_ä_, as in farm, father; _ȧ_, as in ask, fast; _a_, as in at, fat;
_ā_, as in day, fate; _â_, as in care, fare; a, as in final; _e_, as
in met, set; _ē_, as in me, see; _ẽ_, as in her, ermine; _i_, as in
pin, sin; _ī_, as in pine, line; _o_, as in not, got; _ō_, as in
note, old; _ô_, as in for, fought; ö, as in sole, only; õ, as in
fog, orange; _ö_, sound cannot be exactly represented in English.
The English sound of _u_ in _burn_ is perhaps the nearest equivalent
to _ö_; _oo_, as in cook, look; _ōō_, as in coon, moon; _u_, as in
cup, duck; _ū_, as in use, amuse; _û_, as in fur, urge; _ü_ sound
cannot be exactly represented in English. The English sound of _u_
in _luke_ and _duke_ resembles the original sound of _ü_. The letter
N represents the nasal tone of the preceding vowel, as in _encore_
(_ä_N-_kōr´_).
=A=
=Aaron= (_ā´ron_ or _ar’on_).--A character in Shakespeare’s _Titus
Andronicus_, a Moor of unnatural wickedness beloved by Tamora, queen of
the Goths. The character shows originality of conception, but is
otherwise repellant.
=Abaddon= (_a-bad´on_).--The Hebrew name of an evil spirit or destroying
angel called Apollyon in Greek. In mediæval literature he is regarded as
the chief of the demons of the seventh hierarchy and the one who causes
wars and uproars. Klopstock introduced him in his _Messiah_ under the
name of Abbadona. He represents him as a fallen angel still bearing
traces of his former dignity and repenting of his part in the rebellion
against God. In Bunyan’s _Pilgrim’s Progress_ he meets and fights with
Pilgrim.
=Abdalla= (_ab-dal´ä_).--(1) The Mufti, a character in Dryden’s tragedy
_Don Sebastian_. (2) One of Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert’s slaves, in
Scott’s _Ivanhoe_. (3) Brother and predecessor of Giaffer, pasha of
Abydos, by whom he was murdered, in Byron’s _Bride of Abydos_.
=Abdiel= (_ab´di-el_).--A seraph in Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, the only
seraph who remained loyal when Satan stirred up the angels to revolt.
=Abonde= (_a-bön-de´_).--A character in French literature that
corresponds to our Santa Claus, the good fairy who comes at night,
especially New Year’s night, to bring toys to children while they sleep.
=Abu-Hassan= (_ā-bö-has´an_).--As related in the _Arabian Nights_, Abou
Hassan is a merchant of Bagdad who is carried in his sleep to the bed of
the Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid and on awaking is made to believe himself
the caliph. Twice in this way he was made to believe himself caliph and
afterward became in reality the caliph’s favorite and companion.
=Absalom and Achitophel= (_ab´sa-lom_ and _a-kit´ō-fel_).--A poetical
satire by John Dryden, directed against the political faction led by the
Earl of Shaftesbury. The names in the title are given to the duke of
Monmouth and the earl of Shaftesbury. Like Absalom, the son of David,
Monmouth was remarkable for his personal beauty, his popularity, and his
undutifulness to his father.
=Absolute, Captain.=--A character in Sheridan’s comedy, _The Rivals_. He
is distinguished for his gallant, determined spirit, his quickness of
speech, and dry humor.
=Absolute, Sir Anthony.=--An amusing character in Sheridan’s _Rivals_.
He is represented as testy, positive, impatient, and overbearing, but
yet of a warm and generous disposition.
=Acadia= (_a-kā´di-ä_), =Acadie= (_ä-kä´-dē´_).--The original, and now
the poetic, name of Nova Scotia. In 1755, the French inhabitants were
seized, forcibly removed and dispersed among the English colonists on
the Atlantic coast. Longfellow has made this event the subject of his
poem _Evangeline_.
=Acrasia= (_a-krā´zi-ä_).--In Spencer’s _Faërie Queene_, a witch
represented as a lovely and charming woman, whose dwelling is the Bower
of Bliss, which is situated on an island floating in a lake or gulf, and
is adorned with everything in nature that can delight the senses. The
word signifies intemperance. She is the personification of sensuous
indulgence and intoxication. Sir Guyon, who illustrates the opposite
virtue, is commissioned by the fairy queen to bring her into subjection,
and to destroy her residence.
=Acres, Bob.=--A character in Sheridan’s _The Rivals_, celebrated for
his cowardice and his peculiar method of allegorical swearing.
=Adam.=--(1) Adam is a character frequently alluded to in the _Talmud_.
Many strange legends are related of him. He was buried, so Arabian
tradition says, on Aboncais, a mountain of Arabia. (2) In _As You Like
It_, Shakespeare, he is an aged servant to Orlando and offers to
accompany Orlando in his flight and to share with him his
carefully-hoarded savings of five hundred pounds. (3) In Shakespeare’s
_Comedy of Errors_, Adam is an officer known by his dress, a skin-coat.
=Adamastor= (_ad-am-ȧs´tor_).--The phantom of the Cape of Good Hope in
the _Lusiad_: a terrible spirit described by Camoens as appearing to
Vasco da Gama and prophesying the misfortunes which should fall upon
other expeditions to India.
=Adam Bede= (_bēd_).--A novel by George Eliot, the chief character of
which is a young carpenter, a keen and clever workman, somewhat
sharp-tempered and with a knowledge of some good books. He has an alert
conscience, good common sense and “well-balanced shares of
susceptibility and self-control.” He loves Hetty Sorrel, but finally
marries Dinah Morris.
=Adams, Parson.=--A character in Fielding’s story of _Joseph Andrews_,
distinguished for his goodness of heart, poverty, learning, and
ignorance of the world, combined with courage, modesty, and a thousand
oddities.
=Adonais= (_ad-ō-nā´is_).--An elegiac poem by Shelley, commemorating the
death of Keats. The name was coined by Shelley probably to hint an
analogy between Keats’ fate and that of Adonis.
=Advancement of Learning, The.=--A prose treatise by Francis, Lord
Bacon, which contains not only the germ of his Latin work, _De Augmentis
Scientiarum_, but really the pith and marrow of the Baconian philosophy,
if taken in connection with the second book of the _Novum Scientiarum
Organum_. An analysis of the work may be read in Hazlitt’s _Lectures on
the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth_.
=Æneid= (_ē-nē´id_), or =Æneis= (_-is_).--An epic poem, in twelve books,
by Vergil, recounting the adventures of Æneas after the fall of Troy,
founded on the Roman tradition that Æneas settled in Latium and became
the ancestral hero of the Roman people. The hero, driven by a storm on
the coast of Africa, is hospitably received by Dido, queen of Carthage,
to whom he relates the fall of Troy and his wanderings. An attachment
between them is broken by the departure of Æneas, in obedience to the
will of the gods, and the suicide of Dido follows. After a visit to
Sicily, Æneas lands at Cumæ in Italy. In a descent to the infernal
regions he sees his father, Anchises, and has a prophetic vision of the
glorious destiny of his race as well as of the future heroes of Rome. He
marries Lavinia, daughter of Latinus, king of the Latini, and a contest
with Turnus, king of the Rutuli, the rejected suitor follows, in which
Turnus is slain. The poem is a glorification of Rome and of the Emperor
Augustus, who, as a member of the Julian gens, traced his descent from
Julus (sometimes identified with Ascanius), the grandson of Æneas.
=Agamemnon= (_ag-ȧ-mem´non)_.--The greatest of the tragedies of
Æschylus. The scene is laid in Argos, in the palace of Agamemnon, at the
time of the king’s return from the capture of Troy; the catastrophe is
the murder (behind the scenes) of Agamemnon and Cassandra (whom he has
brought captive with him) by the queen Clytemnestra, urged on by her
paramour Ægisthus.
=Agnes.=--(1) A young girl in Molière’s _L’Ecole des Femmes_, who
affects to be remarkably simple and ingenuous. The name has passed into
popular use, and is applied to any young woman unsophisticated in
affairs. (2) A strong womanly character in _David Copperfield_ who
proves a true friend to David’s “child-wife,” Dora, and to David
himself. Later Dora dies and David marries Agnes.
=Agnes, The Eve of St.=--(1) A poem by John Keats. It is characterized
by Leigh Hunt as “the most delightful and complete specimen of his
genius; ... exquisitely loving; ... young but full-grown poetry of the
rarest description; graceful as the beardless Apollo; glowing and
gorgeous with the colors of romance.” St. Agnes was a Roman virgin who
suffered martyrdom in the reign of Diocletian. (2) A poem by Tennyson,
published in 1842.
=Agapida= (_ä-gä-pē´thä_), =Fray Antonio=.--The fictitious writer to
whom Washington Irving originally attributed the authorship of the
_Conquest of Granada_.
=Agib= (_ā´gib_).--(1) The third Calendar in the story of “The Three
Calendars” in the _Arabian Nights’ Entertainments_. (2) In the story of
Noureddin Ali and Bedredden Hassan in _The Arabian Nights_, a son of
Bedredden Hassan and the Queen of Beauty.
=Agramant= (_ä´grä-mänt_).--In Boiardo’s _Orlando Innamorato_ and
Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_, the young king of Africa.
=Ague-Cheek= (_ā´gū-chēk_), =Sir Andrew=. A character in Shakespeare’s
comedy _Twelfth Night_, a timid, silly but amusing country squire, to
whom life consists only of eating and drinking. He is stupid even to
silliness, but so devoid of self-love or self-conceit that he is
delightful in his simplicity.
=Ahasuerus= (_a-haz-ū-ē´rus_).--Chief character in Sue’s _A Wandering
Jew_, the cobbler who pushed away Jesus when, on the way to execution,
He rested a moment or two at his door. “Get off! Away with you!” cried
the cobbler. “Truly, I go away,” returned Jesus, “and that quickly; but
tarry thou till I come.” And from that time Ahasuerus became the
“wandering Jew,” who still roams the earth, and will continue so to do
till the “second coming of the Lord.”
=Ahmed= (_äh´med_), or =Achmet= (_äch´met_).--In the _Arabian Nights_,
noted for a magic tent he possessed which would cover a whole army but
might be carried in the pocket. He also possessed a magic apple which
would cure all diseases.
=Aladdin= (_a-lad´in_).--In the story of “Aladdin or the Wonderful
Lamp,” in the _Arabian Nights’ Entertainments_, the son of a poor widow
in China, who becomes possessed of a magic lamp and ring which command
the services of two terrific jinns. Learning the magic power of the
lamp, by accidentally rubbing it, Aladdin becomes rich and marries the
Princess of Cathay through the agency of the “slave of the lamp” who
also builds in a night a palace for her reception. One window of this
palace was left unfinished, and no one could complete it to match the
others. Aladdin therefore directs the jinns to finish it, which is done
in the twinkling of an eye (hence the phrase “to finish Aladdin’s
window”; that is, to attempt to finish something begun by a greater
man). After many years the original owner of the lamp, a magician, in
order to recover it, goes through the city offering new lamps for old.
The wife of Aladdin, tempted by this idea, exchanges the old rusty magic
lamp for a brand new useless one (hence the phrase “to exchange old
lamps for new”), and the magician transports both palace and princess to
Africa, but the ring helps Aladdin to find them. He kills the magician,
and, possessing himself of the lamp, transports the palace to Cathay,
and at the sultan’s death succeeds to the throne.
=Al Araf= (_äl ä rȧf_).--The Mohammedan limbo, between paradise and
jehennam, for those who die without sufficient merit to deserve the
former, and without sufficient demerit to deserve the latter. Here
lunatics, idiots, and infants go at death, according to the Koran. The
subject of an uncompleted poem by Edgar A. Poe.
=Alasnam= (_a-las´nam_).--The hero of a story in the _Arabian Nights_
entitled “The History of Prince Zeyn Alasnam and the Sultan of the
Genii,” Alasnam has eight diamond statues, but had to go in quest of a
ninth more precious still, to fill the vacant pedestal. The prize was
found in the lady who became his wife, at once the most beautiful and
the most perfect of her race.
=Albracca= (_äl-bräk´kä_).--In Bojardo’s _Orlando Innamorato_, a castle
of Cathay to which Angelica retires in grief at being scorned and
shunned by Rinaldo, with whom she is deeply in love. Here she is
besieged by Agricane, King of Tartary, who resolves to win her,
notwithstanding her indifference to his suit.
=Alceste= (_äl-sest´_).--The principal character in Molière’s comedy
_The Misanthrope_: a disagreeable but upright man who scorns the
civilities of life and the shams of society.
=Alcina= (_äl-che´na_).--A fairy, the embodiment of carnal delights, in
Boiardo’s _Orlando Innamorato_ and Ariosoto’s _Orlando Furioso_ the
sister of Logistalla (reason) and Morgana (lasciviousness). When tired
of her lovers she changed them into trees, beasts, etc., and was
finally, by means of a magic ring, displayed in her real senility and
ugliness. Compare _Acrasia_, _Armida_, and _Circe_.
=Aldine= (_al´din_) =Press=.--The press established at Venice by Aldus
Manutius. See _Manutius_.
=Aldingar= (_al´ding-gär_), =Sir=.--A character in Percy’s _Reliques_.
This ballad relates how the honor of Queen Elianor, wife of Henry
Plantagenet, impeached by Sir Aldingar, her steward, was submitted to
the chance of a duel, and how an angel, in the form of a little child,
appeared as her champion, and established her innocence.
=Alhambra= (_al-ham´brä_).--A volume of legends and descriptive sketches
by Washington Irving. “The account of my midnight rambles about the old
place,” says the author, “literally true, yet gives but a feeble idea of
my feelings and impressions, and of the singular haunts I was exploring.
Everything in the work relating to myself and to the actual inhabitants
of the Alhambra is unexaggerated fact; it was only in the legends that I
indulged in _romancing_, and these were founded on material picked up
about the place.”
=Ali Baba= (_ä´lē bä´bä_).--A character in _The Arabian Nights’
Entertainments_, in the story “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” a poor
wood-cutter who, concealed in a tree, sees a band of robbers enter a
secret cavern, and overhears the magic words “open sesame” which opens
its door. After their departure he repeats the spell and the door opens,
disclosing a room full of treasures with which he loads his asses and
returns home. His brother Cassim, who discovers his secret, enters the
cave alone, forgets the word “sesame,” and is found and cut to pieces by
the robbers. The thieves, discovering that Ali Baba knows their secret,
resolve to kill him, but are outwitted by Morgiana, a slave.
=Alice in Wonderland.=--A little girl through whose dream pass the
scenes of _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_ and _Behind the
Looking-glass_, two popular stories for children by Lewis Carroll
(Charles Dodgson). They have been translated into several European
languages.
=Alice Brand.=--In Scott’s _Lady of the Lake_, Alice signed Urgan the
dwarf thrice with the sign of the cross, and he became “the fairest
knight in all Scotland”; when Alice recognized in him her own brother.
=Allan-a-Dale.=--A friend of Robin Hood’s in the ballad. He is
introduced into Sir Walter Scott’s _Ivanhoe_ as Robin Hood’s minstrel.
=All’s Well That Ends Well.=--A comedy by Shakespeare. The hero and
heroine are Bertram, Count of Roussillon, and Helena, a physician’s
daughter, who are married by the command of the king of France, but part
because Bertram thought the lady not sufficiently well-born for him.
Bertram flees to Florence, but, ultimately, Helena wins his love and all
ends well.
=Allworthy, Mr.=--In Fielding’s novel of _Tom Jones_, a man of amiable
and benevolent character; intended for Mr. Ralph Allen, who was also
celebrated by Pope.
=Almighty Dollar.=--A personification of American worship. Washington
Irving originated the phrase in _The Creole Village_.
=Alp.=--_Siege of Corinth_, Byron. The hero of this poem.
=Amadis de Gaul.=--The hero of an ancient and celebrated Portuguese
romance.
=Amanda= (_a-man´dä_).--A young woman who impersonates Spring in
Thomson’s _Seasons_.
=Amaryllis=, =Amarillis= (_am-a-ril´is_).--In Spenser’s pastoral _Colin
Clout’s Come Home Again_, is the countess of Derby. Her name was Alice,
and she was the youngest of the six daughters of Sir John Spenser, of
Althorpe, ancestor of the noble houses of Spenser and Marlborough. After
the death of the earl, the widow married Sir Thomas Egerton, keeper of
the great seal (afterward baron of Ellesmere and viscount Brackley). It
was for this very lady, during her widowhood, that Milton wrote his
_Arcades_.
=Ambrose.=--A sharper in Lesage’s _Gil Blas_, who assumed in the
presence of Gil Blas the character of a devotee. He was in league with a
fellow who assumed the name of Don Raphael, and a young woman who called
herself Camilla, cousin of Donna Mencia. These three sharpers allure Gil
Blas to a house which Camilla says is hers, fleece him of his ring, his
portmanteau, and his money, decamp, and leave him to find out that the
house is only a hired lodging.
=Amelia= (_a-mē´liä_).--The title of one of Fielding’s novels, and the
name of its heroine, who is distinguished for her tenderness and
affection. The character of Amelia is said to have been drawn from
Fielding’s wife.
=Amine= (_ä-mēn´_).--In _Arabian Nights_ a female character who leads
her three sisters by her side as a leash of hounds.
=Aminte= (_ä-mant´_).--_Les Précieuses Ridicules_, Molière. A
contradictory character in this comedy. She dismisses her admirers for
proposing to marry her, scolds her uncle for not carrying himself as a
gentleman, and marries a valet whom she believes to be a nobleman.
=Amlet= (_am´let_).--The name of a gamester in Vanbrugh’s
_Confederacy_. =Amoret= (_am´ō-ret_).--(1) The name of a lady married
to Sir Scudamore, in Spenser’s _Faërie Queene_. She is the type of a
devoted, loving wife. (2) The heroine of Fletcher’s pastoral drama, _The
Faithful Shepherdess_.
=Amys and Amylion.=--Two faithful friends. The Pylades and Orestes of
the feudal ages. Their adventures are the subjects of ancient romances.
=Ancient Man.=--In Tennyson’s _Idylls of the King_, means Merlin, the
old magician, King Arthur’s protector and teacher.
=Ancient Mariner, The.=--A poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The hero, an
ancient mariner “with a long gray beard and glittering eye,” suffers
terrible evils, and likewise inflicts them on his companions, from
having shot an albatross, a bird of good omen. All his comrades perish
of hunger, but, as he repents, he is permitted to regain the land. At
intervals his agony returns, and he is driven from place to place to
ease his soul by confessing his crime and sufferings to his fellows, and
enforcing upon them a lesson of love for “all things, both great and
small.”
“_The Ancient Mariner_,” says Swinburne, “is perhaps the most wonderful
of all poems. In reading it we seem rapt into that paradise revealed by
Swedenborg, where music and color and perfume were one, where you could
see the hues and hear the harmonies of heaven. For absolute melody and
splendor it were hardly rash to call it the first poem in the language.”
=Andrews, Joseph.=--The hero in Fielding’s novel by the same name,
written to ridicule Richardson’s _Pamela_. Fielding presents Joseph
Andrews as a brother to the modest and prudish Pamela, and pictures him
as a model young man.
=Angelica= (_an-jel´i-kä_).--(1) In Bojardo’s _Orlando Innamorato_, is
daughter of Galaphron, king of Cathay. She goes to Paris, and Orlando
falls in love with her, forgetful of wife, sovereign, country and glory.
Angelica, on the other hand, disregards Orlando, but passionately loves
Rinaldo, who positively dislikes her. Angelica and Rinaldo drink of
certain fountains, when opposite effects are produced in their hearts,
for then Rinaldo loves Angelica, while Angelica loses all love for
Rinaldo. (2) The heroine of Congreve’s comedy of _Love for Love_; in
love with Valentine, but the ward of Sir Sampson Legend, who seeks to
marry her. She jilts the old man, however, and marries the younger
lover. Angelica is supposed to represent Mrs. Bracegirdle; Valentine the
author himself who was enamoured of the actress, and was the rival of
the dramatist, Rowe, in her affections. (3) The heroine of Ariosto’s
_Orlando Furioso_. She was beloved by Orlando, but married Medoro. Also
the name of the heroine of Farquhar’s plays of the _Constant Couple_,
and _Sir Harry Wildair_.
=Angelic Doctor.=--A name bestowed upon Thomas Aquinas, because he
discussed the knotty point of “how many angels can dance on the point of
a needle.”
=Angelo= (_an´je-lō_).--A character in Shakespeare’s _Measure for
Measure_; also the name of a goldsmith in _the Comedy of Errors_.
=Angiolina.=--The wife of the doge of Venice, in Byron’s _Marino
Faliero_.
=Anna Karénina= (_än´nä kä-rā´nē-nä_).--A novel of Tolstoy, perhaps the
most representative of his works. It first appeared serially, but with
long intervals, in a Moscow review, and was published in 1877.
=Annabel Lee.=--The title and subject of a poem by Edgar Allan Poe,
which begins--
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee.
=Anne.=--Perrault’s _La Barbe Bleue_, the sister of Fatima, the seventh
and last wife of Bluebeard. Fatima, having disobeyed her lord by looking
into the locked chamber, is allowed a short respite before execution.
Sister Anne ascends the high tower of the castle, with the hope of
seeing her brothers, who were expected to arrive every moment. Fatima,
in her agony, keeps asking “sister Anne” if she can see them, and
Bluebeard keeps crying out for Fatima to use greater dispatch. As the
patience of both is exhausted the brothers arrive, and Fatima is rescued
from death.
=Annie Laurie=, eldest of the three daughters of Sir Robert Laurie, of
Maxwelton. In 1709 she married James Fergusson, of Craigdarroch, and was
the mother of Alexander Fergusson, the hero of Burns’ song _The
Whistle_. The song of _Annie Laurie_ was written by William Douglas, of
Fingland, in the stewardy of Kirkcudbright, hero of the song _Willie Was
a Wanton Wag_.
=Antipholus of Ephesus= (_an-tif´ō-lus ov ef´e-sus_), and =Antipholus of
Syracuse= (_sir´a-kūs_).--Twin brothers, sons to Ægeon and Æmilia, in
Shakespeare’s _Comedy of Errors_.
=Antonio= (_än-tō´nē-ō_).--(1) The merchant of Venice in Shakespeare’s
play of that name, the friend of Bassanio, and the object of Shylock’s
hatred. (2) The usurping Duke of Milan, and brother to Prospero, in
Shakespeare’s _Tempest_. (3) The father of Proteus, in Shakespeare’s
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_. (4) A minor character in Shakespeare’s _Much
Ado About Nothing_. (5) A sea captain, friend to Sebastian, in
Shakespeare’s _Twelfth Night_.
=Antony and Cleopatra.=--Historical tragedy by Shakespeare which may be
considered as a continuation of _Julius Cæsar_. In the opening scene of
_Julius Cæsar_ absolute power is lodged in one man. In the conclusion of
_Antony and Cleopatra_ a second Cæsar is again in possession of absolute
power, and the entire Roman world is limited under one imperial ruler.
There are four prominent characters in this play: Cleopatra, voluptuous,
fascinating, gross in her faults, but great in the power of her
affections; Octavius Cæsar, cool, prudent, calculating, avaricious;
Antony, quick, brave, reckless, prodigal; Enobarbus, a friend of Antony,
at first jocular and blunt, but transformed by penitence into a
grief-stricken man who dies in the bitterness of despair.
=Apocalypse.=--The Greek name of the last book of the Testament, termed
in English _Revelation_. It has been generally attributed to the Apostle
St. John, but some wholly reject it as spurious. In the first centuries
many churches disowned it, and in the fourth century it was excluded
from the sacred canon by the council of Laodicea, but was again received
by other councils, and confirmed by that of Trent, held in the year
1545. Most commentators suppose it to have been written after the
destruction of Jerusalem, about A. D. 96; while others assign it an
earlier date. Its figures and symbols are impressive.
=Apocrypha= (_a-pok´ri-fä_).--The word originally meant secret or
hidden, and it is said that books of the _Apocrypha_ are not found in
either the Chaldean or the Hebrew language. These books were not in the
Jewish canon, but they were received as canonical by the Catholic
church, by the council of Trent. The apocryphal writings are ten in
number: _Baruch_, _Ecclesiasticus_, _Wisdom of Solomon_, _Tobit_,
_Judith_, two books of the _Maccabees_, _Song of the Three Children_,
_Susannah_, and _Bell and the Dragon_. Their style proves that they were
a part of the Jewish-Greek literature of Alexandria, within three
hundred years before Christ; and as the Septuagint Greek version of the
Hebrew Bible came from the same quarter, it was often accompanied by
these Greek writings, and they gained a general circulation. No trace of
them is found in the Talmud; they are mostly of legendary character, but
some of them are of value for their historical information, their moral
and maxims, and for the illustrations they give of ancient life.
=Apologia pro Vita Sua:= “Being a History of His Religious Opinions,”
published by John Henry Newman. The _Apologia_ will probably never be
equaled as a specimen of acute self-analysis. The only subsequent work
of a similar nature with which it can be compared or associated is Mr.
Gladstone’s _Chapter of Autobiography_, which was designed to defend the
consistency of his action in reference to the Irish church.
=Arabian Nights Entertainments=, consisting of one thousand and one
stories, told by the sultana of the Indies to divert the sultan from the
execution of a bloody vow he made to marry a lady every day and have her
head cut off next morning, to avenge himself for the disloyalty of the
first sultana. The story on which all the others hang is familiar.
Scheherezade, the generous, beautiful young daughter of the vizier, like
another Esther, resolves to risk her life in order to save the poor
maidens of her city, whom the sultan is marrying and beheading at the
rate of one a day. She plans to tell an interesting story each night to
the sultan, breaking off in a very exciting place in order that the
sultan may be tempted to spare her life so that he may hear the sequel.
=Aram= (_ā´ram_), =Eugene.=--A romance by Lord Lytton, founded on the
story of the Knaresborough schoolmaster who committed a murder under
peculiar circumstances.
=Archimage= (_är´ki-māj_), or =Archimago= (_är-ki-mā´gō_).--A character
in Spenser’s _Faërie Queene_, a hypocrite or deceiver. He is opposed to
holiness embodied in the Red Cross Knight, wins the confidence of the
knight in the disguise of a reverend hermit, and by the help of Duessa,
or Deceit, separates him from Una, or Truth.
=B=
=Barons’ Wars, The.=--An historical poem, in six books, by Michael
Drayton. “In some historic sketches,” says Campbell, “he reaches a
manner beyond himself. The pictures of Mortimer and the queen, and of
Edward’s entrance into the castle, are splendid and spirited.”
=Bartholomew= (_bär-thol´ō-mū_) =Fair.=--A comedy by Ben Jonson,
valuable for its lively pictures of the manners of the times. It is
chiefly remarkable for the exhibition of odd humors and tumblers’
tricks.
=Basilisco= (_bas-i-lis´kō_).--_Soliman and Perseda_, old play. A
boasting knight who became so popular with his foolish bragging that his
name grew into a proverb.
=Bassanio= (_ba-sä´ni-ō_).--_Merchant of Venice_, Shakespeare. The lover
of Portia who won her when he chose a leaden casket in which her
portrait was hidden.
=Bath, Major.=--_Amelia_, Henry Fielding. A noble-minded gentleman,
pompous in spite of poverty, and striving to live according to the
“dignity and honor of man.” He tries to hide his poverty under bold
speech even when found doing menial service.
=Battle, Sarah.=--_Essays of Elia_, Lamb. Sarah considered whist the
business of life and literature one of the relaxations. When a young
gentleman, of a literary turn, said to her he had no objection to unbend
his mind for a little time by taking a hand with her, Sarah declared,
“Whist was her life business; her duty; the thing she came into the
world to do. She unbent her mind afterward over a book.”
=Beatrice= (_bē´a-tris_, or _-trēs_).--_Divine Comedy_, Dante. Daughter
of an illustrious family of Florence for whom Dante had a great love. In
his poem she is represented as being his guide through paradise.
Beatrice is also the name of the heroine of Shakespeare’s _Much Ado
About Nothing_.
=Beauty and the Beast.=--Fairy tale by Mme. Villeneuve. Oft repeated in
stories for children, _Beauty and the Beast_ are known in many forms. In
the original tale young and lovely Beauty saved the life of her father
by putting herself in the power of a frightful but kind-hearted monster,
whose respectful affection and deep melancholy finally overcame her
aversion to his hideousness, and induced her to consent to marry him. By
her love Beast was set free from enchantment and allowed to assume his
own form, a handsome and graceful young prince.
=Bede, Adam.=--_Adam Bede_, George Eliot. An ideal workman, hero of the
novel.
=Bedivere= (_bed´i-vēr_).--_Tales of the Round Table_. Bedivere was the
last knight of King Arthur’s Round Table.
=Beggar’s Opera, The=, by John Gay, first acted at Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
in 1727, is the first, and perhaps the best, specimen of English ballad
opera. It was acted in London amid unprecedented applause, and obtained
scarcely less popularity through the provinces. It was said that it made
Rich, the manager, gay; and Gay, the poet, rich. Hazlitt says of the
_Opera_, that “it is indeed a masterpiece of wit and genius, not to say
of morality.”
=Belarius= (_be-lā´ri-us_).--A nobleman and soldier in the army of
Cymbeline, king of Britain.
=Belch= (_belch_), =Sir Toby.=--_Twelfth Night_, Shakespeare. Uncle to
Olivia, a jolly, carefree fellow, type of the roysterers of Queen
Elizabeth’s days.
=Belinda= (_be-lin´dä_).--_Rape of the Lock_, Pope. Poetical name of the
heroine, whose real name was said to be Arabella Fermor. In a frolic
Lord Petre cut a lock from the lady’s hair. This was so much resented
that it broke the great friendship between the two families. The poem,
_Rape of the Lock_, was written to bring the people into a better temper
and lead to reconciliation. Belinda is also the name of the heroine in a
novel written by Maria Edgeworth.
=Bell, Adam.=--_Old Ballad._ A famous wild outlaw belonging to the north
country and celebrated for his skill as an archer.
=Bell, Laura.=--_Pendennis_, Thackeray. One of the sweetest heroines in
English literature.
=Bellman.=--_L’Allegro_, Milton. The watchman who patrolled the streets
and called out the hour of night. Sometimes he repeated scraps of pious
poetry in order to charm away danger.
=Bell-the-Cat.=--Name given to a nobleman at Lauder, Scotland, early in
the sixteenth century. King James II. called an assembly of Scottish
barons to resist a threatened invasion of his realm by Edward IV. of
England. After long discussion one of the barons related the nursery
tale of a convention of mice in which it was proposed to hang a bell on
the cat’s neck, to give warning of her presence. No one would serve on
the mouse committee. To the story Archibald Douglas responded by saying,
“I will bell the cat,” and was afterward known by the name,
Bell-the-Cat.
=Belphœbe= (_bel-fē´bē_).--_Faërie Queene_, Spenser. A delicate and
graceful flattery offered to Queen Elizabeth through the huntress,
Belphœbe, intended as a likeness of the queen. The name taken from
belle, meaning beautiful, and Phœbe, a name sometimes bestowed on Diana.
=Belvawney, Miss.=--_Nicholas Nickleby_, Dickens. She belonged to the
wonderful Portsmouth theater, always took the part of a page and gloried
in silk stockings.
=Belvidera= (_bel-vē-dā´rä_).--_Venice Preserved_, Otway. The beautiful
heroine of the almost forgotten tragedy. Sir Walter Scott said “more
tears have been shed, probably, for the sorrows of Belvidera and Monimia
than for those of Juliet and Desdemona.”
=Benedick= (_ben´ē-dik_).--_Much Ado About Nothing_, Shakespeare. A
young lord of Padua who is gentleman, wit, and soldier. He was a
pronounced bachelor, but after a courtship full of witty sayings and
coquetry he marries the lovely Beatrice. From this gentleman comes the
name Benedick or Benedict, applied to married men who were not going to
marry.
=Benengeli= (_ben-en-gē´lē_), =Cid Hamet.=--_Don Quixote_, Cervantes.
Supposed to be a writer of chronicles among the Moors and claimed as
authority for the tales of adventure recorded by Cervantes. The name,
Cid Hamet, has been often quoted by writers.
=Ben Hur.=--A novel by General Lew Wallace. Messala, the Roman playmate
and young friend of Ben Hur, afterward became his remorseless enemy.
Ambitious, hard, and cruel, when he came into power he made Ben Hur a
galley slave, confiscated his property and imprisoned the mother and
sister. Ben Hur escaped, returned later as a wealthy Roman, and entered
in the famous chariot race against Messala, who had put up enormous sums
in wagers. Messala recognized Ben Hur, and hoped to win the race and
bring him to final ruin; but Messala himself was thrown and seriously
injured. His cruelties were made known, and he was at last slain by his
wife, Isas, the daughter of Balthasar.
=Bennet, Mrs.=--_Amelie_, Fielding. An improper character.
=Benvolio= (_ben-vō´li-ō_).--_Romeo and Juliet_, Shakespeare. One of
Romeo’s friends who would “quarrel with a man that had a hair more or a
hair less in his beard than he had.” Mercutio says to him, “Thou hast
quarreled with a man for coughing in the street.”
=Beowulf= (_bā´ō-wulf_).--The name of an Anglo-Saxon epic poem of the
sixth century. It received its name from Beowulf, who delivered
Hrothgar, King of Denmark, from the monster Grendel. This Grendel was
half monster and half man, and night after night stole into the king’s
palace, called Heorot, and slew sometimes as many as thirty of the
sleepers at a time. Beowulf put himself at the head of a mixed band of
warriors, went against the monster and slew it. This epic is very
Ossianic in style, full of beauties, and most interesting.
=Bertram= (_ber´tram_).--_Guy Mannering_, Scott. The character was
suggested by James Annesley, Esq., rightful heir of the earldom of
Anglesey, of which he was dispossessed by his uncle Richard. He died in
1743. Bertram was also the name of the haughty and dissolute count,
husband of Helena in Shakespeare’s comedy _All’s Well That Ends Well_.
=Bianca= (_bi-an´kä_).--(1) The youngest daughter of Baptista of Padua,
as gentle and meek as her sister Katherine was violent and irritable.
(2) The sweetheart, “almost” wife of Cassio, in Shakespeare’s _Othello_.
=Biglow Papers, The.=--A series of satirical poems, in the quaint Yankee
dialect, ascribed to a certain Hosea Biglow, but really written by the
American poet, James Russell Lowell.
=Birch, Harvey.=--_The Spy_, Cooper. The chief character of the novel.
=Biron= (_bē-rôn´_).--_Love’s Labor’s Lost_, Shakespeare. A merry madcap
young lord, in attendance on Ferdinand, king of Navarre.
=Black-Eyed Susan.=--_Ballad_, John Gay. The heroine of the popular sea
song.
=Black Knight of the Black Lands.=--Sir Peread. Called by Tennyson
_Night_ or _Nox_. He was one of the four brothers who kept the passages
of Castle Dangerous, and was overthrown by Sir Gareth. _Idylls_ (_Gareth
and Lynette_).
=Blatant Beast.=--_Faërie Queene_, Spenser. A bellowing monster typical
of slander; or, an impersonation of what we now call _Vox Populi_, or
the _Voice of the People_.
=Bleak House.=--A novel by Charles Dickens, the title of which was
suggested, it is said, by the situation of a certain tall brick house at
Broadstairs, which stands high above and far away from the remainder of
the town, and in which the author resided for several seasons.
=Blimber= (_blim´er_), =Miss Cornelia.=--_Dombey and Son_, Dickens. The
daughter of Dr. Blimber, the head of a first-class educational
establishment conducted on the forcing, or cramming, principle. She is a
very learned, grave, and precise young lady, “no light nonsense about
her,” who has become “dry and sandy with working in the graves of
deceased languages.”
=Blithedale= (_blīth´dāl_) =Romance, The.=--A story by Nathaniel
Hawthorne, founded on the author’s experience as a member of the Brook
Farm community. “Its predominant idea,” says R. H. Hutton, “is to
delineate the deranging effect of an absorbing philanthropic idea on a
powerful mind; the unscrupulous sacrifices of personal claims which it
induces, and the misery in which it ends. There is scarcely one
_incident_ in the tale properly so called except the catastrophe.”
=Blowzelinda= (_blou-ze-lin´dä_), or =Blowsalinda=
(_blou-za-lin´dä_).--_Shepherd’s Week_, John Gay. The country girl,
heroine of this pastoral poem, written more than one hundred and fifty
years ago, but quoted as a picture of the poverty and rudeness of rural
life at that time.
=Bobadil= (_bob´a-dil_), =Captain.=--_Every Man in His Humor_, Jonson. A
boasting coward, who passes himself off with young and simple people for
a Hector.
=Bœuf, Front de= (_beuf, fron du_).--_Ivanhoe_, Scott. One of King
John’s followers. A ferocious scoundrel.
=Bois-Guilbert= (_bwa´gel-bär´_), =Brian de.=--_Ivanhoe_, Scott. A brave
but cruel, crafty, and dissolute commander of the Knights Templar.
=Boniface= (_bon´i-fās_).--_The Beaux’s Stratagem_, Farquhar. A fine
representation of an English landlord. Hence applied to landlords
generally.
=Bontemps= (_bôn-ton´_), =Roger.=--_Song_, Beranger. Known in France as
the personification of care-free leisure. The equivalent, among the
French peasantry, for the English proverb, “There’s a good time coming,”
is _Roger Bontemps_. This one of Beranger’s most celebrated songs was
written in 1814.
=Bottom, Nick.=--_A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Shakespeare. A man who
fancies he can do everything, and do it better than anyone else.
Shakespeare has drawn him as profoundly ignorant and with an overflow of
self-conceit. Oberon, the fairy king, desiring to punish Titania, his
queen, commissioned Puck to watch her till she fell asleep, and then to
anoint her eyelids with the juice of a plant called “love-in-idleness,”
the effect of which, when she awoke, was to make her dote upon Bottom,
upon whom Puck had fixed an ass’s head.
=Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Le= (_bōōr-zhwä´ zhon-tē-yōm´ lû_).--A comedy by
Molière, with music by Lulli, produced in 1670. The hero is a tradesman,
M. Jourdain, who is ambitious to marry his daughter to a titled husband.
=Bowling, Tom.=--_Roderick Random_, Smollett. A name made almost famous
as hero of the novel. Critics have said, “The character of Tom Bowling,
in _Roderick Random_ will be regarded in all ages as a happy exhibition
of those naval heroes to whom Britain is indebted for so much of her
happiness and glory.” The Tom Bowling referred to in Dibdin’s famous sea
song was Captain Thomas Dibdin, brother of Charles Dibdin, who wrote the
song.
=Boz= (_boz_), =Sketches by.=--By Charles Dickens. They were the first
of their class. Dickens was the first to unite the delicately playful
thread of Charles Lamb’s street musings--half experiences, half bookish
fantasies--with the vigorous wit and humor and observation of
Goldsmith’s _Citizen of the World_, his _Indigent Philosopher_, and _Man
in Black_, and twine them together in the golden cord of essay, which
combines literature with philosophy, humor with morality, amusement with
instruction. The most powerful and popular of the sketches are probably
those entitled, _A Visit to Newgate_, _The Drunkard’s Death_, _Election
for Beadle_, _Greenwich Fair_, and _Miss Evans at the Eagle_.
=Bracebridge Hall=, or _The Humorists_.--Miscellaneous sketches, in
fiction and essay, by Washington Irving, published in 1822.
=Brag, Jack.=--_Jack Brag_, Theodore Hook. Hero of the novel and a
spirited embodiment of the arts employed by a vulgar pretender to creep
into aristocratic society, and of his ultimate discomfiture. General
Burgoyne figures in an old ballad known as _Sir Jack Brag_.
=Bramble, Matthew.=--_Humphrey Clinker_, Smollett. Noted character in
the novel described as “an odd kind of humorist,” afflicted with the
gout, and “always on the fret,” but full of generosity and benevolence.
=Brass, Sally, and Sampson.=--_Old Curiosity Shop_, Dickens. Brother and
sister, well mated, he a shystering lawyer and she getting ahead of him
in villainy. Sampson was dishonest, sentimental, and affected in manner,
and both are interesting characters to read about.
=Brentford= (_brent´fōrd_), =The Two Kings of.=--_The Rehearsal_,
Villiers. Much question has been raised as to who was to be ridiculed
under these characters. The royal brothers, Charles II. and James II.,
have been suggested; others say the fighting kings of Granada. In the
farce the two kings are represented as walking hand in hand, as dancing
together and singing in concert.
=Briana= (_brī-ā´nä_).--Spenser’s _Faërie Queene_. The lady of a castle
who demanded for toll the locks of every lady and the beard of every
knight that passed. This toll was established because Sir Crudor, with
whom she was in love, refused to marry her till she had provided him
with human hair sufficient to purfle a mantle with. Sir Crudor, having
been overthrown in knightly combat by Sir Calidore, who refused to give
the passage pay, is made to release Briana from the condition imposed on
her, and Briana swears to discontinue the discourteous toll.
=Brick, Jefferson.=--In Dickens’ _Martin Chuzzlewit_. A very weak, pale
young man, the war correspondent of the _New York Rowdy Journal_, of
which Colonel Diver was editor.
=Bride of Abydos, The.=--A Turkish tale, told in octosyllabic verse by
Lord Byron, and published in 1813. It is in two cantos, and opens with
the well-known song imitated from Goethe, beginning: “Know ye the land
where the cypress and myrtle.” The name of the “bride” is Zuleika, and
that of her lover, Selim.
=Bride of Lammermoor, The.=--A romance of Sir Walter Scott, published in
1819, and characterized as a tragedy of the highest order, uniting
excellence of plot with Scott’s usual merits of character and
description.
=Brook Farm.=--The full name was “Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture
and Education,” a stock company of nearly seventy members, located on a
farm of two hundred acres at West Roxbury, Mass. Among the members were
George Ripley, Charles A. Dana, George William Curtis, Margaret Fuller
and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Among their frequent visitors were Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Theodore Parker, Bronson Alcott. This idyllic life lasted about
five years, from 1841 to 1846. Brook Farm was a financial failure but it
was important in intellectual results. Hawthorne has written the story
of the experiment in _Blithedale Romance_.
=Brown, Tom.=--_Tom Brown’s School Days_ and _Tom Brown at Oxford_,
Thomas Hughes. The hero of these stories of school days, a typical
English schoolboy and undergraduate.
=Brunhild= (_brön´hild_).--_Nibelungenlied._ The story of Brunhild holds
large place in ancient German romance. She was, herself, a warrior,
proud and skillful, and she promised to be the bride of the man who
could conquer her in three trials, in hurling the lance, in throwing the
stone, and in leaping after the stone when thrown. By the arts and
bravery of Siegfried, she was deluded into marrying Gunther, king of
Burgundy; but, discovering the trick, she planned and accomplished the
destruction of Siegfried, and the humiliation of Chriemhild, his wife.
=Bumble, Mr.=--_Oliver Twist_, Dickens. A pompous, disagreeable beadle,
who figures largely in the beginning of the story. The name Bumble has
since attached itself to the office.
=Bunsby= (_bunz´bi_), =Jack.=--_Dombey and Son_, Dickens. A commander of
a ship looked up to as an oracle by his friend Captain Cuttle. He is
described as wearing a “rapt and imperturbable manner,” and seeming to
be “always on the lookout for something in the extremest distance.”
=Bunthorne= (_bun´thôrn_).--_Patience_, Sullivan. A gloomy poet showing
most distinctly in his gloom surrounded by the characters of a comic
opera. He was inserted as a satire on the æsthetic craze, turning into
ridicule the imitators of Rossetti.
=Burchell= (_ber´chel_), =Mr.=--_Vicar of Wakefield_, Goldsmith. A
prominent character who passes himself off as a poor man, but is really
a baronet in disguise. He is noted for his habit of crying out “Fudge!”
by way of expressing his strong contempt for the opinions of others.
=Burd Helen.=--_Scotch Ballad._ A traditional name standing for
constancy. She was carried to England by fairies and imprisoned in a
castle. The youngest brother of the fair Burd Helen was guided by the
enchanter Merlin and accomplished the perilous task of rescuing his
sister. This is recited in the line “Childe Rowland to the dark tower
came,” quoted by Shakespeare. Only a fragment of the old ballad has been
preserved.
=Buskin.=--Tragedy. The Greek tragic actors used to wear a sandal some
two or three inches thick, to elevate their stature. To this sole was
attached a very elegant buskin.
=Buzfuz=, (_buz´fuz_) =Serjeant.=--_Pickwick Papers_, Dickens. A
pompous, chaffing lawyer, who bullies Mr. Pickwick and the witnesses in
the famous breach of promise suit, Bardell vs. Pickwick.
=Byfield.=--A New England parish, the scene of an historical novel by
John Lewis Ewell. Here lived the ancestor of Longfellow to whom the poet
dedicated _The Village Blacksmith_, himself a blacksmith, keeping his
accounts in peculiar orthography. According to the deed of sale in 1681,
the Byfield Indians got a larger price from the first English settlers
than was paid for Manhattan Island.
=C=
=Caius= (_kā´yus_), =Doctor.=--_Merry Wives of Windsor_, Shakespeare. A
physician in the comedy who adds a touch of humor. He is most
conspicuous as the lover of Anne Page.
=Calandrino= (_kä-län-drē´nō_).--A simpleton frequently introduced in
Boccaccio’s _Decameron_; expressly made to be befooled and played upon.
His mishaps, as Macaulay states, “have made all Europe merry for more
than four centuries.”
=Caleb.=--(1) The enchantress who carried off St. George in infancy. (2)
A character in Dryden’s satire of _Absalom and Achitophel_, meant for
Lord Grey, one of the adherents of the Duke of Monmouth.
=Caleb Quotem.=--A parish clerk or jack-of-all-trades, in Coleman’s play
_The Review, or Ways of Windsor_. Coleman borrowed the character from
_Throw Physic to the Dogs_, an old farce.
=Caliban= (_kal´i-ban_).--A savage and deformed slave of Prospero in
Shakespeare’s _Tempest_. He is represented as being the “freckled whelp”
of Sycorax, a foul hag, who was banished from Argier (or Algiers) to the
desert island afterward inhabited by Prospero. From his rude, uncouth
language we get the phrase “Caliban style,” “Caliban speech,” meaning
the coarsest possible use of words.
=Calidore= (_kal´i-dōr_).--A knight in Spenser’s Faërie Queene, typical
of courtesy, and said to be intended for a portrait of Sir Philip
Sidney.
=Calista.=--The name of a celebrated character in Rowe’s _Fair
Penitent_.
=Callipolis= (_ka-lip´o-lis_).--_Battle of Alcazar_, George Peele. A
character in the _Battle of Alcazar_, used by Sir Walter Scott and
others as a synonym for lady-love, sweetheart, charmer. Sir Walter
always spells the word Callipolis, but Peele calls it Calipolis.
=Calydon= (_kal´i-don_).--A forest celebrated in the romances relating
to King Arthur and Merlin.
=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= (_kä_N-_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´bo_TH-_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´_TH_ä_).--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.