Part 197

=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.