Part 195

=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_.