Jesuits’ impostures.

Hohenlinden (hō´en-lin´den).—A poem by Thomas Campbell, published in 1802, celebrating the battle of Hohenlinden, gained by Moreau and the French over the Austrians. The poet visited the battle field on December 3, 1800.

Holofernes (hol-ō-fer´nēz).—(1) A pedant living in Paris, under whose care Gargantua is placed for instruction. (2) A pedantic schoolmaster in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost.

Holt, Felix.—The hero of George Eliot’s novel by the same name.

Home, Sweet Home.—A popular lyric contained in the drama of Clari, the Maid of Milan, by John Howard Payne. The beautiful melody to which it has been wedded is said to be of Italian or Sicilian origin, though by some it is attributed to Sir Henry Rowley Bishop. Perhaps the latter merely arranged and harmonized it.

Homilies.—The latter entries in the Peterborough Chronicle and a few homilies are almost all that we have left of the literature of the twelfth century. Some of these homilies are copied or imitated from those of Ælfric.

Honeycomb (hun´i-kōm), Will.—One of the members of the imaginary club by whom the Spectator was professedly edited. He is distinguished for his graceful affectation, courtly pretension, and knowledge of the gay world.

Honeyman, Charles.—A fashionable preacher in Thackeray’s novel, The Newcomes.

Hopeful.—A pilgrim in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, who accompanies Christian to the end of his journey.

Hop-o’-my-Thumb.—A character in the tales of the nursery. Tom Thumb and Hop-o’-my-Thumb are not the same, although they are often confounded. Tom Thumb was the son of peasants, knighted by King Arthur, and was killed by a spider. Hop-o’-my-Thumb was a nix, the same as the German “daumling,” the French “le petit pouce,” and the Scotch “Tom-a-lin” or “Tamlane.” He was not a human dwarf, but a fay.

Horatio (hō-rā´shi-ō).—Hamlet, Shakespeare. An intimate friend of Hamlet, a prince, a scholar, and a gentleman.

Horatius Cocles.—Captain of the bridge gate over the Tiber. He and two men to help him held the bridge against vast approaching armies. Subject and title of a poem by Lord Macauley.

Horner, Jack.—The name of a celebrated personage in the literature of the nursery. A Somersetshire tradition says that the plums which Jack Horner pulled out of the Christmas pie alluded to the title deeds of the abbey estates at Wells, which were sent to Henry VIII., in a pasty, and were abstracted on the way by the messenger, a certain Jack Horner.

Hortense (hôr-ten´s, or or-tons´).—Bleak House, Dickens. The vindictive French maid-servant of Lady Dedlock. In revenge for the partiality shown by Lady Dedlock to Rosa, Hortense murdered Mr. Tulkinghorn, and tried to throw the suspicion of the crime on Lady Dedlock.

House of the Seven Gables, The.—A romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1851. “In The House of the Seven Gables,” says R. H. Hutton, “we have a picture studied to impress on us that both personal character and the malign influences of evil action are transmitted, sometimes with accumulating force, even through centuries, blighting every generation through which they pass. The subject would apparently involve a series of sketches, but only two are introduced from the past, and the family characteristics are so anxiously preserved as to make even these seem like slight modifications of some of the living group. The only incident in the tale is the light thrown upon a crime—which had been committed thirty years before the story opens—by the sudden death of the principal representative of a family from the same disease, in the same chair, and under the same circumstances, as those of the old ancestor and founder of the family, whose picture hangs above the chair.”

Hubbard, Old Mother.—A well-known nursery rhyme. Mother Hubbard’s Tale, by Edmund Spenser, is a satirical fable in the style of Chaucer.

Hubert de Burgh (börg, or berg).—Justice of England, created Earl of Kent, introduced by Shakespeare into King John. He is the one to whom the young prince addresses his piteous plea for life. The lad was found dead soon afterward, either by accident or foul play.

Hubert, Saint.—The legend of Saint Hubert makes him a patron saint of huntsmen.

Hudibras (hū´di-bras).—The title and hero of a celebrated satirical poem by Samuel Butler. Hudibras is a Presbyterian justice of the time of the commonwealth.

Hugh of Lincoln.—A legendary personage who forms the subject of Chaucer’s Prioress’ Tale, and also of an ancient English ballad. Wordsworth has given a modernized version of this tale.

Hugo Hugonet.—Castle Dangerous, Scott. Minstrel of the earl of Douglas.

Humphrey.—The imaginary collector of the tales in Master Humphrey’s Clock, by Charles Dickens.

Humpty Dumpty.—The hero of a well-known nursery rhyme. The name signifies humped and dumpy, and is the riddle for an egg.

Huon de Bordeaux (ü-ôn´de bor-dō´).—A hero of one of the romances of chivalry bearing this name.

Hural Oyun.—In the fairy tales found in the Koran, these are the black-eyed daughters of paradise. They are created from muck, and are free from all physical weakness and are always young. It is held out to every male believer that he will have seventy-two of these girls as his household companions in paradise.

Hylas (hī´las).—A beautiful boy, beloved by Hercules, who was drawn into a spring by the enamored nymphs. The story has been treated by Bayard Taylor, and by William Morris in his Life and Death of Jason.

Hypatia (hī-ā´shiä).—A novel by the Rev. Charles Kingsley, the scene of which is laid in Alexandria, at a time when Christianity was gaining ground against Paganism and the neo-Platonism of the schools. Hypatia herself was born about the year 370, and, after attracting to her lectures on philosophy a large and brilliant auditory, was torn to pieces by the rabble of her native city in 415. Hypatia appeared in 1853.

Hyperion (hī-pē´ri-on, or hī-per-ī´on).—A romance in four books, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This work, which was the result of an extensive tour in Germany, was published in 1839, and with much that is purely fanciful and imaginative, contains much that came within the actual experience of the author who is represented, idealized, in the character of Paul Flemming. The episode with Mary Ashburton is supposed to have reference to a real occurrence. The book is full of description and of eloquent discussion, besides being interspersed with snatches of legend and of song.

Hypocrites’ Isle.—An island described by Rabelais in one of his satires. He pictures this island of Hypocrites as wholly inhabited by people of low and defiled natures, as, by sham saints, spiritual comedians, seducers, and “such-like sorry rogues who live on the alms of passengers like the hermit of Lamont.”

I

Iago (ē-ä´gō).—Othello, Shakespeare. Othello’s ensign and the villain of the play. Iago is said to be a character next to a devil, yet not quite a devil, which Shakespeare alone could execute without scandal.

Idleness, The Lake of.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. Whoever drank thereof grew instantly “faint and weary.” The Red Cross Knight drank of it, and was readily made captive by Orgoglio.

Idylls of the King.—A series of poems by Tennyson. Taken together they form a parable of the life of man. Each idyll taken as a separate picture represents the war between sense and soul. In Lancelot and Guinevere the lower nature leads them astray and there is intense struggle before the higher nature prevails. In Vivien, Tristram, and Modred, the base and sensual triumph. In Arthur, Sir Galahad and Percivale, it is the victory of the spiritual.

Ignaro.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. Fosterfather of Orgoglio. Spenser says this old man walks one way and looks another, because ignorance is always “wrong-headed.”

Iliad (il´ē-ad).—A famous Greek epic poem by Homer. It is the tale of the siege of Troy, in twenty-four books. It is written in Greek hexameters, and commemorates the deeds of Achilles and other Greek heroes at the siege of Troy. Books one, two and three are introductory to the war. Paris proposes to decide the contest by a single combat, and Menelaus accepts the challenge. Paris, being overthrown, is carried off by Venus, and Agamemnon demands that the Trojans shall give up Troy in fulfillment of the compact, and the siege follows. The gods take part, and frightful slaughter ensues. At length Achilles slays Hector, and the battle is at an end. Old Priam, going to the tent of Achilles, craves the body of his son Hector; Achilles gives it up, and the poem concludes with the funeral rites of the Trojan hero. Vergil continues the tale from this point, shows how the city was taken and burnt, and then continues with the adventures of Æneas, who escapes from the burning city, and makes his way to Italy.

Imogen (im´ō-jen).—The wife of Posthumus, and the daughter of Cymbeline in the play of Shakespeare’s under title Cymbeline. “Of all Shakespeare’s women,” says Hazlitt, “she is, perhaps, the most tender and the most artless.”

Incantation.—Is derived from a Latin root meaning simply “to sing.” It is the term in use to denote one of the most powerful and awe-inspiring modes of magic, resting on a belief in the mysterious power of words solemnly conceived and passionately uttered.

Inchcape Rock.—It is dangerous for navigators, and therefore the abbot of Aberbrothock fixed a bell on a float, which gave notice to sailors. Southey says that Ralph the Rover, in a mischievous joke, cut the bell from the buoy, and it fell into the sea; but on his return voyage his boat ran on the rock, and Ralph was drowned. Precisely the same tale is told of St. Goven’s bell.

Inferno, The.—Divine Comedy, Dante. Epic poem in thirty-four cantos. Inferno is the place of the souls who are wholly given up to sin. The ascent is through Purgatory to Paradise.

Ingoldsby Legends (ing´gōldz-bi lej´endz, or lē´jendz).—A collection of legends in prose and verse, supposed to have been found in the family chest of the Ingoldsby family, and related by Thomas Ingoldsby. Of the poetical pieces it is not too much to say that, for originality of design and diction, for quaint illustration and musical verse, they are not surpassed in the English language. From the days of Hudibras to our time, the drollery invested in rhyme has never been so amply or so felicitously exemplified; and if derision has been unsparingly applied, it has been to lash knavery and imposture.

In Memoriam.—A poem by Alfred Tennyson, published in 1850, and consisting of one hundred and thirty “short swallow flights of song,” in a measure which Tennyson has made his own. It is well known that these “brief lays, of sorrow born,” were written in memory of the author’s friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, who died in 1833. They are characterized by George MacDonald as forming “the poem of the hoping doubters, the poem of our age—the grand minor organ fugue of In Memoriam. It is the cry of the bereaved Psyche into the dark infinite after the vanished love. His friend is nowhere in his sight, and God is silent. Death, God’s final compulsion to prayer, in its dread, its gloom, its utter stillness, its apparent nothingness, urges the cry. Moanings over the dead are mingled with the profoundest questionings of philosophy, the signs of nature, and the story of Jesus, while now and then the star of the morning, bright Phosphor, flashes a few rays through the shifting cloudy dark. And if the sun has not arisen on the close of the book, yet the aurora of the coming dawn gives light enough to make the onward journey possible and hopeful.”

Innocents Abroad.—By Mark Twain. Travelers seeing Europe without any illusions. The fun consists in an irreverent application of modern common sense to historic associations, ridiculing sentimental humbug. An air of innocence and surprise adds to the drolleries of their adventures.

Instauratio Magna (in-stâ-rā´shi-ō mag´nä).—The title (The Great Restoration) which Bacon gave to his Magnum Opus, the design of which was for six divisions:—(1) The Advancement of Learning; (2) the Novum Organum; (3) the Experimental History of Nature; (4) the Scala Intellectus, which leads from experience to science; (5) the Bodronic, or anticipations of the second philosophy; and (6) Active Science, or experiment. Of these, only the first two, and a portion of the third (Sylva Sylvarum), were published. The idea that was to run through the Instauratio was that invention must be based upon experience, and experience upon experiment.

Interludes, The.—Springing from the moralities and bearing some resemblance to them, though nearer the regular drama, are the interludes, a class of compositions in dialogue, much shorter and more merry and farcical. They were generally played in the intervals of a festival.

Invocation.—An address at the commencement of a poem, in which the author calls for the aid of some divinity, particularly of his muse.

Iphigenia (if´i-jē-nī´ä).—The heroine of Euripides’ tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis, and of Goethe’s tragedy Iphigenia auf Tauris. She was placed on the altar in a rash vow by her father. Artemis at the last moment snatched her from the altar and carried her to heaven, substituting a hind in her place. The similarity of this legend to the scripture stories of Jephthah’s vow and Abraham’s offering of his son Isaac is noticeable.

Iras.—A strongly delineated character in Ben Hur, a Tale of The Christ, by Lew Wallace.

Iras.—A female attendant on Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s play, Antony and Cleopatra.

Isaac of York.—A wealthy Jew, the father of Rebecca, in Sir Walter Scott’s novel, Ivanhoe.

Isabella.—The heroine in Shakespeare’s comedy, Measure for Measure.

Island of Lanterns.—In the celebrated satire of Rabelais, an imaginary country inhabited by false pretenders to knowledge. The name was probably suggested by the City of Lanterns, in the Greek romance of Lucian. Swift has copied this same idea in his Island of Laputa.

Island of St. Brandan.—A marvelous flying island, the subject of an old and widely spread legend of the middle ages. Though the island of St. Brandan has been a disappointment to voyagers, it has been a favorite theme with poets.

Island of the Blest.—Imaginary island in the west. Hither the favorites of the gods were conveyed without dying, and dwelt in never-ending joy. The name first occurs in Hesiod’s Works and Days. This phrase is often used in modern literature.

Ithuriel (i-thö´ri-el).—In Milton’s Paradise Lost, an angel commissioned by Gabriel to search through paradise, in company with Zephon, to find Satan, who had eluded the vigilance of the angelic guard, and effected an entrance into the garden. It is related that Ithuriel found Satan “squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve,” and transformed him by a touch of his spear into his proper shape.

Ivanhoe.—A novel by Sir Walter Scott. The hero, also Ivanhoe, figures as Cedric of Rotherwood’s disinherited son, the favorite of King Richard I., and the lover of the Lady Rowena, whom, in the end, he marries. The scene is laid in England in the reign of Richard I., and we are introduced to Robin Hood in Sherwood forest, banquets in Saxon halls, tournaments, and all the pomp of ancient chivalry. Rowena, the heroine, is quite thrown into the shade by the gentle, meek, yet high-souled Rebecca.

Ivory Gate of Dreams.—Dreams which delude pass through the ivory gate, but those which come true through the horn gate.

J

Jack and the Bean-Stalk.—A nursery legend said to be an allegory of the Teutonic Al-fader, the “red hen” representing the all-producing sun, the “money-bags” the fertilizing rain, and the “harp” the winds.

Jack-in-the-Green.—A prominent character in Maypole dances.

Jack Robinson.—A famous comic song by Hudson.

Jack Sprat.—The hero of a nursery rhyme. Jack and his wife form a fine combination in domestic economy.

Jack the Giant-killer.—The name of a famous hero in the literature of the nursery, the subject of one of the Teutonic or Indo-European legends, which have become nationalized in England and America.

Jaquenetta (jak-e-net´ä).—Love’s Labor’s Lost, Shakespeare. A country wench courted by Don Adriano de Armado.

Jaques (zhä´kes).—A lord attending upon the exiled duke, in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. A contemplative character who thinks and does—nothing. He is called the “melancholy Jaques,” and affects a cynical philosophy. He could “suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs.”

Jarley, Mrs.—The proprietor of a waxwork show in Dickens’ Old Curiosity Shop. She has lent her name to a popular game of parlor tableaux.

Jarndyce (järn´dis), John.—A prominent figure in Dickens’ Bleak House, distinguished for his philanthropy, easy good-nature and good sense, and for always saying, “The wind is in the east,” when anything went wrong with him. The famous suit of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, in this novel, is a satire upon the court of chancery.

Jarvie, Nicol.—A prominent character in Sir Walter Scott’s novel Rob Roy. He is a bailie of Glasgow.

Javert (zhä-var´).—An officer of the police force in Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo. He is the incarnation of inexorable law.

Jarvis.—A faithful old servant, in Moore’s The Gamester, who tries to save his master, Beverley, from his fatal passion of gambling.

Jaup.—An old woman at Middlemas village, in Scott’s The Surgeon’s Daughter.

Jekyll, Doctor, and Mr. Hyde.—A singular romance by Robert Louis Stevenson. The hero is a duplex character—Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Doctor Jekyll is a benevolent and upright physician, who by means of a potion is able to transform himself for a time into a second personality, Mr. Hyde, of a brutal and animal nature.

Jellyby (jel´i-bi), Mrs.—A character in Dickens’ novel, Bleak House, a type of sham philanthropy. She spends her time and energy on foreign missions to the neglect of her family. Mrs. Jellyby is quite overwhelmed with business correspondence relative to the affairs of Borrioboola Gha.

Jenkins, Winifred.—The name of Miss Tabitha Bramble’s maid in Smollett’s Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. She makes ridiculous blunders in speaking and writing.

Jenkinson, Ephraim.—A green old swindler, whom Dr. Primrose met in a public tavern. Dr. Primrose sold the swindler his horse, Old Blackberry, for a draft upon Farmer Flamborough.

Jeroboam (jer-ō-bō´am) Sermon.—One of Dr. Emmons’ sermons, which made a great noise at the time. It was known as his Jeroboam Sermon. It was written on the occasion of Jefferson’s inauguration as president, and, although Jefferson is not named, the delineation of the character of Jeroboam is such that no one can doubt the personal application intended.

Jerusalem Delivered.—An epic in twenty books, by Torquato Tasso. The crusaders, encamped on the plains of Tortosa, chose Godfrey for their chief, and Alandine, king of Jerusalem, made preparations for defense. The Christian army having reached Jerusalem, the king of Damascus sent Armida to beguile the Christians. It was found that Jerusalem could never be taken without the aid of Rinaldo. Godfrey, being informed that the hero was dallying with Armida in the enchanted island, sent to invite him back to the army; he returned, and Jerusalem was taken. Armida fled into Egypt, and offered to marry any knight who slew Rinaldo. The love of Rinaldo returned, he pursued her and she relented. The poem concludes with the triumphant entry of the Christian army into the Holy City, and their devotions at the tomb of the Redeemer. The two chief episodes are the loves of Olindo and Sofronia, and of Tancred and Clorinda.

Jessica (jes´i-kä).—The beautiful daughter of Shylock, in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.

Jones, Tom.—The hero of Fielding’s novel entitled The History of a Foundling, represented as a model of generosity, openness, and manly spirit, though thoughtless and dissipated.

Joyeuse (zhwä-yez´).—The sword of Charlemagne as mentioned in romances of chivalry.

Joyeuse Garde (zhwä-yez´ gärd).—The residence of the famous Lancelot du Lac.

Judith.—The heroine in the book by the same name in the Apocrypha. She was a beautiful Jewess of Bethulia, who, when her town was besieged by Holofernes, the general of Nebuchadnezzar, attended him in his tent, and, when he was drunk, killed him, whereupon her townsmen fell upon the Assyrians and defeated them with great slaughter. The tale is not mentioned by Josephus, and has, from an early period, been held to be an allegory. It has frequently furnished poets and painters with subjects.

Julius Cæsar.—An historical tragedy by William Shakespeare. The poet was in this, as in other plays, materially assisted by North’s translation of Plutarch. “Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar,” says Hazlitt, “is not equal, as a whole, to either of his other plays taken from the Roman history. It is inferior in interest to Coriolanus, and both in interest and power to Antony and Cleopatra. It, however, abounds in admirable and affecting passages, and is remarkable for the profound knowledge of character, in which Shakespeare could hardly fail.”

K

Kadir, Al.—The night on which the Koran was sent down to Mohammed. Al Kadir is supposed to be the seventh of the last ten nights of Ramadan, or the night between the twenty-third and twenty-fourth days of the month.

Kay.—A foster brother of King Arthur, and a rude and boastful knight of the Round Table. He was the butt of King Arthur’s court. Called also Sir Queux. He appears in the Boy and the Mantle, in Percy’s Reliques. Sir Kay is represented as the type of rude boastfulness, Sir Gawain of courtesy, Sir Launcelot of chivalry, Sir Mordred of treachery, Sir Galahad of chastity, Sir Mark of cowardice.

Kehama (kē-hä´mä).—A Hindu rajah who obtains and sports with supernatural power. His adventures are related in Southey’s poem entitled The Curse of Kehama.

Kenilworth.—A novel by Sir Walter Scott. This is very superior to The Abbot and The Monastery. For interest it comes next to Ivanhoe, and the portrait of Queen Elizabeth is lifelike and correct. That of Queen Mary is given in The Abbot. Full of courtly gayeties and splendor, the novel contains the unhappy tale of the beautiful Amy Robsart, which cannot fail to excite our sympathy and pity.

Kent, Earl of.—A rough, plain-spoken, but faithful nobleman in Shakespeare’s King Lear, who follows the fallen fortunes of the king, disguised as a servant, under the assumed name of Caius.

Kenwigs (ken´wigz).—A family in Dickens’ novel Nicholas Nickleby, including a number of little girls who differed from one another only in the length of their frilled pantalets and of their flaxen pigtails tied with bows of blue ribbon.

Kilkenny Cats.—Two cats, in an Irish story, which fought till nothing was left but their tails. It is probably a parable of a local contest between Kilkenny and Irishtown, which impoverished both boroughs.

Kilmansegg, Miss.—An heiress with great expectations and an artificial leg of solid gold, in Hood’s poem, A Golden Legend.

King Horn.—A metrical romance which was very popular in the thirteenth century. King Horn is a beautiful young prince who is carried away by pirates; but his life is spared, and after many wonderful adventures he weds a princess, and regains his father’s kingdom.

King Lear.—A tragedy by Shakespeare whose hero is a fabulous or legendary king of Britain. He had three daughters, and when four score years old, wishing to retire from the active duties of sovereignty, resolved to divide his kingdom between them, but was persuaded to disinherit Cordelia. The beauty of the play is the exquisite character of Cordelia, who is a “perfect woman.”

King Log and King Stork.—Characters in a celebrated fable of Æsop, which relates that the frogs, grown weary of living without a government, petitioned Jupiter for a king. Jupiter accordingly threw down a log among them, which made a satisfactory ruler till the frogs recovered from their fright and discovered his real nature. They, therefore, entreated Jupiter for another king, whereupon he sent them a stork, who immediately began to devour them.

Klaus, Peter.—The hero of an old popular tradition of Germany—the prototype of Rip Van Winkle—represented as a goatherd.

Knickerbocker, Diedrich.—The imaginary author of a humorous fictitious History of New York, written by Washington Irving.

Knight of the Swan.—Lohengrin, son of Parsival, because his boat was drawn by a swan.

Knights of the Round Table.—King Arthur’s knights were so called because they sat with him at a round table made by Merlin for King Leodogran. This king gave it to Arthur on his marriage with Guinevere, his daughter.

Koppenberg.—The mountain of Westphalia to which the pied piper (Bunting) led the children, when the people of Hamelin refused to pay him for killing their rats. Browning’s poem, The Pied Piper, tells the tale.

L

Lady of Lyons, The.—A drama, by Lord Lytton, in which Pauline Deschappelles, daughter of a Lyonese merchant, rejects the suits of Beauseant, Glavis, and Claude Melnotte, who therefore combined. Claude, who was a gardener’s son, aided by the other two, passed himself off as Prince Como, married Pauline, and brought her home to his mother’s cottage. The proud beauty was very indignant, and Claude left her to join the French army. He became a colonel, and returned to Lyons. He found his father-in-law on the eve of bankruptcy, and that Beauseant had promised to satisfy the creditors if Pauline would consent to marry him. Pauline was heartbroken; Claude revealed himself, paid the money required, and carried home the bride.

Lady of Shalott, The.—A poem by Alfred Tennyson, founded on an incident in King Arthur. It is descriptive of “a being whose existence passes without emotion, without changes, without intelligible motive for living on, without hope or fear, here or hereafter.”

Lady of the Lake, The.—A poem in six cantos by Sir Walter Scott, published in 1810. “Measured even by the standard of the Minstrel and Marmion, the Lady of the Lake possessed,” says Palgrave, “merits of its own, which raised his reputation still higher. Jeffrey’s prediction has been perfectly fulfilled, that the Lady of the Lake would be ‘oftener read than either of the former,’ and it is generally acknowledged to be, in Lockhart’s words, ‘the most interesting, romantic, picturesque, and graceful of his great poems.’” The descriptions of scenery, which form one of the chief charms of the poem, render it, even now, one of the most minute and faithful handbooks to the region in which the drama of Ellen and the Knight of Snowdon is laid.

Lake Poets, The.—Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge, who lived about the lakes of Cumberland.

Lalla Rookh (lal´ä rök).—An oriental romance by Thomas Moore, consisting of four tales in verse, entitled The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Paradise and the Peri, The Fire-Worshipers, and The Light of the Harem, and connected by a short prose narrative, in which it is described how Lalla Rookh, daughter of the Emperor Aurungzebe, journeys toward Bucharia to meet her engaged husband, and how the prince gains her love on the way, in the guise of a Cashmerian minstrel. Lalla Rookh was published in 1817.

L’Allegro (läl-lā´grō).—A descriptive poem by John Milton, probably written during his college life.

L’Amour Médecin (la-mōōr´ mād-saN´) (or, The Love Doctor).—A comedy by Molière, written about the year 1665. Lucinde, the daughter of Sganarelle, is in love, and the father calls in four doctors to consult upon the nature of her malady. They see the patient, and retire to consult together, but talk about Paris, about their visits, about the topics of the day; and when the father enters to know what opinion they have formed, they all prescribe different remedies, and pronounce different opinions. Lisette then calls in a “quack” doctor (Clitandre, the lover), who says he must act on the imagination, and proposes a seeming marriage, to which Sganarelle assents. The assistant being a notary, Clitandre and Lucinde are married.

Lampoon.—A personal satire, often bitter and malignant. These libels, carried to excess in the reign of Charles II., acquired the name of lampoons from the burden sung to them: “Lampone, lampone, camerada lampone.”

Land of Beulah.—The paradise in which souls wait before the resurrection. In Pilgrim’s Progress the land from which the pilgrims enter the Celestial City. The name is found in Isaiah lxii., 4.

Land of Bondage.—Name given to Egypt in the Bible.

Land of Cakes.—A name sometimes given to Scotland, because oatmeal cakes are a common national article of food, particularly among the poorer classes.

Land of Nod.—In common speech sleepy-land or land of dreams.

Land of Promise.—The land promised to Abraham—Canaan.

Land of Shadows.—A place of unreality, sometimes meaning land of ghosts.

Land o’ the Leal.—An unknown land of happiness, loyalty, and virtue. Caroline Oliphant, baroness Nairne, meant heaven in her song and this is now its accepted meaning.

Land of Wisdom.—A name given to Normandy, in France, because of the wise customs which have prevailed there, and also because of the skill and judgment of the people in making laws.

Land of Veda (vē´dä).—Name often given to India.

Landlady’s Daughter.—She rowed Flemming “over the Rhine-stream, rapid and roaring wide,” and told to him the story of the Liebenstein.

Last Days of Pompeii (pom-pā´yē), The.—A novel by Bulwer Lytton, Edward George, Baron Lytton, which was published in 1834. The interest of the book is one of situation and of action rather than of character. The scenes which linger on our memories longest are the noonday excursion on the Campanian seas, the temple of Isis, with its hidden machinery; the funeral pomp and dirge of the murdered Apæcides, Lydon perishing in the unequal struggle; the price which was to have been paid for a father’s liberty; and lastly, the grand catastrophe, a subject which called forth all Lord Lytton’s brilliant powers.

Last of the Mohicans.—The Indian chief Uncas is so called by Cooper in his novel of that title.

Launfal (län´fal), Sir.—Steward of King Arthur. James Russell Lowell has a poem entitled The Vision of Sir Launfal.

Lavaine.—Son of the lord of Astolat, who accompanied Sir Lancelot when he went to tilt for the ninth diamond. Lavaine is described as young, brave, and a true knight. He was brother to Elaine.

Lavinia (la-vin´i-ä) and Palemon.—Lavinia was the daughter of Acasto, patron of Palemon. Through Acasto Palemon gained a fortune and wandered away from his friend. Acasto lost his property, and dying, left a widow and daughter in poverty. Palemon often sought them, but could never find them. One day, a lovely modest maiden came to glean in Palemon’s fields. The young squire was greatly struck with her exceeding beauty and modesty, but she was known as a pauper and he dared not give her more than a passing glance. Upon inquiry he found that the beautiful gleaner was the daughter of Acasto; he proposed marriage, and Lavinia was restored to her rightful place.

Leonato (lē-ō-nä´tō).—Governor of Missina in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. He prematurely accredited the accusations against his daughter, Hero.

Leonine (lē´ō-nīn).—In Shakespeare’s Pericles. Servant to Dionyza. The latter conspired with him to murder Marina, and was saved from the crime only by the intervention of pirates.

Léonore (lā-ō-nōr´).—In Molière’s L’ecole des Maris, sister of Isabelle, an orphan; brought up by Ariste according to his notions of training a girl to make him a good wife. He put her on her honor, tried to win her confidence and love, gave her all the liberty consistent with propriety and social etiquette, and found that she loved him, and made a fond and faithful wife.

Leviathan (lē-vi´a-than) (or, the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil).—A work by Thomas Hobbes, published in 1651. In Leviathan, Hobbes’ peculiar theories in politics received their fullest and ablest expression. They found an illustrious opponent in Lord Clarendon, who, in 1676, published A Brief View and Survey of the Dangerous and Pernicious Errors to Church and State in Mr. Hobbes’ book Entitled Leviathan.

Little Dorrit.—The heroine and title of a novel by Charles Dickens. Little Dorrit was born and brought up in the Marshalsea prison, Bermondsey, where her father was confined for debt; and when about fourteen years of age she used to do needlework, to earn a subsistence for herself and her father. The child had a pale, transparent face; was quick in expression, though not beautiful in feature. Her eyes were a soft hazel, and her figure slight. The little dove of the prison was idolized by the prisoners, and when she walked out, every man in Bermondsey who passed her, touched or took off his hat out of respect to her good works and active benevolence. Her father, coming into a property, was set free at length, and Little Dorrit married Arthur Clennam, the marriage service being celebrated in the Marshalsea, by the prison chaplain.

Little John.—A big, stalwart fellow, named John Little, who encountered Robin Hood, and gave him a sound thrashing, after which he was rechristened, and Robin stood godfather. Little John is introduced by Sir Walter Scott in The Talisman.

Little Nell.—Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens. The prominent character of the story, pure and true, though living in the midst of selfishness and crime. She was brought up by her grandfather, who was in his dotage, and who tried to eke out a narrow living by selling curiosities. At length, through terror of Quilp, the old man and his grandchild stole away, and led a vagrant life.

Lochinvar (lock´in-var).—A young highlander, in the poem of Marmion, was much in love with a lady whose fate was decreed that she should marry a “laggard.” Young Lochinvar persuaded the too-willing lassie to be his partner in a dance; and, while the guests were intent on their amusements, swung her into his saddle and made off with her before the bridegroom could recover from his amazement.

Locksley.—So Robin Hood is sometimes called, from the village in which he was born.

Locksley Hall.—A poem by Tennyson, in which the hero, the lord of Locksley Hall, having been jilted by his cousin Amy for a rich boor, pours forth his feelings in a flood of scorn and indignation. The poem is understood to have been occasioned by a similar incident in the poet’s own life, but this has been questioned.

Lohengrin (lō´hen-grin).—The Knight of the Swan; the hero of a romance by Wolfram von Eschenbach, a German minnesinger of the thirteenth century, and also of a modern musical drama by Richard Wagner. He was the son of Parsival, and came to Brabant in a ship drawn by a white swan, which took him away again when his bride, disobeying his injunction, pressed him to discover his name and parentage.

Lorelei, or Loreley (lō´re-li).—In German poetry and romance, a siren supposed to haunt the Lurlenberg rock on the Rhine, and lure sailors and fisherman to destruction. She is the subject of a beautiful ballad by Heine.

Lorna Doone.—A novel by R. D. Blackmore, published in 1869, the scene of which is laid in Exmoor. The Doones are a family of robbers and freebooters from which Lorna, otherwise Lady Lorna Dugal, is rescued by John Ridd, a young man. Ridd finally broke up the band, drove them from Doone valley, and married Lorna.

Love’s Labor’s Lost.—A comedy by Shakespeare. Ferdinand, king of Navarre, with three lords named Biron, Dumain, and Longaville, agree to spend three years in study, during which time no woman was to approach the court. The compact signed, all went well until the princess of France, attended by Rosaline, Maria, and Katharine, besought an interview respecting certain debts said to be due from the king of France to the king of Navarre. The four gentleman fell in love with the four ladies. The love of the king sought the princess, by right, Biron loved Rosaline, Longaville admired Maria, and Dumain adored Katharine. In order to carry their suits, the four gentlemen, disguised as Muscovites, presented themselves before the ladies; but the ladies, being warned of the masquerade, disguised themselves also, so that the gentlemen in every case addressed the wrong lady. A mutual arrangement was made that the suits should be deferred for twelve months and a day; and if, at the expiration of that time, they remained of the same mind, the matter should be taken into serious consideration.

Lusiad (lū´si-ad), The.—A Portuguese poem by Luiz Camoëns, in 1572. The Lusiad celebrates the chief events in the history of Portugal, and is remarkable as the only modern epic poem which is pervaded by anything approaching the national and popular spirit of ancient epic poems. Bacchus was the guardian power of the Mohammedans, and Venus, or Divine Love, of the Lusians. The fleet first sailed to Mozambique, then to Melinda (in Africa), where the adventurers were hospitably received and provided with a pilot to conduct them to India. In the Indian Ocean, Bacchus tried to destroy the fleet; Venus, however, calmed the sea, and Gama arrived in India in safety. Having accomplished his object, he returned to Lisbon. Among the most famous passages are the tragical story of Inez de Castro, and the apparition of the giant Adamastor, who appears as the spirit of the storm to Vasco da Gama, when crossing the cape. The versification of The Lusiad is extremely charming.

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Mab.—The queen of the fairies, famous in English literature if only on account of the exquisite description of her put into the mouth of Mercutio, in Romeo and Juliet, beginning “O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.”

Macbeth.—One of Shakespeare’s most celebrated tragedies, whose chief characters are Macbeth, king of Scotland, and Lady Macbeth, his murderously ambitious wife. Urged by the latter he kills Duncan, the rightful king, and in turn is himself slain by Macduff. The tale of Macbeth and Banquo was borrowed from the legendary history of Scotland, but the interest of the play is not historical. It is a tragedy of human life, intensely real, the soul, with all its powers for good or evil, deliberately choosing evil. The three witches in the desert place, in thunder, lightning, storm, strike the keynote of evil suggestion. The awfulness of soul destruction is felt in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as in no other of Shakespeare’s dramas.

Macheath, Captain.—A highwayman who is the hero of Gay’s Beggar’s Opera.

Mac-Ivor (mak-ē´vor), Fergus.—Waverley, Scott, Fergus Mac-Ivor is a prominent character in the novel, and his sister, Flora Mac-Ivor, the heroine. They are of the family of a Scottish chieftain.

Macreons, The Island of.—Pantagruel, Rabelais. The title is given to Great Britain, derived from a Greek word meaning long-lived, “because no one is put to death there for his religious opinions.” Rabelais says the island “is full of antique ruins and relics of popery and ancient superstitions.”

Madasima, Queen.—An important character in the old romance called Amadis de Gaul; her constant attendant was Elisabat, a famous surgeon with whom she roamed in solitary retreats.

Madoc (mad´ok).—A poem by Southey, founded on one of the legends connected with the early history of America. Madoc, a Welsh prince of the twelfth century, is represented as making the discovery of the western world. His contests with the Mexicans form the subject.

Maidens’ Castle.—An allegorical castle mentioned in Malory’s History of Prince Arthur. It was taken from a duke by seven knights, and held by them till Sir Galahad expelled them. It was called The Maidens’ Castle because these knights made a vow that every maiden who passed it should be made a captive.

Maid Marian.—A half mythical character, but the name is said to have been assumed by Matilda, daughter of Robert, Lord Fitzwalter, while Robin Hood remained in a state of outlawry. The name is considered the foundation of the word marionettes, from Maid Marian’s connection with the morris dance, or May-day dance, at which she was said to appear.

Maid of Athens.—Made famous by Lord Byron’s song of this title. Twenty-four years after this song was written an Englishman sought out “the Athenian maid,” and found a beggar without a vestige of beauty.

Maid of Saragossa.—Childe Harold, Byron. A young Spanish woman distinguished for her heroism during the defense of Saragossa in 1808-1809. She first attracted notice by mounting a battery where her lover had fallen, and working a gun in his place.

Malade Imaginaire, Le (or, The Imaginary Invalid).—A comedy by Molière. Mons. Argan, who took seven mixtures and twelve lavements in one month instead of twelve mixtures with twenty lavements, as he had hitherto done. “No wonder,” he says, “I am not so well.” He fancies his wife loves him dearly, and that his daughter is undutiful, because she declines to marry a young medical prig instead of Cleante, whom she loves. His brother persuades “the malade” to counterfeit death, in order to test the sincerity of his wife and daughter. The wife rejoices greatly at his death, and proceeds to filch his property, when Argan starts up and puts an end to her pillage. Next comes the daughter’s turn. When she hears of her father’s death, she bewails him with great grief, says she has lost her best friend, and that she will devote her whole life in prayer for the repose of his soul. Argan is delighted, starts up in a frenzy of joy, declares she is a darling, and shall marry the man of her choice freely, and receive a father’s blessing.

Malaprop (mal´a-prop), Mrs.—A character in Sheridan’s Rivals, noted for her blundering use of words.

Malbecco.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. The husband of a young wife, Helinore, and himself a crabbed, jealous old fellow.

Malengrin.—A character in Spenser’s Faërie Queene, who carried a net on his back “to catch fools with.” The name has grown to mean the personification of guile or flattery.

Malepardus.—The castle of Master Reynard, the Fox, in the beast epic of Reynard the Fox.

Malvoisin.—Ivanhoe, Scott. One of the challenging knights at the tournament (Sir Philip de Malvoisin). Sir Albert de Malvoisin was a preceptor of the Knights Templar.

Mambrino (mäm-brē´nō).—Poems, Ariosto, etc. A king of the Moors, who was the possessor of an enchanted golden helmet, which rendered the wearer invulnerable and which was the object of eager quest to the paladins of Charlemagne. This helmet was borne away by the knight Rinaldo. In Don Quixote we are told of a barber who was caught in a shower of rain, and who, to protect his hat, clapped his brazen basin on his head. Don Quixote insisted that this basin was the helmet of the Moorish king; and, taking possession of it, wore it as such.

Managarm.—Prose Edda. The largest and most formidable of the race of giants. He dwells in the Iron-wood, Jamvid. Managarm will first fill himself with the blood of man, and then he will swallow up the moon. This giant symbolizes war, and the iron wood in which he dwells is the wood of spears.

Manfred.—A poem by Byron. Manfred sold himself to the prince of darkness, and received from him seven spirits to do his bidding. They were the spirits of “earth, ocean, air, night, mountains, winds, and the star of his own destiny.” Wholly without human sympathies, the count dwelt in splendid solitude among the Alpine mountains. He loved Astarte, and was visited by her spirit after her death. In spirit form she told Manfred that he would die the following day; and, when asked if she loved him, she signed “Manfred,” and vanished.

Manon l’Escaut (mä-non´ les-kō).—A French novel by A. F. Prévost. Manon is the “fair mischief” of the story. Her charms seduce and ruin the chevalier des Grieux, who marries her. After marriage, the selfish mistress becomes converted into the faithful wife, who follows her husband into disgrace and banishment, and dies by his side in the wilds of America. The object of this novel, like that of La Dame aux Camélias, by Dumas fils, is to show how true hearted, how self-sacrificing, how attractive, a fille de joie may be.

Mantalini (man-ta-lē´nē).—Nicholas Nickleby, Dickens. The husband of madame; he is a man doll, noted for his white teeth, his oaths, and his gorgeous morning gown. This “exquisite” lives on his wife’s earnings, and thinks he confers a favor on her by spending. Madame Mantalini is represented as a fashionable dressmaker near Cavendish Square, London.

Marble Faun, The.—A romance by Hawthorne, published in 1860. The English edition, published in the same year, is called Transformation, or the Romance of Monte Beni. See Donatello. The sole idea of the Marble Faun is to illustrate the intellectually and morally awakening power of a sudden impulsive sin, committed by a simple, joyous, instinctive, “natural” man. The whole group of characters is imagined solely with a view to the development of this idea.

Marcellus (mär-sel´us).—Hamlet, Shakespeare. An officer of Denmark, to whom the ghost of the murdered king appeared before it presented itself to Prince Hamlet.

Marchioness, The.—Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens. A half-starved maid-of-all-work, in the service of Sampson Brass and his sister Sally. She was so lonesome and dull that it afforded her relief to peep at Mr. Swiveller even through the keyhole of his door. Mr. Swiveller called her the “marchioness,” when she played cards with him, “because it seemed more real and pleasant” to play with a marchioness than with a domestic. While enjoying these games they made the well known “orange peel wine.”

Mariana (mä-rē-ä´nä).—In Tennyson’s poem The Moated Grange, a young damsel, who sits in the moated grange, looking out for her lover, who never comes. (2) In Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure Mariana is a lovely and lovable lady, betrothed to Angelo, who, during the absence of Vincentio, the duke of Vienna, acted as his lord deputy. Her pleadings to the duke for Angelo are wholly unrivaled.

Martin’s Summer, St.—Halcyon days; a time of prosperity; fine weather. Mentioned by Shakespeare in Henry VI., etc.

Masora.—A critical work or canon, whereby is fixed and ascertained the reading of the text of the Hebrew version of the Bible.

Mauth Dog.—Lay of the Last Minstrel, Scott. A black specter spaniel that haunted the guard room of Peeltown in the Isle of Man. A drunken trooper entered the guard room while the dog was there, but lost his speech, and died within three days.

Mazeppa (mä-zep´ä).—A poem by Byron. Mazeppa was a Cossack of noble family who became a page in the court of the king of Poland, and while in this capacity intrigued with Theresia, the young wife of a count, who discovered the amour, and had the young page lashed to a wild horse, and turned adrift.

McFingal.—The hero of Trumbull’s political poem of the same name; represented as a burly New England squire, enlisted on the side of the Tory part of the American revolution, and constantly engaged in controversy with Honorius, the champion of the Whigs.

Measure for Measure.—A comedy by Shakespeare. There was a law in Vienna that made it death for a man to live with a woman not his wife; but the law was so little enforced that the mothers of Vienna complained to the duke of its neglect. So the duke deputed Angelo to enforce it; and, assuming the dress of a friar, absented himself awhile, to watch the result. Scarcely was the duke gone, when Claudio was sentenced to death for violating the law. His sister Isabel went to intercede on his behalf, and Angelo told her he would spare her brother if she would become his Phryne. Isabel told her brother he must prepare to die, as the conditions proposed by Angelo were out of the question. The duke, disguised as a friar, heard the whole story, and persuaded Isabel to “assent in words,” but to send Mariana (the divorced wife of Angelo) to take her place. This was done; but Angelo sent the provost to behead Claudio, a crime which “the friar” contrived to avert. Next day the duke returned to the city, and Isabel told her tale. Finally the duke married Isabel, Angelo took back his wife, and Claudio married Juliet.

Medea (mē-dē´ä).—A play by Euripides. The Medea came out in 431 B. C. along with the poet’s Philoctetes, Dictys, and the satiric Reapers (the last was early lost). It was based upon a play of Neophron’s, and only obtained the third prize, Euphorion being first, and Sophocles second. It may accordingly be regarded as a failure in its day—an opinion apparently confirmed by the faults (viz., Ægeus and the winged chariot) selected from it as specimens in Aristotle’s Poetica. There is considerable evidence of there being a second edition of the play, and many of the variants, or so-called interpolations, seem to arise from both versions being preserved and confused. Nevertheless, there was no play of Euripides more praised and imitated.

Médecine Malgré Lui, Le (mād-saN´ mal-grā´lwē lu), (or, The Doctor in Spite of Himself).—A comedy by Molière. The “enforced doctor” is Sganarelle, a fagot maker, who is called in by Géronte to cure his daughter of dumbness. Sganarelle soon perceives that the malady is assumed in order to prevent a hateful marriage, and introduces her lover as an apothecary. The dumb spirit is at once exorcized, and the lovers made happy with “pills matrimonial.”

In 1733 Fielding produced a farce called The Mock Doctor, which was based on this comedy. The doctor he calls “Gregory,” and Géronte “Sir Jasper.” Lucinde, the dumb girl, he calls “Charlotta;” and Anglicizes her lover’s name, Léandre, into “Leander.”

Meg Merrilies (mer´i-lēz).—A prominent character in Scott’s Guy Mannering, a half-crazy gypsy or sibyl.

Meistersingers (mīs´ter-sing-ers).—In Germany an association of master tradesmen, to revive the national minstrelsy, which had fallen into decay with the decline of the minnesingers or love minstrels (1350-1523). Their subjects were chiefly moral or religious, and constructed according to rigid rules.

Melissa (me-lis´ä).—Orlando Furioso, Ariosto. The prophetess who lived in Merlin’s cave. Bradamante gave her the enchanted ring to take to Rogero; so, assuming the form of Atlantes, she not only delivered Rogero but disenchanted all the forms metamorphosed in the island where he was captive.

Melnotte, Claude.—Lady of Lyons, Bulwer. The son of a gardener in love with Pauline, “the Beauty of Lyons,” but treated by her with contempt. Beauseant and Glavis, two other rejected suitors, conspired with him to humble her.

Merchant of Venice.—A comedy by Shakespeare. Antonio the merchant, signs a bond in order to borrow money from Shylock, a Jew, for Bassanio, the lover of Portia. If the loan was repaid within three months, only the principal would be required; if not, the Jew should be at liberty to claim a pound of flesh from Antonio’s body. The ships of Antonio being delayed by contrary winds, the merchant was unable to meet his bill, and the Jew claimed the forfeiture. Portia, in the dress of a law doctor, conducted the defense, and saved Antonio by reminding the Jew that a pound of flesh gave him no drop of blood.

Merlin.—The name of an ancient Welsh prophet and enchanter. He is often alluded to by the older poets, especially Spenser, in his Faërie Queene, and also figures in Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. In the History of Prince Arthur by Malory, Merlin is the prince of enchanters and of a supernatural origin. He is said to have built the Round Table and to have brought from Ireland the stones of Stonehenge.

Merlin’s Cave.—In Dynevor, near Carmarthen, noted for its ghastly noises of rattling iron chains, groans, and strokes of hammers. The cause is said to be this: Merlin set his spirits to fabricate a brazen wall to encompass the city of Carmarthen, and, as he had to call on the Lady of the Lake, bade them not slacken their labor till he returned; but he never did return, for Vivian held him prisoner by her wiles.

Merry Wives of Windsor, The.—A comedy by Shakespeare. It is said that Queen Elizabeth was so pleased with the Falstaff of Henry IV. that she commanded Shakespeare to show how he conducted himself when in love. For the plot he was probably but little indebted to other writers. The Two Lovers of Pisa from Straparola, in Tarleton’s News Out of Purgatory, and a story from Il Pecorone which suggests the hiding of Falstaff in the soiled linen, may possibly have suggested some of the incidents. John Dennis wrote a play, The Comical Gallant, or the Amours of Sir John Falstaff, in 1702, in which The Merry Wives may be recognized.

Messiah (me-sī´ä), The.—An epic poem in fifteen books, by F. G. Klopstock. The subject is the last days of Jesus, his crucifixion and resurrection.

Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life.—A novel, by George Eliot, published in 1872, and characterized by The Quarterly Review “as the most remarkable work of the ablest of living novelists, and, considered as a study of character, unique.” The heroine is Dorothea Brooke, first married to Mr. Casaubon, afterward to Will Ladislaw. Among the other characters are Mr. Lydgate, Rosamond Vincy, Mary Garth, and Mrs. Cadwallader.

Midlothian, or Mid-Lothian (mid-lō´THi-an), The Heart of.—A tale by Scott, of the Porteous riot, in which the incidents of Effie and Jeanie Deans are of absorbing interest. Effie was seduced by Geordie Robertson (alias George Staunton), while in the service of Mrs. Saddletree. She murdered her infant, and was condemned to death; but her half sister Jeanie went to London, pleaded her cause before the queen, and obtained her pardon. Jeanie, on her return to Scotland, married Reuben Butler; and Geordie Robertson (then Sir George Staunton) married Effie. Sir George being shot by a gypsy boy, Effie (i. e., Lady Staunton) retired to a convent on the continent.

Midsummer Night’s Dream.—A comedy by Shakespeare. The author says there was a law in Athens that if a daughter refused to marry the husband selected for her by her father, she might be put to death. Ægeus, an Athenian, promised to give his daughter Hermia in marriage to Demetrius; but, as the lady loved Lysander, she refused to marry the man selected by her father, and fled from Athens with her lover. Demetrius went in pursuit of her, followed by Helena, who doted on him. All four came to a forest, and fell asleep. In their dreams a vision of fairies passed before them, and, on awaking, Demetrius resolved to forego Hermia, who disliked him, and to take to wife Helena, who sincerely loved him. When Ægeus was informed thereof, he readily agreed to give his daughter to Lysander, and the force of the law was not called into action (1592).

Mildendo.—Gulliver’s Travels, Swift. The metropolis of Lilliput, the wall of which was two feet and a half in height, and at least eleven inches thick. The emperor’s palace, called Belfaborac, was in the center of the city.

Miles Standish (or, Courtship of Miles Standish).—A poem by H. W. Longfellow. From this poem the robust figures of the Puritan captain in his haps and mishaps, and of John Alden and Priscilla, are now part of our national treasures.

Miller, Daisy.—Title and heroine of a story by Henry James. An American girl traveling in Europe, where her innocence, ignorance, and disregard of European customs and standards of propriety put her in compromising situations, and frequently expose her conduct to misconstruction.

Mill on the Floss.—A novel by George Eliot, published in 1860. There is a simplicity about The Mill on the Floss which reminds us of the classic tragedy. The vast power of nature over the career and fate of a family is figured forth in the river, beside which the child Maggie played, filling her mother’s heart with gloomy and not unveracious presentiments, and down which she passed with Stephen in her hour of temptation, with Tom in her last moments; the whole strength of association and of the ties and instinct of blood breaking in at every critical point in the story, like the voice of a Greek chorus, full of traditionary warning and stern common sense, but speaking in the dialect of English rusticity, and by the mouths of Mr. Tulliver and his wife’s relations.

Minna von Barnhelm (min´ä fon bärn´helm).—A comedy by Lessing, published in 1767. It is the first German national drama which deals with contemporary events.

Minnehaha (min-e-hä´hä).—Hiawatha, Henry W. Longfellow. The daughter of the arrow maker of Dacotah, and wife of Hiawatha. She was called Minnehaha from the waterfall of that name.

Minnesingers (min´e-sing-erz).—A name given to the German lyric poets of the middle ages, on account of love being the principal theme of their lays, the German word “minne” being used to denote a pure and faithful love.

Miranda.—The Tempest, Shakespeare. The daughter of Prospero, the exiled duke of Milan, and niece of Antonio, the usurping duke. She is brought up on a desert island, with Ariel, the fairy spirit, and Caliban, the monster, as her only companions.

Miriam.—A beautiful and mysterious woman in Hawthorne’s romance The Marble Faun, for love of whom Donatello commits murder, thus becoming her partner in crime.

Misanthrope, Le (mi-zäN-trop´, lu).—A comedy by Molière, produced in 1666. This play is an almost inexhaustible source of allusions, quotations, proverbial sayings, etc. Its principal interest lies in the development of various pairs of opposing characters in even their lightest shades. It is the ideal of classic comedy. Alceste, the impatient, but not cynical, hero. Célimène the coquette, Oronte the fop, Éliante the reasonable woman, Arsinœ the mischief maker, are all immortal types.

Misérables, Les [(mi-zā-rabl´, lâ); or, The Unfortunates.]—A novel by Victor Hugo, in five parts: Fantine, Cosette, Marius, L’Idylle Rue Plumet, and Jean Valjean. It was published in 1862.

Morte d’Arthur (môrt där´ther).—(1) Compilation of Arthurian tales, called on the title page The History of Prince Arthur, compiled from the French by Sir Thomas Malory, and printed by William Caxton in 1470. It is divided into three parts. The first part contains the birth of King Arthur, the establishment of the Round Table, the romance of Balin and Balan, and the beautiful allegory of Gareth and Linet. The second part is mainly the romance of Sir Tristram. The third part is the romance of Sir Launcelot, the quest of the holy grail, and the death of Arthur, Guinevere, Tristram, Lamorake, and Launcelot.

(2) An idyll by Tennyson, called The Passing of Arthur, in the Idylls of the King. The poet supposes Arthur (wounded in the great battle of the west) to be borne off the field by Sir Bedivere. The wounded monarch directed Sir Bedivere to cast Excalibur into the mere. Sir Bedivere then carried the dying king to a barge, in which were three queens, who conveyed him to the island valley of Avilion.

Mualox.—The Fair God, Lew Wallace. The old paba or prophet who assured Nenetzin that she was to be the future queen in her father’s palace.

Much Ado About Nothing.—A comedy by Shakespeare. It was first printed in 1600. The play was known as Benedict and Bettris in 1613, and is probably the same as Love’s Labor’s Won. The story of Hero is taken with some variations from one of Bandello’s tales, which probably was borrowed from the story of Geneura and Ariodantes in the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto. This part of the play, however, is subordinated by Shakespeare to the loves of Benedict and Beatrice.

Mucklebacket.—The Antiquary, Scott. Name of a conspicuous family, consisting of Saunders Mucklebacket, the old fisherman of Musselcrag; Old Elspeth, mother of Saunders; Maggie, wife of Saunders; Steenie, the eldest son, who was drowned; Little Jennie, Saunders’ child.

Mumblecrust, Madge.—A character in Edall’s Ralph Roister Doister, whose name was subsequently employed in Dekker’s Satiro-Mastix, and the comedy of Patient Grissel. Madge is mentioned in the MS. comedy of Misogonus.

Münchausen (münch´hou-zen), The Baron.—A hero of most marvelous adventures, and the fictitious author of a book of travels filled with most extravagant tales. The name is said to refer to Hieronymus Karl Friedrich von Münchausen, a German officer in the Russian army, noted for his marvelous stories.

Mutual Friend, Our.—A novel by Charles Dickens. The “mutual friend” is Mr. Boffin, the golden dustman, who was the mutual friend of John Harmon and of Bella Wilfer. The tale is this: John Harmon was supposed to have been murdered by Julius Handford; but it was Ratford, who was murdered by Rogue Riderhood, and the mistake arose from a resemblance between the two persons. By his father’s will, John Harmon was to marry Bella Wilfer; but John Harmon knew not the person destined by his father for his wife, and made up his mind to dislike her. After his supposed murder, he assumed the name of John Rokesmith, and became the secretary of Mr. Boffin, “the golden dustman,” residuary legatee of old John Harmon, by which he became possessor of one hundred thousand dollars. Boffin knew Rokesmith, but concealed his knowledge for a time. At Boffin’s house John Harmon (as Rokesmith) met Bella Wilfer, and fell in love with her. Mr. Boffin, in order to test Bella’s love, pretended to be angry with Rokesmith for presuming to love Bella; and, as Bella married him, he cast them both off “for a time,” to live on John’s earnings. A babe was born, and then the husband took the young mother to a beautiful house, and told her he was John Harmon, that the house was their house, that he was the possessor of five hundred thousand dollars through the disinterested conduct of their “mutual friend,” Mr. Boffin, and the young couple live happily with Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, in wealth and luxury.

My Novel.—A work of fiction by Edward, Lord Lytton, published in 1853. It is described as the “great work which marks the culminating point in Lord Lytton’s genius, the work to which, with a rare estimate of his own powers, he has given the singularly appropriate title of My Novel.... If we except one or two melodramatic scenes, it is throughout an admirable work.... The plot is complex, but it is unfolded with marvelous directness and ingenuity, and, notwithstanding the digressions, the interest never for a moment flags.” Among the characters are Squire Hazeldean, Mr. Dale, Dick Avenel, Leonard Fairfield, and Harley L’Estrange.

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Nathan the Wise [Nathan der Wise (nä´tän der vī´ze).]—A drama by G. E. Lessing, so called from the name of its principal character. Its tendency is toward religious tolerance, especially in the episode of the three rings, which was taken from Boccaccio. Nathan is a persecuted but noble Jew, an ideal character resembling Moses Mendelssohn.

Natty Bumppo.—Called “Leather-Stocking.” He appears in five of Cooper’s novels: (1) The Deerslayer; (2) The Pathfinder; (3) As “Hawk-eye” in The Last of the Mohicans; (4) “Natty Bumppo” in The Pioneers; and (5) as the “Trapper” in The Prairie, in which he dies.

Neæra (nē-ē´rä).—The name of a girl mentioned by the Latin poets Horace, Vergil, and Tibullus; sometimes also introduced into modern pastoral poetry as the name of a mistress or sweetheart.

Nepenthe.—A care-dispelling drug, which Polydamna, wife of Thonis, king of Egypt, gave to Helen. A drink containing this drug “changed grief to mirth, melancholy to joyfulness, and hatred to love.” The water of Ardenne had the opposite effects. Homer mentions this drug nepenthe in his Odyssey. It is also mentioned in Poe’s Raven.

New Atlantis, The.—An imaginary island in the middle of the Atlantic. Bacon, in his allegorical fiction, so called, supposes himself wrecked on this island, where he finds an association for the cultivation of natural science and the promotion of arts. Called the “New” Atlantis to distinguish it from Plato’s Atlantis, an imaginary island of fabulous charms.

Newcomes, The.—Memoirs of a Most Respectable Family, by William Makepeace Thackeray. The hero is Clive Newcome, a young artist, son of Colonel Newcome, and cousin of Ethel Newcome, whom he marries after the death of his first wife, Rosa Mackenzie. Among the other characters are Comte de Florac, Charles Honeyman, “J. J.,” Fred Bayham, Lady Kew, Jack Belsize, Dr. Goodenough, and others.

Colonel Newcome, is “the finest portrait,” says Hannay, “that has been added to the gallery of English fiction since Sir Walter’s time. The pathos, at once manly and delicate, with which his ruin and death are treated, places Thackeray in a high rank in poetic sentiment.”

Nibelungenlied (nē´be-loong-en-lēd).—An historic poem, generally called the German Iliad. It is the only great national epic that European writers have produced since antiquity, and belongs to every country that has been peopled by Germanic tribes, as it includes the hero traditions of the Franks, the Burgundians and the Goths, with memorials of the ancient myths carried with them from Asia. The poem is divided into two parts, and thirty-two lieds, or cantos. The first part ends with the death of Siegfried, and the second part with the death of Kriemhild. The death of Siegfried and the revenge of Kriemhild have been celebrated in popular songs dating back to the lyric chants now a thousand years old. These are the foundation of the great poem.

Nicholas Nickleby.—A novel by Dickens. The mother of the hero, Nicholas, is a widow fond of talking and of telling long stories with no connection. She imagined her neighbor, a mildly insane man, was in love with her because he tossed cabbages and other articles over the garden wall. She had a habit of introducing in conversation topics wholly irrelevant to the subject under consideration, and of always declaring, when anything unanticipated occurred, that she had expected it all along, and had prophesied to that precise effect on divers (unknown) occasions. Nicholas Nickleby has to make his own way in the world. He first goes as usher to Mr. Squeers, schoolmaster at Dotheboys Hall; but leaves in disgust with the tyranny of Squeers and his wife, especially to a poor boy named Smike. Smike runs away from the school to follow Nicholas, and remains his humble follower till death. At Portsmouth, Nicholas joins the theatrical company of Mr. Crummles, but leaves the profession for other adventures. He falls in with the Brothers Cheeryble, who make him their clerk; and in this post he rises to become a merchant, and finally marries Madeline Bray.

Nightingale, Ode to a.—Poem by John Keats, which “was written,” says Leigh Hunt, “in a house at the foot of Highgate Hill, on the border of the fields looking toward Hampstead. The poet had then his mortal illness upon him, and knew it; never was the voice of death sweeter.”

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown;
Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faëry lands forlorn.

Notre Dame de Paris.—A prose romance by Victor Hugo, published in 1831. The scene is laid in Paris at the end of the reign of Louis XI. It is a vigorous but somber picture of mediæval manners.

Nourmahal (nör-ma-häl´).—Lalla Rookh, Moore. “Light of the Harem.” She was for a season estranged from the sultan, till he gave a grand banquet, at which she appeared in disguise as a lute-player and singer. The sultan was so enchanted with her performance that he exclaimed, “If Nourmahal had so played and sung, I could forgive her all;” whereupon the sultana threw off her mask.

Nucta.—Paradise and the Peri, Moore. The name given to the miraculous drop which falls from heaven, in Egypt, on St. John’s day, and is supposed to stop the plague.

Nun of Nidaros.—Tales of a Wayside Inn, Longfellow. The abbess of the Drontheim convent, who heard the voice of St. John while she was kneeling at her midnight devotions.

Nut-Brown Maid.—Reliques, Percy. The maid who was wooed by the “banished man.” The “banished man” described to her the hardships she would have to undergo if she married him; but finding that she accounted these hardships as nothing compared with his love, he revealed himself to be an earl’s son, with large hereditary estates in Westmoreland, and married her.

O

Obermann (ō-ber-män´).—The impersonation of high moral worth without talent, and the tortures endured by the consciousness of this defect. This name was given to the hero and imaginary author of a work of the same name by Etienne Pivert de Senancourt, a French writer.

Oberon (ō´be-ron).—King of the fairies, whose wife was Titania. Shakespeare introduces both Oberon and Titania in his Midsummer Night’s Dream. He and Titania, his queen, are fabled to have lived in India, and to have crossed the seas to northern Europe to dance by the light of the moon.

Oberon the Fay.—A humpty dwarf only three feet high, but of angelic face, lord and king of Mommur.

Odyssey (od´i-si).—Homer’s epic poem recording the adventures of Odysseus (Ulysses) in his voyage home from Troy. The poem opens in the island of Calypso, with a complaint against Neptune and Calypso for preventing the return of Odysseus to Ithaca. Telemachos, the son of Odysseus, starts in search of his father, accompanied by Pallas in the guise of Mentor. He goes to Pylos to consult old Nestor, and is sent by him to Sparta, where he is told by Menelaus that Odysseus is detained in the island of Calypso. In the meantime, Odysseus leaves the island, and, being shipwrecked, is cast on the shore of Phæacia. After twenty years’ absence Odysseus returns to his home. Penelope is tormented by suitors. To excuse herself, Penelope tells her suitors he only shall be her husband who can bend Odysseus’ bow. None can do so but the stranger, who bends it with ease. Odysseus is recognized by his wife, and the false suitors are all slain, and peace is restored to Ithaca.

Œdipus (ed´i-pus) Coloneus [(kō-lō-nē´us); or, Œdipus at Colonus (kō-lō´nus)].—A tragedy of Sophocles, which was not exhibited till four years after his death, and was said to be the last he wrote. In it Œdipus, driven from Thebes by Creon, with his daughters, Antigone and Ismene, seeks asylum with Theseus at Athens, and there obtains pardon from the gods, and peace.

Œdipus Tyrannus (ti-ran´us).—A tragedy by Sophocles, of uncertain date, “placed by the scholiasts, and by most modern critics, at the very summit of Greek tragic art.”

Ogier (ō-zhyā´) the Dane.—One of the paladins of the Charlemagne epoch. Also made the hero of an ancient French romance, and the subject of a ballad whose story is probably a contribution from the stores of Norman tradition, Holger, or Olger, Danske, being the national hero of Denmark. He figures in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.

O’Groat.—A name often alluded to in early English parables or sayings coming from the legend of John O’Groat’s House. This ancient building was supposed to stand on the most northerly point in Great Britain. John of Groat and his brothers were originally from Holland. According to tradition, the house was of an octagonal shape, being one room with eight windows and eight doors, to admit eight members of the family, the heads of eight different branches of it, to prevent their quarrels for precedence at table, which, on a previous occasion, had well-nigh proved fatal.

Oldbuck, Jonathan.—Antiquary, Scott. The character whose whimsies gave name to the novel. He is represented as devoted to the study and accumulation of old coins, medals, and relics. He is irritable, sarcastic, and cynical from an early disappointment in love, but full of humor and a faithful friend.

Old Curiosity Shop, The.—A tale by Charles Dickens. An old man, having run through his fortune, opened a curiosity shop in order to earn a living and brought up a granddaughter, named Nell [Trent], fourteen years of age. The child was the darling of the old man, but, deluding himself with the hope of making a fortune by gaming, he lost everything, and went forth, with the child, a beggar. Their wanderings and adventures are recounted till they reach a quiet country village, where the old clergyman gives them a cottage to live in. Here Nell soon dies, and the grandfather is found dead upon her grave. The main character, next to Nell, is that of a lad named Kit [Nubbles], employed in the curiosity shop, who adored Nell as “an angel.” This boy gets in the service of Mr. Garland, a genial, benevolent, well-to-do man, in the suburbs of London; but Quilp hates the lad, and induces Brass, a solicitor of Bevis Marks, to put a five pound banknote in the boy’s hat, and then accuse him of theft. Kit is tried, and condemned to transportation; but, the villainy being exposed by a girl-of-all-work nicknamed “The Marchioness,” Kit is liberated and restored to his place, and Quilp drowns himself.

Old Man of the Sea.—In the Arabian Nights, a monster encountered by Sindbad the sailor in his fifth voyage. After carrying him upon his shoulders a long time, Sindbad at last succeeds in intoxicating him, and effects his escape. The Old Man of the Sea was also made the title of a humorous and well-known poem by O. W. Holmes.

Old Mortality, the best of Scott’s historical novels. Morton is the best of his young heroes, and serves as an excellent foil to the fanatical and gloomy Burley. The two classes of actors, viz., the brave and dissolute cavaliers, and the resolute oppressed covenanters, are drawn in bold relief. The most striking incidents are the terrible encounter with Burley in his rocky fastness; the dejection and anxiety of Morton on his return from Holland; and the rural comfort of Cuddie Headrigg’s cottage on the banks of the Clyde, with its thin blue smoke among the trees, “showing that the evening meal was being made ready.” Old Mortality is an itinerant antiquary, whose craze is to clean the moss from gravestones, and keep their letters and effigies in good condition.

Old Red Sandstone.—One of the most noted of Hugh Miller’s famous writings on geological subjects. It revealed his discovery of fossils in a formation which, up to that time, had been deemed almost destitute of them.

Oliver.—As You Like It, Shakespeare. Son and heir of Sir Rowland de Bois, who hated his youngest brother, Orlando, and whom he planned to murder by indirect methods. Orlando, finding it impossible to live in his brother’s house, fled to the forest of Arden, where he joined the society of the banished duke. Oliver pursued him, and as he slept in the forest a snake and a lioness lurked near to make him their prey. Orlando chanced to be passing, slew the two monsters, and then found that the sleeper was his brother Oliver. Oliver’s feelings underwent a change, and he loved his brother as much as he had before hated him. In the forest the two brothers met Rosalind and Celia. The former, who was the daughter of the banished duke, married Orlando; and the latter, who was the daughter of Frederick, the usurping duke, married Oliver.

Oliver Twist.—A novel by Charles Dickens. Thackeray, writing of this novel, in the character of “Ikey Solomons,” says: “The power of the writer is so amazing that the reader at once becomes his captive, and must follow him whithersoever he leads: and to what are we led? Breathless to watch all the crimes of Fagin, tenderly to deplore the errors of Nancy, to have for Bill Sikes a kind of pity and admiration, and an absolute love for the society of the Dodger. All these heroes stepped from the novel on to the stage; and the whole London public, from peers to chimney sweeps, were interested about a set of ruffians whose occupations are thievery, murder, and prostitution.” A remarkable feature of the work, and one which, on its publication, brought considerable odium on the writer, was its unsparing exposure of the poor-law and the workhouse system, which led to its representation on the stage being forbidden for a time.

Olivia.—Twelfth Night, Shakespeare. A rich countess, whose love was sought by Orsino, duke of Illyria; but, having lost her brother, Olivia lived for a time in entire seclusion, and in no wise reciprocated the duke’s love. Olivia fell in love with Viola, who was dressed as the duke’s page, and sent her a ring. Mistaking Sebastian (Viola’s brother) for Viola, she married him out of hand.

Ophelia (ō-fē´liä).—Hamlet, Shakespeare. Daughter of Polonius, the chamberlain. Hamlet fell in love with her, but, after his interview with the Ghost, finds that his plans must lead away from her. During his real or assumed madness, he treats her with undeserved and angry rudeness, and afterward, in a fit of inconsiderate rashness, kills her father, the old Polonius. The terrible shock given to her mind by these events completely shatters her intellect, and leads to her accidental death by drowning.

Organon (ôr´ga-non).—The name given to the first work on logic by Aristotle. He is said to have created the science of logic. The Organon has been enlarged and recast by some modern authors, especially by Mr. John Stuart Mill in his System of Logic, into a structure commensurate with the vast increase of knowledge and extension of positive method belonging to the present day.

Origin of Species, The.—A work by Charles Robert Darwin, in which he put forward his theory of “natural selection.” It was published in 1859, and by many is regarded as the most important scientific work of the nineteenth century.

Orlando Furioso (or-län´dō fö-rē-ō´sō).—An epic poem in forty-six cantos, by Ariosto, which occupied his leisure for eleven years, and was published in 1516. This poem, which celebrates the semi-mythical achievements of the paladins of Charlemagne in the wars between the Christians and the Moors, became immediately popular, and has since been translated into all European languages, and passed through innumerable editions.

Ormulum (ôr´mū-lum).—The Ormulum is a collection of metrical homilies, one for each day of the year; but the single existing copy gives the homilies for thirty-two days only. There are very few French words in the poem, but Scandinavian words and constructions abound. The writer, Orm, or Ormin, belonged to the east of England, and he and his brother Walter were Augustinian monks. He makes no use of rhyme, but his verses are smooth and regular.

Osbaldistone (os-bâl´dis-ton).—Rob Roy, Scott. A family name in the story which tells of nine of the members: (1) the London merchant and Sir Hildebrand, the heads of two families; (2) the son of the merchant is Francis; (3) the offspring of the brother are Percival, the sot; Thorncliffe, the bully; John, the gamekeeper; Richard, the horse-jockey; Wilfred, the fool; and Rashleigh, the scholar, by far the worst of all. This last worthy is slain by Rob Roy, and dies cursing his cousin Frank, whom he had injured.

O’Shanter.—See Tam O’Shanter.

Osman (os-män´).—Sultan of the East, conqueror of the Christians, a magnanimous man. He loved Yara, a young Christian captive. This forms the subject of a once famous ballad.

Osrick (oz´rik).—A court fop in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He is made umpire by Claudius in the combat between Hamlet and Laertes.

Osseo.—Hiawatha, Longfellow. Son of the Evening Star. When broken with age, he married Oweenee, one of ten daughters of a northland hunter. She loved him in spite of his ugliness and decrepitude, because “all was beautiful within him.” As he was walking with his nine sisters-in-law and their husbands, he leaped into the hollow of an oak tree and came out strong and handsome; but Oweenee at the same moment was changed into a weak old woman. But the love of Osseo was not weakened. The nine brothers and sisters-in-law were transformed into birds. Oweenee, recovering her beauty, had a son, whose delight was to shoot the birds that mocked his father and mother. An Algonquin legend gave the foundation of the story.

Othello (ō-thel´ō).—A tragedy by Shakespeare. The chief character is a Moor of Venice, who marries Desdemona, the daughter of a Venetian senator, and is led by his ensign, Iago, a consummate villain, to distrust her fidelity and virtue. Iago hated the Moor both because Cassio, a Florentine, was preferred to the lieutenancy instead of himself, and also from a suspicion that the Moor had tampered with his wife; but he concealed his hatred so well that Othello wholly trusted him. Iago persuaded Othello that Desdemona intrigued with Cassio, and urged him on till he murdered his bride.

Outre-Mer (ōōtr-mèr).—A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea.—A series of prose tales and sketches by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, published in 1835. “The Pays d’Outre-Mer,” says the writer, “is a name by which the pilgrims and crusaders of old designated the Holy Land. I, too, in a certain sense, have been a pilgrim of Outre-Mer; for to my youthful imagination the Old World was a kind of Holy Land, lying afar off beyond the blue horizon of the ocean. In this, my pilgrimage, I have traversed France from Normandy to Navarre; smoked my pipe in a Flemish inn; floated through Holland in a Trekschuit; trimmed my midnight lamp in a German university; wandered and mused amid the classic scenes of Italy; and listened to the gay guitar and merry castanet on the borders of the blue Guadalquivir.”

P

Pacolet (pak´ō-let).—In Valentine and Orson, an old romance, a character who owned an enchanted steed, often alluded to by early writers. The name of Pacolet was borrowed by Steele for his familiar spirit in the Tatler. The French have a proverb, “It is the horse of Pacolet;” that is, it is one that goes very fast.

Page.—Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare. Name of a family of Windsor, conspicuous in the play. When Sir John Falstaff made love to Mrs. Page, Page himself assumed the name of Brook. Sir John told the supposed Brook his whole “course of wooing.”

Page, Anne.—Daughter of the above, in love with Fenton. Slender calls her “the sweet Anne Page.”

Page, Mrs.—Wife of Mr. Page, of Windsor. When Sir John Falstaff made love to her, she joined with Mrs. Ford to dupe him and punish him.

Palamon.—(1) A character in The Knight’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, in love with Emilia, who is also beloved by Palamon’s friend, Arcite. (2) In Falconer’s poem of The Shipwreck, is in love with the daughter of Albert, the commander of the vessel in which he sails. (3) In Thomson’s poem of Autumn in The Seasons, is a young man, “the pride of swains,” in love with Lavinia. He is a poetical representation of Boaz, while Lavinia is intended for Ruth.

Pangloss (pan´glos), Doctor.—(1) A poor pedant, in Colman the Younger’s comedy of the Heir at Law, who has been created an Artium Societatis Socius (A. S. S.). He is remarkable for the aptness, if triteness, of his quotations. (2) An optimist philosopher in Voltaire’s Candide.

Pantagruelian (pan-tag´rö-el-an) Law Case.—Pantagruel, Rabelais. This case, having nonplused all the judges in Paris, was referred to Lord Pantagruel for decision. After much “statement” the bench declared, “We have not understood one single circumstances of the defense.” Then Pantagruel gave sentence, but his judgment was as unintelligible as the case itself. So, as no one understood a single sentence of the whole affair, all were perfectly satisfied.

Paracelsus (par-a-sel´sus).—A dramatic poem by Robert Browning, published in 1835. It is a work of singular beauty, and is replete with lofty and solemn thoughts on the fate of genius and the chance and change of life. The Paracelsus of the poem is a very different person from the Paracelsus of history—the brilliant and daring quack who professed to have discovered the philosopher’s stone, but who, by the introduction of opium among the remedies of the Pharmacopæia, in some wise made amends for his absurd extravagance.

Paradise and the Peri.—The second tale in Moore’s poetical romance of Lalla Rookh. The Peri laments her expulsion from heaven, and is told that she will be readmitted if she will bring to the gate of heaven the “gift most dear to the Almighty.” After several failures the Peri offered the “Repentant Tear,” and the gates flew open to receive the gift.

Paradise Lost.—An epic poem by Milton. The poem opens with the awaking of the rebel angels in hell after their fall from heaven, the consultation of their chiefs how best to carry on the war with God, and the resolve of Satan to go forth and tempt newly created man to fall. Satan reaches Eden, and finds Adam and Eve in their innocence. This is told in the first four books. The next four books contain the Archangel Raphael’s story of the war in heaven, the fall of Satan, and the creation of the world. The last four books describe the temptation and the fall of man, and tell of the redemption of man by Christ, and the expulsion from Paradise.

Paradise Regained.—An epic by Milton on the redemption of man. In this poem the author tells of the journey of Christ into the wilderness after his baptism, and its four books describe the temptation of Christ by Satan.

Parallel Lives of Greeks and Romans.—A celebrated biographical work by Plutarch, consisting of forty-six comparisons. In spite of all exceptions on the score of inaccuracy, want of information, or prejudice, Plutarch’s Lives must remain one of the most valuable relics of Greek literature, not only because they stand in the place of many volumes of lost history, but also because they are written with a graphic and dramatic vivacity such as we find in few biographies, ancient or modern; because they are replete with reflections which, if not profound, are always moderate and sensible; and because the author’s aim throughout is to enforce the highest standard of morality of which a heathen was capable. As one of his most enthusiastic admirers has said, “He stands before us as the legate, the ambassador, and the orator on behalf of those institutions whereby the old-time men were rendered wise and virtuous.”

Partington (pär´ting-ton), Mrs.—An imaginary old lady whose laughable sayings have been recorded by an American humorist, B. P. Shillaber.

Paul and Virginia.—A popular romance by Bernardin de St. Pierre. According to a tradition, or version, Paul and Virginia are brought up in the belief that they are brother and sister. Don Antonio is sent to bring her to Spain, and make her his bride. She is taken by force on board ship, but scarcely has the ship started, when a hurricane dashes it on the rocks and it is wrecked. Alhambra, a runaway slave, whom Paul and Virginia had befriended, rescues Virginia, who is brought to shore and married to Paul. Antonio is drowned.

Pauline.—The Lady of Lyons in Bulwer-Lytton’s play of this name. She was married to Claude Melnotte, a gardener’s son, who pretended to be a count.

Paul Pry.—Paul Pry, John Poole. An idle, inquisitive, meddlesome fellow, who has no occupation of his own, and is forever poking his nose into other people’s affairs. He always comes in with the apology “I hope I don’t intrude.”

Peau de Chagrin (pō du shä-grin), “The Ass’ Skin.”—A story by Balzac. The hero becomes possessed of a magical wild ass’ skin, which yields him the means of gratifying every wish; but for every wish thus gratified the skin shrank somewhat, and at last vanished, having been wished entirely away. Life is a peau d’âne, for every vital act diminishes its force, and when all its force is gone, life is spent.

Peeping Tom of Coventry.—A tailor of Coventry, the only soul in the town mean enough to peep at the Lady Godiva as she rode naked through the streets to relieve the people from oppression.

Peggotty (peg´o-ti), Clara.—The nurse of David Copperfield in Dickens’ novel of this name. Being very plump, whenever she makes any exertion some of the buttons on the back of her dress fly off.

Peggotty, Dan’l.—Brother of David Copperfield’s nurse. Dan’l was a Yarmouth fisherman. His nephew, Ham Peggotty, and his brother-in-law’s child, “little Em’ly,” lived with him.

Peggotty, Em’ly.—She was engaged to Ham Peggotty; but being fascinated with Steerforth she eloped. She was afterward reclaimed, and emigrated to Australia.

Peggotty, Ham.—Represented as the very beau ideal of an uneducated, simple-minded, honest, and warm-hearted fisherman. He was drowned in his attempt to rescue Steerforth from the sea.

Pendennis (pen-den´is), The History of.—By William Makepeace Thackeray. The hero, Arthur Pendennis, reappears in the author’s Adventures of Philip, and is represented as telling the story of The Newcomes.

Pendennis.—Name of the hero of a novel by Thackeray, published in 1849 and 1850, the immediate successor of Vanity Fair. Literary life is described in the history of Pen, a hero of no very great worth.

Pendennis, Laura.—Sister of Arthur, considered one of the best of Thackeray’s characters.

Pendennis, Major.—A tuft-hunter, who fawns on his patrons for the sake of wedging himself into their society.

Penseroso (pen-se-rō´sō), Il.—A poem by John Milton, written as a companion to L’Allegro. The latter is composed in the character of a cheerful, the former in that of a melancholy man, and the whole tone of each poem is regulated accordingly. The one begins with the dawn, the other with evening. The one opens with the lark, the other with the nightingale, and so on.

Pepys’ (pēps, or pips, or pep´is) Diary.—A book by Samuel Pepys, written in shorthand, and deciphered and published in 1825. It extends over the nine years from 1660 to 1669, and is the gossipy chronicle of that gay and profligate time. We have no other book which gives so lifelike a picture of that extraordinary state of society.

Peregrine Pickle (per´e-grin pik´l).—The title of a novel by Smollett. Peregrine Pickle is a savage, ungrateful spendthrift, fond of practical jokes, and suffering with evil temper the misfortunes brought on himself by his own willfulness.

Peter Bell.—A tale in verse, by Wordsworth. A wandering tinker, subject of Wordsworth’s poem, whose hard heart was touched by the fidelity of an ass to its dead master. Shelley wrote a burlesque of this poem, entitled Peter Bell the Third, intended to ridicule the ludicrous puerility of language and sentiment which Wordsworth often affected. This burlesque was given the name of the Third because it followed a parody already published as Peter the Second.

Petruchio (pe-trö´chō, or ki-ō).—A gentleman of Verona, in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. A very honest fellow, who hardly speaks a word of truth, and succeeds in all his tricks. He acts his assumed character to the life, with untired animal spirits, and without a particle of ill-humor.

Phædo (fē´dō), or Phædon (fe´don).—An ancient and well known work by Plato, in which the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is most fully set forth. It is in the form of a dialogue, which combines, with the abstract philosophical discussion, a graphic narrative of the last hours of Socrates, which, for pathos and dignity, is unsurpassed.

Phédre (fā´dr).—A tragedy by Racine, produced January 1, 1677. It was founded on the story of Phædra, daughter of Minos, king of Crete, and wife of Theseus. She conceived a criminal love for Hippolytus, her stepson, and, being repulsed by him, accused him to her husband of attempting to dishonor her. Hippolytus was put to death, and Phædra, wrung with remorse, strangled herself. Phédre was the great part of Mdlle. Rachel; she first appeared in this character in 1838. It is unquestionably the most remarkable of Racine’s regular tragedies. By it the style must stand or fall, and a reader need hardly go farther to appreciate it. For excellence of construction, artful beauty of verse, skillful use of the limited means of appeal at the command of the dramatist, no play can surpass Phédre.

Philip.—The Madness of Philip, Josephine Daskam. A representation of the unregenerate child—“the child of strong native impulses who has not yet yielded to the shaping force of education; the child, therefore, of originality, of vivacity, of humor, and of fascinating power of invention in the field of mischief.”

Philippics (fi-lip´iks), The.—A group of nine orations of Demosthenes, directed against Philip of Macedon. The real adversary in all these famous speeches is not so much the king of Macedon as the sloth and supineness of the Athenians, and the influence of the peace party, whether honest or bribed by Philip. They are the first Philippic, urging the sending of a military force to Thrace, delivered 351 B. C; three orations in behalf of the city of Olynthus (destroyed by Philip), delivered in 349-348; the oration On the Peace, 346; the second Philippic, 344; the oration On the Embassy, 344; the speech On the Chersonese, 341; and the third Philippic, 341.

The name is also given to a series of fourteen orations of Cicero against Mark Antony, delivered 44-43 B. C.

Philtra.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. A lady of large fortune, betrothed to Bracidas; but, seeing the fortune of Amidas daily increasing, and that of Bracidas getting smaller, she attached herself to the more prosperous younger brother.

Phineas (fin´e-as).—Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Mrs. Stowe. The quaker, an “underground railroad” man who helped the slave family of George and Eliza to reach Canada, after Eliza had crossed the river on cakes of floating ice.

Phyllis (fil´is).—In Vergil’s Eclogues, the name of a rustic maiden. This name, also written Phillis, has been in common use as meaning any unsophisticated country girl.

Pickwick (pik´wik), Mr. Samuel.—The hero of the Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens. He is a simple-minded, benevolent old gentleman, who wears spectacles and short black gaiters. He founds a club, and travels with its members over England, each member being under his guardianship. They meet many laughable adventures.

Pied Piper of Hameln (hä´meln).—Old German legend. Robert Browning, in his poem entitled The Pied Piper, has given a metrical version. The legend recounts how a certain musician came into the town of Hameln, in the country of Brunswick, and offered, for a sum of money, to rid the town of the rats by which it was infested. Having executed his task, and the promised reward having been withheld, he in revenge blew again his pipe, and by its tones drew the children of the town to a cavern in the side of a hill, which, upon their entrance, closed and shut them in forever.

Piers Plowman (pērs plou´man).—A satirical poem of the fourteenth century. The hero falls asleep, like John Bunyan, on the Malvern hills, and has different visions, which he describes, and in which he exposes the corruptions of society, the dissoluteness of the clergy, and the allurements to sin. The author is supposed to be Robert or William Langland. No other writings so faithfully reflect the popular feeling during the great social and religious movements of that century as the bitterly satirical poem. The Vision of Piers Plowman. In its allegory, the discontent of the commons with the course of affairs in church and state found a voice.

Pietro.—The Ring and the Book, Browning. The professed father of Pompilia, criminally assumed as his child to prevent certain property from passing to an heir not his own.

Pilgrim’s Progress.—A celebrated allegory by Bunyan. It recounts the adventures of the hero, Christian, from his conversion to his death. He wanders from the way to Doubting Castle, and is held there by Giant Despair. His sins are a pack; his Bible is a chart, his minister Evangelist, his conversion a flight from the City of Destruction, his struggle with besetting sins a fight with Apollyon, his death a toilsome passage over a deep stream which flows between him and heaven.

Pilot, The.—Title of a sea-story by Cooper, which was called the “first sea-novel of the English language.” It was published in the year 1823, and soon translated into Italian, German, and French. It is founded on the adventures of John Paul Jones.

Pinch, Tom.—A character in Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit, distinguished by his guilelessness, his oddity, and his exhaustless goodness of heart.

Pippa (pēp´pä) Passes.—A drama, Italian in scene and character, by Robert Browning. “It is,” says Stedman, “a cluster of four scenes, with prologue, epilogue, and interludes, half prose, half poetry, varying with the refinement of the dialogue. Pippa is a delicately pure, good, blithesome peasant maid. It is New Year’s Day at Ardo. She springs from bed at sunrise, resolved to enjoy to the full her sole holiday. Others may be happy throughout the year; haughty Ottima and Sebald, the lovers on the hill; Jules and Phene, the artist and his bride; Luigi and his mother; Monsignor, the bishop; but Pippa has only this one day to enjoy. Now, it so happens that she passes, this day, each of the groups or persons we have named, at an important crisis in their lives, and they hear her various carols as she trills them forth in the innocent gladness of her heart. Pippa Passes is a work of pure art, and has a wealth of original fancy and romance, apart from its wisdom.” It appeared in 1842.

Pistol (pis´tol).—A follower of Falstaff, in Shakespeare’s comedy of The Merry Wives of Windsor, and in the second part of King Henry IV. “A roguing beggar, a cantler, an upright man that liveth by cozenage.”

Pocket.—Great Expectations, Dickens. Name of a family prominent in the story.

Pocket.—A real scholar, educated at Harrow, and an honor-man at Cambridge, but, having married young, he had to take up the calling of “grinder” and literary fag for a living. Pip was placed in his care.

Pocket, Herbert.—Son of Mr. Matthew Pocket, wonderfully hopeful, but had not the stuff to push his way into wealth.

Pocket, Mrs.—Daughter of a city knight, brought up to be an ornamental nonentity, helpless, shiftless, and useless. She was the mother of eight children, whom she allowed to “tumble up” as best they could, under the charge of her maid, Flopson.

Pocket, Sarah.—Sister of Matthew Pocket, a little, dry, old woman, with a small face that might have been made of walnut-shell, and a large mouth.

Poor Richard’s Almanac.—An almanac published by Benjamin Franklin, 1732-1757, noted for its maxims. He made it the medium for teaching thrift, temperance, order, cleanliness, chastity, forgiveness, and so on. The maxims or precepts of these almanacs generally end with the words, “as poor Richard says.”

Portia (pôr´shiä).—In The Merchant of Venice, a rich heiress, whose hand and fortune hang upon the right choosing between a gold, a silver, and a leaden casket. She is in love with Bassanio, who, luckily, chooses well. She appears at the trial of Antonio as a “young doctor of Rome,” named Balthazar.

Poyser (poi´zer), Mrs.—A character in Adam Bede. Some of her wonderfully shrewd and humorous observations have passed into the language. Here are some specimens: “It seems as if them as aren’t wanted here are th’ only folks as aren’t wanted in the other world.” “I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish; God Almighty made ’em to match the men.” “It’s hard to tell which is Old Harry when everybody’s got boots on.” “There’s many a good bit o’ work done with a sad heart.” “It’s poor work allays settin’ the dead above the livin’. It ’ud be better if folks ’ud make much on us beforehand, istid o’ beginning when we’re gone.” “Some folks’ tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin’ not to tell you the time of day, but because there’s summat wrong in their own inside.”

Précieuses Ridicules (prā-syuz´ ri-di-kul´), Les.—A comedy by Molière, in ridicule of the Précieuses, as they were styled, forming the coterie of the Hotel de Rambouillet in the seventeenth century. The soirées held in this hotel were a great improvement on the licentious assemblies of the period; but many imitators made the thing ridiculous, because they lacked the same presiding talent and good taste.

The two girls of Molière’s comedy are Madelon and Cathos, the daughter and niece of Gargibus, a bourgeois. They change their names to Polixène and Aminte, which they think more genteel, and look on the affectations of two flunkies as far more distingués than the simple, gentlemanly manners of their masters. However, they are cured of their folly, and no harm comes of it.

Prelude (prē´lūd, or prel´ūd), The, or The Growth of a Poet’s Mind.—An autobiographical poem, in blank verse, by William Wordsworth. It was intended as an introduction to “a philosophical poem, containing views of Man, Nature, and Society; and to be entitled The Recluse, as having for its principal subject the sensations and opinions of a poet living in retirement.” This poem was to have consisted of three parts, of which the second only, The Excursion, was completed and published. The Prelude consists of fourteen books: Book one, Childhood and Schooltime; book two, Schooltime, continued; book three, Residence at Cambridge; book four, Summer Vacation; book five, Books; book six, Cambridge and the Alps; book seven, Residence in London; book eight, Retrospect—Love of Nature Leading to Love of Man; book nine, Residence in France; book ten, Residence in France, continued; book eleven, France, concluded; book twelve, Imagination and Taste, How Impaired and Restored; book thirteen, the same subject continued and concluded; and book fourteen, Conclusion.

Primrose (prim´rōz), Rev. Charles.—Vicar of Wakefield, Goldsmith. A clergyman, rich in heavenly wisdom, but poor indeed in all worldly knowledge.

Primrose, Moses.—Brother of the above, noted for giving in barter a good horse for a gross of worthless green spectacles with copper rims.

Primrose, Olivia.—The eldest daughter of the doctor. Pretty, enthusiastic, a sort of Hebê in beauty. “She wished for many lovers,” and eloped with Squire Thorndill.

Primrose, Sophia.—The second daughter of Dr. Primrose. She was “soft, modest, and alluring.”

Princess: a Medley.—A poem by Alfred Tennyson. “It is,” says Stedman, “as he entitles it, a medley, constructed of ancient and modern materials—a show of mediæval pomp and movement, observed through an atmosphere of latterday thought and emotion. The poet, in his prelude, anticipates every stricture, and to me the anachronisms and impossibilities of the story seem not only lawful, but attractive. Tennyson’s special gift of reducing incongruous details to a common structure and tone is fully illustrated in a poem made—

“‘To suit with time and place,
A Gothic ruin and a Grecian house,
A talk at college and of ladies’ rights,
A feudal knight in silken masquerade.’

Other works of our poet are greater, but none is so fascinating. Some of the author’s most delicately musical lines are herein contained. The tournament scene is the most vehement and rapid passage in the whole range of Tennyson’s poetry. The songs reach the high water mark of lyrical compositions. The five melodies—As Thro’ the Land, Sweet and Low, The Splendor Falls, Home They Brought and Ask Me No More—constitute the finest group of songs produced in our century, and the third seems to many the most perfect English lyric since the time of Shakespeare.” The name of the Princess is Ida.

Priscilla (pri-sil´ä).—Courtship of Miles Standish, Longfellow. A Puritan maiden who is wooed by Captain Standish through the mediation of his friend, John Alden, who is in love with Priscilla. She prefers John Alden and marries him after the captain’s supposed death. The captain, however, appears at the close of the wedding service, and the friends are reconciled.

Prometheus (prō-mē´thūs) Bound.—A tragedy of Æschylus, of uncertain date. Prometheus is fabled to have made men of clay, and to have imparted life to them by means of fire brought from heaven. It was said that for this he was bound to the rock by order of Zeus, that he resisted all efforts to subdue his will and purpose, bade defiance to the father of the gods, and disappeared in an appalling tempest. Mrs. Browning published a poetical translation in 1833.

Prospero (pros´pe-rō).—Tempest, Shakespeare. Rightful duke of Milan, deposed by his brother. Drifted on a desert island, he practised magic, and raised a tempest in which his brother was shipwrecked. Ultimately Prospero “broke his wand,” and his daughter married the son of the King of Naples.

Puff, Mr.—In Sheridan’s farce The Critic, a hack writer, who, having failed at other occupations, tries criticism for a living, and is a “professor of the art of puffing.”

Puss in Boots.—The subject and title of a well-known nursery tale derived from a fairy story in the Nights of the Italian author Straparola, and Charles Perrault’s Contes des Fées. The wonderful cat secures a princess and a fortune for his master, a poor young miller, whom he passes off as the rich marquis of Carabas.

Pygmalion (pig-mā´li-on) and Galatea (gal-a-tē´ä).—A mythological comedy, by W. S. Gilbert, embodying the fable of the Athenian sculptor who prayed the gods to put life into the statue of Galatea which he had fashioned. In the comedy, Galatea evokes the jealousy of the sculptor’s wife Cynisca; and, after causing great misery by her very innocence, voluntarily returns to the original stone.

Pyncheon (pin´chon).—The name of an ancient but decayed family in Hawthorne’s romance The House of the Seven Gables. There are: (1) Judge Pyncheon, a selfish, cunning, worldly man. (2) His cousin Clifford, a delicate, sensitive nature, reduced to childishness by long imprisonment and suffering. (3) Hepzibah, the latter’s sister, an old maid who devotes herself to the care of Clifford. (4) A second cousin, Phœbe, a fresh, cheerful young girl, who restores the fallen fortunes of the family and removes the curse which rested on it.

Q

Quasimodo (kwā-si-mō´dō).—Notre Dame de Paris, Hugo. A misshapen dwarf, one of the prominent characters in the story. He is brought up in the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. One day, he sees Esmeralda, who had been dancing in the cathedral close, set upon by a mob, and he conceals her for a time in the church. When, at length, the beautiful gypsy girl is gibbeted, Quasimodo disappears mysteriously, but a skeleton corresponding to the deformed figure is found after a time in a hole under the gibbet.

Quaver.—The Virgin Unmasked, Fielding. A singing-master, who says, “if it were not for singing-masters, men and women might as well have been born dumb.” He courts Lucy by promising to give her singing-lessons.

Queen Lab.—Arabian Nights. The queen of magic, ruler over the enchanted city, in the story of Beder, prince of Persia. She transforms men into horses, mules, and other animals. Beder marries her, defeats her plots against him, but is himself turned into an owl for a time.

Quentin Durward (kwen´tin der´wärd).—A novel by Sir Walter Scott. A story of French history. The delineations of Louis XI. and Charles the Bold of Burgundy will stand comparison with any in the whole range of fiction or history.

Quickly, Mistress.—Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare. A serving woman to Dr. Caius, a French physician. She is the go-between of three suitors for “sweet Anne Page,” and with perfect disinterestedness wishes all three to succeed.

Quickly, Mistress Nell.—Hostess of a tavern in Eastcheap, frequented by Harry, Prince of Wales, Sir John Falstaff, and all their disreputable crew.

Quidnunkis.—Title and name of hero in a fable found or written by Gay in 1726. This hero was a monkey which climbed higher than its neighbors, and fell into a river.

Quilp (kwilp).—Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens. A hideous dwarf, cunning, malicious, and a perfect master in tormenting. Of hard, forbidding features, with head and face large enough for a giant, he lived on Tower hill, collected rents, advanced money to seamen, and kept a sort of wharf, calling himself a ship-breaker.

Quintus Fixlein.—Title of a romance by Jean Paul Richter and the name of the principal character.

Quirk, Gammon, and Snap.—A firm of rascally, scheming, hypocritical solicitors in Warren’s Ten Thousand a Year.

R

Raby, Aurora.—In Byron’s Don Juan. She was a rich, noble English orphan, “a rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded.”

Radigund.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. Queen of the fabled Amazons. Having been rejected by Bellodant “the Bold,” she revenged herself by degrading all the men who fell into her power by dressing them like women, and giving them women’s work.

Ramayana [(rä´-mä´yȧ-nȧ); Rāma-ayana, the goings or doings of Rama].—One of the two great epics of India, the other being the Mahabharata. It is ascribed to a poet, Valmiki, and consists at present of about twenty-four thousand stanzas, divided into seven books. It is the production of one man, though many parts are later additions, such as those in which Rama is represented as an incarnation of Vishnu, all the episodes in the first book, and the whole of the seventh. It was at first handed down orally, and variously modified in transmission, and afterward reduced to writing.

Ramona (ra-mō´nä).—Title of a romance by Helen Hunt Jackson. Ramona saw the American Indian followed by “civilization” while retreating slowly but surely toward his own extinction, and had herself a share in the tragedy. Ramona is considered the great romance of Indian life.

Random (ran´dom).—Roderick Random, Smollett. A young Scotch scapegrace in quest of fortune. At one time he revels in prosperity, again he is in utter destitution. He roams at random, in keeping with his name.

Rappaccini (rap-ä-chē´nē).—Mosses from an Old Manse, Hawthorne. A doctor in whose garden grew strange plants whose juices and fragrance were poison. His daughter, nourished on these odors, became poisonous herself. Her lover found an antidote which she took, but the poison meant life and the antidote meant death to her.

Rasselas (ras´e-las).—An imaginary romance by Dr. Johnson. According to the custom of his country, Abyssinia, Rasselas was confined in paradise, with the rest of the royal family. This paradise was in the valley of Amhara, surrounded by high mountains. It had only one entrance, a cavern concealed by woods, and closed by iron gates. He escaped with his sister Nekayah and Imlac the poet, and wandered about to find what condition or rank of life was the most happy. After investigation, he found no lot without its drawbacks, and resolved to return to the “Happy Valley.”

Raud the Strong.—Tales of a Wayside Inn, Henry W. Longfellow. The viking who worshiped the old gods and lived by fire and sword. King Olaf went against him, sailing from Drontheim to Salten Fjord.

Raven, The.—A poem by Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1845, which has attained a world-wide popularity. For the author’s account of the mode of its construction, see The Philosophy of Composition, an essay, in the collected edition of his works. The last verse runs:

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting,
On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—Nevermore!

Ravenswood.—Bride of Lammermoor, Scott. The lord of Ravenswood, an old Scotch nobleman and a decayed royalist. His son Edgar falls in love with Lucy Ashton, daughter of Sir William Ashton, Lord-Keeper of Scotland. The lovers plight their troth, but Lucy is compelled to marry Frank Hayston, laird of Bucklaw. The bride, in a fit of insanity, attempts to murder the bridegroom and dies. Bucklaw goes abroad. Colonel Ashton, seeing Edgar at the funeral of Lucy, appoints a hostile meeting; and Edgar, on his way to the place appointed, is lost in the quicksands. A prophecy, noted as a curse, hung over the family and was thus fulfilled.

Raymond.—In Jerusalem Delivered, by Tasso. Raymond was known as the Nestor of the crusaders, slew Aladine, the king of Jerusalem, and planted the Christian standard upon the tower of David.

Rebecca.—Ivanhoe, Scott. Daughter of Isaac the Jew, in love with Ivanhoe.

Red-cross Knight.—The Red-cross Knight is St. George, the patron saint of England, and, in the obvious and general interpretation, typifies holiness, or the perfection of the spiritual man in religion. In Spenser’s Faërie Queene the task of slaying a dragon was assigned to him as the champion of Una.

Redgauntlet (red-gänt´let).—One of the principal characters in Sir Walter Scott’s novel of the same name, a political enthusiast and Jacobite, who scruples at no means of upholding the cause of the Pretender and finally accompanies him into exile. His race bore a fatal mark resembling a horseshoe which appeared on the face of Red-gauntlet as he frowned when angry.

Red-Riding-Hood.—This nursery tale is, with slight variations, common to Sweden, Germany, and France. In Charles Perrault’s Contes des Fées it is called Le Petit Chaperon Rouge.

Religio Medici (rē-lij´i-ō med´i-sī).—A prose work by Sir Thomas Browne. “The Religio Medici,” says the elder Lytton, “is one of the most beautiful prose poems in the language; its power of diction, its subtlety and largeness of thought, its exquisite conceits and images, have no parallel out of the writers of that brilliant age when Poetry and Prose had not yet divided their domain, and the Lyceum of Philosophy was watered by the mixing of the wine!”

Representative Men.—A work by Emerson which more nearly than any of his other works, gives expression to his system as a whole. The topics are: (1) Plato, the Philosopher; (2) Swedenborg, the Mystic; (3) Montaigne, the Skeptic; (4) Shakespeare, the Poet; (5) Napoleon, the Man of the World; (6) Goethe, the Writer. The mental portraits sketched under these six heads give us Emerson himself, so far as he is capable of being formulated at all.

Republic, The.—A work composed by Plato four hundred years before Christ. The Republic is not, as the title would suggest, a political work, like the Politics of Aristotle. The principles and government of an ideal moral organism, of which the rulers shall be types of fully developed and perfectly educated men, are the real subject. In the Republic we find the necessity of virtue to the very idea of social life proved in the first book; then the whole process of a complete moral and scientific education is set forth. It has been said that the most complete record of the beliefs or opinions of Plato are found in this work.

Reveries of a Bachelor.—By D. G. Mitchell. The Reveries is a collection of sketches of life and character, painted in such a dreamlike, delicate manner as to make the reader lose for the time being the full consciousness of his surroundings. It has called forth a number of imitators more or less successful, no one of whom, however, is comparable to the original.

Reynard (rā´närd, or ren´ärd) the Fox.—A beast-epic, so called. This prose poem is a satire on the state of Germany in the middle ages. Reynard represents the Church; Isengrin the wolf (his uncle) typifies the baronial element; and Nodel the lion stands for the regal power. The plot turns on the struggle for supremacy between Reynard and Isengrin. Reynard uses all his endeavors to victimize everyone, especially his uncle Isengrin, and generally succeeds.

Richelieu (rēsh-y-lōō´), or The Conspiracy.—A drama in five acts, by Edward, Lord Lytton; produced in 1839, the part of the hero being played by Macready. For some of the incidents the author confesses himself indebted to the authors of Cinq Mars and Picciola. Among the characters are Baradas, the favorite; De Mauprat, in love with Julie; Julie de Mortemar herself; Marion de Lorme, mistress of Orleans; Orleans himself; Louis XIII., and others.

Rights of Man, The.—“Being an answer to Mr. Burke’s Attack on the French Revolution,” by Thomas Paine. This work, which was published in 1791-1792, procured for the writer the distinction of a trial for sedition, which he escaped by flying to France.

Rinaldo (ri-nal´dō).—A Christian hero in Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered. He was the son of Bertoldo and Sophia, and nephew of Guelpho, but was brought up by Matilda. He was one of Charlemagne’s paladins, and cousin to Orlando. Having killed Charlemagne’s nephew Berthelot, he was banished and outlawed. After various adventures and disasters, he went to the Holy Land, and, on his return, succeeded in making peace with the emperor.

Ring and the Book, The.—A poem by Robert Browning, published in 1869. It is the story of a tragedy which took place at Rome in 1698. The versified narrative of the child Pompilia’s sale to Count Guido, of his cruelty and violence, of her rescue by a young priest, the pursuit, the lawful separation, the murder by Guido of the girl and her putative parents, the trial and condemnation of the murderer, and the affirmation of his sentence by the pope—all this is made to fill out a poem of twenty-one thousand lines; but these include ten different versions of the tale, besides the poet’s prelude, in which latter he gives a general outline of it. The chapters which contain the statements of the priest lover and Pompilia are full of tragic beauty and emotion. The pope’s soliloquy, though too prolonged, is a wonderful piece of literary metempsychosis.

Rip Van Winkle.—A tale by Washington Irving, adapted from the old German legend of Peter Klaus, a goatherd, who drank a miraculous draught of wine in a dell of the Harz mountains, which brought on sleep from which he did not wake until twenty years after, when he returned to his native village to find everything changed, and no one who knew him. In Irving’s tale the hero is a Dutchman living in America, and the scene is the Catskill mountains. The story is most picturesquely told, and has been effectively dramatized, the leading personage being illustrated by the genius of Jefferson.

Rivals, The.—A comedy by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, produced at Covent Garden, London, in 1775, and described by Hazlitt as “a play of even more action and incident, but of less wit and satire, than The School for Scandal. It is as good as a novel in the reading, and has the broadest and most palpable effect upon the stage.”

Roaring Camp, The Luck of.—A prose sketch by Francis Bret Harte, an American poet, in which the softening effects of the presence of a little child in a camp of ruffians are very touchingly described. It has been dramatized.

Rob Roy.—A romance by Sir Walter Scott which is founded on some passages in the career of the famous Highlander, Robert MacGregor, who was popularly called Rob Roy. The nominal hero of Rob Roy is Francis Osbaldistone; the heroine, Diana Vernon. Among the other characters are Baillie Nicol Jarvie, “The Dougal Cratur” Andrew Fairservice, Helen MacGregor, Sir Frederick Vernon, and Rashleigh Osbaldistone. The novel has been dramatized in a version which still holds the stage in Scotland. Scott speaks of Rob as “the Robin Hood of Scotland—the dread of the wealthy, but the friend of the poor, and possessed of many qualities, both of head and heart, which would have graced a less equivocal profession than that to which his fate condemned him.”

Roderick, or Roderic (rod´er-ik) Dhu.—Lady of the Lake, Scott. An outlaw and chief of a band of Scots who resolved to win back what had been lost to the Saxons. In connection with Red Murdock he sought the life of the Saxon Fitz-James.

Roderigo (rod-e-rē´gō).—In Shakespeare’s Othello, a Venetian in love with Desdemona, who, when the lady eloped with Othello, hated the “noble Moor.”

Roland (rō´land).—The hero of one of the most ancient and popular epics of early French or Frankish literature, and, according to tradition, the favorite nephew and captain of the Emperor Charlemagne. Roland is the hero of Théroulde’s Chanson de Roland; of Turpin’s Chronique; of Bojardo’s Orlando Innamorato; of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.

Romance of the Rose.—A poetical allegory, begun by Guillaume de Lorris in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and continued by Jean Meung in the first half of the fourteenth century. The poet dreams that Dame Idleness conducts him to the Palace of Pleasure, where he meets many adventures among the attendant maidens, Youth, Joy, Courtesy, and others, by whom he is conducted to a bed of roses. He singles out one, when an arrow from Love’s bow stretches him fainting on the ground. Fear, Slander, and Jealousy are afterward introduced.

Romeo.—In Shakespeare’s tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, a son of Montague, in love with Juliet, the daughter of Capulet, who was the head of a noble house of Verona, in feudal enmity with the house of Montague.

Romeo and Juliet.—A tragedy by William Shakespeare. Romeo, a son of Montague, in love with Juliet, the daughter of Capulet; but between the houses of Montague and Capulet there existed a deadly feud. As the families were irreconcilable, Juliet took a sleeping draught, that she might get away from her parents and elope with Romeo. Romeo, thinking her to be dead, killed himself; and when Juliet awoke and found her lover dead, she also killed herself.

Romola (rom´ō-lä).—A novel of Italian life and character by George Eliot. Romola is a marvelously able story of the revival of the taste and beauty and freedom of Hellenic manners and letters, under Lorenzo de’ Medici and the scholars of his court, side by side with the revival of Roman virtue, and more than the ancient austerity and piety, under the great Dominican Savonarola. This period of history is one which of all others may well have engrossing interest for George Eliot. Treasures of learning and discipline, amassed for mankind ages before, for ages stored and hidden away, see again the sun, are recognized and put to use. What use they will be put to, with what new and fruitful effects on the state and the citizen, with what momentary and with what lasting consequences, this she strives to discover; this she follows through the public history of Italy during the modern invasion of Charles VIII., and the events which succeed his invasion, and through the private fortunes of her admirably chosen group of characters, some of them drawn from life, all of them true to nature.

Rosetta (rō-zet´tä) Stone.—Found at Rosetta in the delta of the Nile, contains equivalent inscriptions in hieroglyphics in demotic and in Greek letters. The meaning of the Greek text being known, the hieroglyphics could be translated.

Rowena (rō-ē´nä).—A Saxon princess, ward of Cedric of Rotherwood, in Sir Walter Scott’s romance of Ivanhoe.

Rumpelstilzchen.—Old German Tales. According to Grimm, this name is a compound, but the spirit represented is one familiar to all German children. The original story tells of him as a dwarf who spun straw into gold for a certain miller’s daughter.

S

Sacripant (sak´ri-pant), King.—(1) King of Circassia, and a lover of Angelica, in Bojordo and Ariosto. (2) A personage in Tassoni’s mock heroic poem, Rape of the Bucket, represented as false, brave, noisy and hectoring.

Sagas (sä´gas).—Title of the ancient traditions which form the substance of the history and mythology of the Scandinavian races. The language in which they are written is supposed to be the old Icelandic. In the Edda there are numerous sagas. As our Bible contains the history of the Jews, religious songs, moral proverbs, and religious stories, so the Edda contains the history of Norway, religious songs, a book of proverbs, and numerous stories. The original Edda was compiled and edited by Sæmund Sigfusson, an Icelandic priest and scald, in the eleventh century. It contains twenty-eight parts or books, all of which are in verse. Two hundred years later Snorri Sturleson, of Iceland, abridged, rearranged, and reduced to prose the Edda, and his work was called The Younger Edda. In this we find the famous story called by the Germans the Nibelungenlied. Besides the sagas contained in the Eddas, there are numerous others, and the whole saga literature makes over two hundred volumes. Among them are the Völsunga Saga, which is a collection of lays about the early Teutonic heroes. The Saga of St. Olaf is the history of this Norwegian king. Frithjof’s Saga contains the life and adventures of Frithjof of Iceland. Snorri Sturleson, at the close of the twelfth century, made the second great collection of chronicles in verse, called the Heimskringla Saga. This is a most valuable record of the laws, customs and manners of the ancient Scandinavians.

Sakuntala.—A famous drama by Kâlidasa. The daughter of Viswamita and a water nymph, abandoned by her parents, and brought up by a hermit. One day, King Dushyanta came to the hermitage, and persuaded Sakuntala to marry him. In due time a son was born, but Dushyanta left his bride at the hermitage. When the boy was six years old, his mother took him to the king, and Dushyanta recognized his wife by a ring which he had given her. Sakuntala was now publicly proclaimed queen, and the boy (whose name was Bhârata) became the founder of the glorious race of the Bhâratas.

Samson Agonistes (sam´son ag-o-nis´tēz).—A sacred drama by Milton. Samson, blind and bound, triumphs over his enemies. As in the Bible story, he grasps two of the supporting pillars, and perishes in the general ruin.

Sancho Panza (sang´kō pan´zä).—The esquire and counterpart of Don Quixote in Cervantes’ famous novel. He has much shrewdness in practical matters, and a store of proverbial wisdom. He rode upon an ass and was noted for his proverbs.

Sartor Resartus (sär´tor rē-sär´tus), (i. e., The Tailor Patched).—The title of an old Scottish ballad, being The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdröckh, in Three Books, by Thomas Carlyle. It may be described as a kind of philosophical romance, in which the author gives us, in the form of a review of a supposed German work on dress, and a notice of the writer, his opinions on things in general. The hero, it has been said, seems to be intended for a portraiture of human nature as affected by the moral influence to which a cultivated mind would be exposed by acquaintance with the transcendental philosophy of Fichte.

Satyrane (sat´i-rān), Sir.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. A noble knight who delivered Una from the fauns and satyrs. The meaning seems to be that Truth, driven from the towns and cities, took refuge in caves and dens where for a time it lay concealed. At length Sir Satyrane (Luther) rescues Una from bondage; but no sooner is this the case than she falls in with Archimago, to show how very difficult it was at the time of the Reformation to separate Truth from Error.

Sawyer, Bob.—Pickwick Papers, Dickens. A drinking young doctor who tries to establish a practice at Bristol, but without success. Sam Weller calls him “Mr. Sawbones.”

Scalds, or Skalds.—Court poets and chroniclers of the ancient Scandinavians. They resided at court, were attached to the royal suite, and attended the king in all his wars. These bards celebrated in song the gods, the kings of Norway, and national heroes. Few complete Skaldic poems have survived, but a multitude of fragments exist.

Scarlet Letter, The.—A romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850. The heroine, Hester Prynne, was condemned to wear conspicuously the letter “A” in scarlet, token of her sin as mother of her child, Pearl, whose father was not known. She was first exposed in disgrace on a raised scaffold, then served a term in prison, and afterward gained a moderate support for herself and child by embroidering. She refused to reveal the name of the father, although she might then be allowed to lay aside the letter. He was always near, held an important position, and lived a life of wearing remorse. After his death Hester Prynne took her child to another country, but returned to spend her old age in seclusion and comfort in the same place that had witnessed her punishment. She always bore herself proudly, but not defiantly, and brought to herself such love and respect that the scarlet letter became a badge of honor. Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband, appeared as a learned foreign physician, visited her in prison, but promised not to reveal his relation to her, and devoted his life to learning her secret. The characters in the story are intense, and the analysis of motives subtle.

Scheherazade, or Sheherazade (she-hē´rä-zād).—Arabian Nights. The fabled relater of the stories in these “Entertainments.”

Scaramouche (skar´a-mouch).—An Italian character whose traits are cowardice and boastfulness. He is of Spanish creation, copied into Italian comedy.

Schlemihl (shlem´el), Peter.—The name of the hero of a little work by Chamisso, a man who sells his shadow to the devil. The name has become a byword for any poor, silly, and unfortunate fellow.

Schneider (shnī´der).—Rip Van Winkle’s dog, in Boucicault’s dramatization of Irving’s Rip Van Winkle. The name of the dog in the story is “Wolf.”

School for Scandal, The.—A comedy by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, produced at Covent Garden, London, in 1777, and characterized by Hazlitt as, “if not the most original, perhaps the most finished and faultless comedy which we have. The scene in which Charles Surface sells all the old family pictures but his uncle’s, who is the purchaser in disguise, and that of the discovery of Lady Teazle when the screen falls, are among the happiest and most highly wrought that comedy, in its wide and brilliant range, can boast. Besides the art and ingenuity of this play, there is a genial spirit of frankness and generosity that relieves the heart as well as clears the lungs. While it strips off the mask of hypocrisy, it inspires a confidence between man and man.”

School for Wives [L’Ecole des Femmes (lä-kol´ dā fam´)].—A comedy by Molière. Arnolph has a crotchet about the proper training of girls to make good wives, and tries his scheme upon Agnes, whom he adopts from a peasant’s cottage, and designs in due time to make his wife. He sends her from early childhood to a convent, where difference of sex and the conventions of society are wholly ignored. When removed from the convent, she treats men as if they were schoolgirls, kisses them, plays with them, and treats them with girlish familiarity. The consequence is, a young man name Horace falls in love with her, and makes her his wife, and Arnolph loses his painstaking.

School of Husbands [L’Ecole des Maris (lä-kol´ da mä-re´)] A comedy by Molière. Ariste and Sganarelle, two brothers, bring up Léonor and Isabelle, two orphan sisters, according to their systems for making them in time their model wives. Sganarelle’s system was to make the woman dress plainly, live retired, attend to domestic duties, and have few indulgences. Ariste’s system was to give the woman great liberty, and trust to her honor. Isabelle, brought up by Sganarelle, deceived him and married another; but Léonor, brought up by Ariste, made him a fond and faithful wife.

Scottish Chiefs, The.—A romantic story by Jane Porter, published in 1810, and counting among its heroes Robert Bruce and Sir William Wallace.

Scourge of God.—Attila, king of the Huns. A. P. Stanley says the term was first applied to Attila in the Hungarian Chronicles. It is found in a legend belonging to the eighth or ninth century.

Scrooge (skröj), Ebenezer.—Christmas Carol, Dickens. The prominent character, made partner, executor, and heir of old Jacob Marley, stockbroker.

Seasons, The.—A series of poems by James Thomson, which appeared in the following order: Winter; Summer; Spring; and Autumn; the whole being republished, with the famous Hymn. Horace Walpole said that he would rather have written the most absurd lines by Lee than The Seasons; but Wordsworth, on the other hand, speaks of it as “a work of inspiration. Much of it,” he says, “is written from himself, and nobly from himself.”

Sebastian (se-bas´tian).—(1) Brother of Viola, in Twelfth Night. They were twins, and so much alike that they could not be distinguished except by their dress. Sebastian and his sister being shipwrecked, escaped to Illyria. Here Sebastian was mistaken for his sister (who had assumed man’s apparel), and was invited by the Countess Olivia to take shelter in her house from a street broil. Olivia was in love with Viola, and thinking Sebastian to be the object of her love, married him. (2) Brother of Alfonso, king of Naples, in The Tempest. (3) Father of Valentine and Alice, in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Mons. Thomas.

Sedley, Mr.—Vanity Fair, Thackeray. A wealthy London stockbroker, brought to ruin in the money market just prior to the battle of Waterloo.

Selith.—One of the two guardian angels of the Virgin Mary and St. John the divine, in Klopstock’s Messiah.

Sempronius (sem-prō´ni-us).—In Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, a flatterer of Timon, who excuses himself from lending Timon money on the ground that others had been asked first.

Senena.—Madoc, Southey. A Welsh maiden in love with Caradoc. Under the assumed name of Mervyn she became the page of the Princess Goervyl, that she might follow her lover to America, where Madoc colonized Caer-Madoc. Senena was promised in marriage to another; but when the wedding day arrived the bride was nowhere to be found.

Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy.—By Laurence Sterne, published in 1768. Sterne describes this work as follows: “It is a subject which works well, and suits the frame of mind in which I have been for some time past. I told you my design in it was to teach us to love the world and our fellow creatures better than we do—so it runs most upon these gentler passions and affections which add so much to it.”

Serena (sā-rā´nä).—Faërie Queene, Spenser. Allured into the fields by the mildness of the weather, to gather wild flowers for a garland, she was attacked by the Blatant Beast, which carried her off in its mouth. Her cries attracted to the spot Sir Calidore, who compelled the beast to drop its prey.

Sesame.—In Arabian tales given as the talismanic word which would open or shut the door leading into the cave of the forty thieves. In order to open it, the words to be uttered were, “Open, Sesame!” and in order to close it, “Shut, Sesame!” Sesame is a plant yielding grain which is sometimes used for food, and from which an oil is expressed. When Cassim forgot the word, he substituted “Barley,” but without effect. Sesame has come into general use in connection with any word or act which will open the way for accomplishment of the thing desired.

Seven Lamps of Architecture, The.—A treatise on architecture by Ruskin, published in 1849. The “seven lamps” are those of Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and Obedience. They are symbolic rules for the guidance of the student.

Sganarelle (sgä-nä-rel´).—The hero of Molière’s comedy La Mariage Force. He is represented as a humorist of about fifty-three, who, having a mind to marry a fashionable young woman, but feeling a doubt, consults his friends upon this momentous question. Receiving no satisfactory counsel, and not much pleased with the proceedings of his bride elect, he at last determines to give up his engagement, but is cudgeled into compliance by the brother of his intended.

Shallow.—A braggart and absurd country justice in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, and in the second part of King Henry IV.

Shandy, Mrs.—The mother of Tristram Shandy in Sterne’s novel of this name. She is the ideal of nonentity, a character individual from its very absence of individuality.

Shandy, Tristram.—The nominal hero of Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gent.

Shandy, Walter.—The name of Tristram Shandy’s father in Sterne’s novel of this name, a man of an active and metaphysical, but at the same time a whimsical, cast of mind, whom too much and too miscellaneous learning had brought within a step or two of madness.

Sharp, Becky.—A leading character in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, the daughter of a poor painter, dashing, selfish, unprincipled, and very clever.

Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, The.—The hero and title of a religious tract by Hannah More. The shepherd is noted for his homely wisdom and simple piety.

Shepherd’s Calendar, The.—Twelve eclogues in various meters, by Spenser, one for each month. January: Colin Clout (Spenser) bewails that Rosalind does not return his love. February: Cuddy, a lad, complains of the cold, and Thenot laments the degeneracy of pastoral life. March: Willie and Thomalin discourse of love. April: Hobbinol sings a song on Eliza. May: Palinode exhorts Piers to join the festivities of May, but Piers replies that good shepherds who seek their own indulgence expose their flocks to the wolves. June: Hobbinol exhorts Colin to greater cheerfulness. July: Morrel, a goatherd, invites Thomalin to come with him to the uplands. August: Perigot and Willie contend in song, and Cuddy is appointed arbiter. September: Diggon Davie complains to Hobbinol of clerical abuses. October: On poetry. November: Colin being asked by Thenot to sing, excuses himself because of his grief for Dido, but finally sings her elegy. December: Colin again complains that his heart is desolate. Thenot is an old shepherd bent with age, who tells Cuddy, the herdsman’s boy, the fable of the oak and the brier, one of the best-known fables included in the calendar.

Shepherd’s Pipe.—Pan, in Greek mythology, was the god of forests, pastures, and flocks, and the reputed inventor of the shepherd’s flute or pipe.

Sheridan’s Ride.—A lyric by T. B. Read, one of the few things written during the heat of the Civil war that is likely to survive.

She Stoops to Conquer.—A comedy by Oliver Goldsmith, said to have been founded on an incident which actually occurred to its author. When Goldsmith was sixteen years of age, a wag residing at Ardagh directed him, when passing through that village, to Squire Fetherstone’s house as the village inn. The mistake was not discovered for some time, but all concerned enjoyed the joke. She Stoops to Conquer is one of the gayest, pleasantest, and most amusing pieces of English comedy.

Shingebis.—In Longfellow’s Hiawatha, the diver who challenged the North Wind and put him to flight in combat.

Shocky.—The Hoosier Schoolmaster, Edw. Eggleston. The little lad from the poorhouse who adores the schoolmaster and early warns him of plans for upsetting his authority. He is also a small poet, not in rhyming, but in comprehension of things about him and in his way of looking at life, and he grows to be a helper in the Church of the Best Licks, founded by the schoolmaster.

Shylock.—A sordid, avaricious, revengeful Jew, in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.

Siege Perilous, The.—The Round Table contained sieges, or seats, in the names of different knights. One was reserved for him who was destined to attainment in the quest of the Holy Grail. This seat was called “perilous” because if anyone sat therein except he for whom it was reserved, he would “lose himself.” It finally bore the name of Sir Galahad.

Siegfried (sēg´frēd).—The hero of various Scandinavian and Teutonic legends, particularly of the old German epic poem, the Nibelungenlied. He is represented as a young warrior of physical strength and beauty, and in valor superior to all men of his time. He cannot easily be identified with any historical personage.

Sikes, Bill.—A brutal thief and housebreaker in Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist. He murders his mistress, Nancy, and, in trying to lower himself by a rope from the roof of a building where he had taken refuge from the crowd, he falls, and is choked in a noose of his own making. Sikes had an ill-conditioned, savage dog, the beast-image of his master, which he kicked and loved, ill-treated and fondled.

Silas Marner (mär´ner).—A novel by George Eliot, published in 1861. This novel is one of the authoress’ most beautiful stories, the most poetical of them all—the tale of Silas Marner, who deems himself deserted and rejected utterly of God and man, and to whom, in his deepest misery, in place of lost gold, a little foundling girl is sent. This tale is the most hopeful of all her books. The contemplation of the renewal of enterprise and energy, which comes with little children, and of the promise with which each new generation gilds the crown of honor for its sires, is pleasant and grateful to her. She writes upon her title page the lines of Wordsworth:

A child, more than all other gifts
That earth can offer to declining man,
Brings hope with it and forward-looking thoughts.

The weaver of Raveloe and Eppie are creations after Wordsworth’s own heart.

Silken Thread.—Gulliver’s Travels. In the kingdom of Lilliput, the three great prizes of honor are “fine silk threads six inches long, one blue, another red, and a third green.” The thread is girt about the loins, and no ribbon of the Legion of Honor, or of the Knight of the Garter, is worn more worthily or more proudly.

Sindbad (sind´bad) the Sailor.—A character in the Arabian Nights, in which is related the story of his strange voyages and wonderful adventures.

Sinon.—In Vergil’s Æneid the cunning Greek who, by a false tale, induced the Trojans to drag the wooden horse into Troy.

Sir Roger de Coverley (kuv´er-li).—In Addison’s The Spectator. The prototype of this famous character was Sir John Pakington, a hypothetical baronet of Coverley or Cowley, near Oxford.

Skeleton in Armor, The.—A lyric by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, suggested to him while riding on the seashore at Newport. A year or two previous a skeleton had been dug up at Fall River, clad in broken and corroded armor; and the idea occurred to him of connecting it with the Round Tower at Newport, generally known hitherto as the Old Windmill, though now claimed by the Danes as a work of their early ancestors.

Sketch-Book, The.—A series of short tales, sketches, and essays, published by Washington Irving in 1820. They are chiefly descriptive of English manners and scenery, and have often been reprinted.

Skylark, Ode to the.—By Percy Bysshe Shelley, written in 1820. “In sweetness,” says Leigh Hunt, “and not even there in passages, the Ode to the Skylark is inferior only to Coleridge—in rapturous passion to no man. It is like the bird it sings—enchanting, profuse, continuous, and alone; small, but filling the heavens.”

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That, from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Slick, Sam.—The hero of various humorous narratives, by Haliburton, illustrating and exaggerating the peculiarities of the Yankee character and dialect.

Slop, Dr.—The name of a choleric and uncharitable physician in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Gent.

Slough of Despond.—Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan. A deep bog, which Christian had to pass on his way to the Wicket Gate.

Sly, Christopher.—Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare. A keeper of bears and a tinker and a sad drinker, son of a peddler.

Sofronia (sof-rō´ni-ä).—A young Christian of Jerusalem, the heroine of an episode in Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered. She and her lover, Olinda, are condemned to death by Aladine, king of Jerusalem. The king finally, at the solicitation of Clorinda, spares them and they are married.

Sohrab (sö-hrâb´) and Rustum.—An episode, or narrative in verse, by Matthew Arnold. The story is told in prose in Sir John Malcolm’s History of Persia. “The powerful conception of the relation between the two chieftains, and the slaying of the son by the father, are,” says Stedman, “tragical and heroic. The descriptive passage at the close beginning—

But the majestic river floated on,

for diction and breadth of tone would do honor to any living poet.”

Song of Roland.—An ancient song recounting the deeds of Roland, the renowned nephew of Charlemagne, slain in the pass of Roncesvalles. At the battle of Hastings, Taillefer advanced on horseback before the invading army, and gave the signal for onset by singing this famous song.

Spanker, Lady Gay.—In London Assurance, by Boucicault, is a woman of great spirit, devoted to the chase.

Speed.—An inveterate punster and the clownish servant of Valentine, one of the two “gentlemen” in Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Spenlow (spen´lō).—Lavinia and Clarissa, in Dickens’ David Copperfield, two spinster aunts of Dora Spenlow, with whom she lived at the death of her father.

Squeers.—Name of a family prominent in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby. Wackford Squeers, master of Dotheboys Hall, in Yorkshire, is a vulgar, conceited, ignorant schoolmaster, overbearing and mean. He steals the boys’ pocket money, clothes his son in their best suits, half starves them, and teaches them next to nothing. Ultimately he is transported for theft. Mrs. Squeers, a raw-boned, harsh, heartless virago, with no womanly feeling for the boys put under her charge. Miss Fanny Squeers, daughter of the schoolmaster. Miss Fanny falls in love with Nicholas Nickleby, but later hates him because he is insensible to the soft impeachment. Master Wackford Squeers, over-bearing, self-willed and passionate.

Squire of Dames.—A personage introduced by Spenser in the Faërie Queene, and whose curious adventures are there recorded. The expression is sometimes applied to a person devoted to the fair sex.

Steerforth (stēr´fōrth), James.—David Copperfield, Dickens. The young man who led little Em’ly astray. When tired of his toy, he proposed to her to marry his valet. Steerforth, being shipwrecked off the coast of Yarmouth, Ham Peggotty tried to rescue him, but both were drowned.

Stentor (sten´tor).—A Grecian herald in the Trojan war whom Homer describes as great-hearted, brazen-voiced Stentor, accustomed to shout as loud as fifty other men.

Stephano (stef´a-nō).—(1) In Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, earl of Carnuti, the leader of four hundred men in the allied Christian army. He was noted for his military prowess and wise counsel; (2) a drunken butler in Shakespeare’s The Tempest; (3) servant to Portia in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.

Stiggins, Rev. Mr.—A red-nosed, hypocritical “shepherd,” or Methodist parson, in Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, with a great appetite for pineapple rum. He is the spiritual adviser of Mrs. Weller, and lectures on temperance.

Strephon (stref´on).—The shepherd in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, who makes love to the beautiful Urania. It is a stock name for a lover, Chloe being usually the corresponding lady.

Strongback.—One of the seven attendants of Fortunio, in D’Aulnoy’s Fairy Tales. He could never be overweighted, and could fell a forest in a few hours without fatigue.

Summer, St. Martin’s.—The fine weather which generally occurs in October and November; referred to in Henry VI.

T

Tabard (tab´ārd), The.—Is the inn, in High Street, Southwark, London, from which Chaucer makes his pilgrims start on their journey to Canterbury. It took its name from its sign—a tabard.

Tale of Two Cities, A.—A novel, by Charles Dickens, originally produced in All the Year Round for 1859, and afterward republished in complete form. The author says he first conceived the main idea of the story when acting, with his children and friends, in Wilkie Collins’ drama of The Frozen Deep. His narrative is drawn from the scenes of the French revolution of 1789; and it was one of Dickens’ hopes, he says, to add something to the popular and picturesque means of understanding that terrible time; “though no one,” he continues, “can hope to add anything to the philosophy of Carlyle’s wonderful book.”