Part 198

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

=Dorrit.=--See _Little Dorrit_.

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

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

=Dorastus.=--The hero of an old popular “history” or romance, upon which Shakespeare founded his _Winter’s Tale_. It was written by Robert Greene, and was first published in 1588, under the title of _Pandosto, the Triumph of Time_.

=Dorothea.=--The heroine of Goethe’s celebrated poem of _Herman und Dorothea_.

=Dory, John.=--A character in _Wild Oats_ or _The Strolling Gentleman_, a comedy by John O’Keefe.

=Dotheboys Hall= (_dö´the-boiz hâl_).--_Nicholas Nickleby_, Dickens. A school for boys kept by a Mr. Squeers, a puffing, ignorant, overbearing brute, whose system of education consisted of alternately beating and starving.

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

=Dousterswivel= (_dös´ter-swiv-el_), =Herman.=--Scott, _The Antiquary_. A German schemer, who obtains money under the promise of finding hidden wealth by a divining rod.

=Drawcansir= (_drâ´kan-ser_).--A bragging, blustering bully, in George Villiers, duke of Buckingham’s _The Rehearsal_, who took part in a battle, and killed everyone on both sides, “sparing neither friend nor foe.”

=Driver.=--_Guy Mannering_, Scott. Clerk to Mr. Pleydell, advocate, Edinburgh.

=Dromio.=--_The Brothers Dromio._ Twin brothers exactly alike, who serve two brothers exactly alike, in Shakespeare’s _Comedy of Errors_, based on the _Menæchmi_ of Plautus.

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

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

=Duessa= (_dū-es´sa_).--A foul witch, in Spenser’s _Faërie Queene_, who under the assumed name of Fidessa, and the assumed character of a distressed and lovely woman, entices the Red-cross Knight into the House of Pride.

=Duff, Jamie.=--_Guy Mannering_, Scott. The idiot boy attending Mrs. Bertram’s funeral.

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

=Dumain= (_dū-mān´_).--A lord attending on the king of Navarre in Shakespeare’s _Love’s Labor’s Lost_.

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

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

=Dundreary= (_dun-drēr´i_), =Lord.=--A grotesque character in Taylor’s comedy, _Our American Cousin_, noted for his aristocratic haughtiness of manner. The character is said to have been created by the actor Sothern.

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

=Durandarte= (_dö-rän-där´te_).--A fabulous hero of Spain. Cervantes has introduced him, in _Don Quixote_, in the celebrated adventure of the knight in the cave of Montesinos.

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

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

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

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

=E=

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

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

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

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

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

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

=Edgar=, or =Edgardo=.--Master of Ravenswood, in love with Lucy Ashton in Scott’s _Bride of Lammermoor_.

=Edith.=--The _Maid of Lorn_ in Scott’s _Lord of the Isles_, who married Ronald when peace was restored after the battle of Bannockburn.

=Edith, The Lady.=--_Ivanhoe_, Scott. Mother of Athelstane “the Unready” (thane of Coningsburgh).

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

=Edith Plantagenet= (_plan-taj´e-net_), =The Lady.=--_The Talisman_, Scott. Called “The Fair Maid of Anjou,” a kinswoman of Richard I., and attendant on Queen Berengaria.

=Edmund.=--A bastard son of Gloucester in Shakespeare’s tragedy of _King Lear_.

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

=Edward.=--_Count Robert of Paris_, Scott. Brother of Hereward, the Varangian guard. He was slain in battle.

=Edwin.=--(1) The hero of Goldsmith’s ballad entitled _The Hermit_. (2) The hero of Mallet’s ballad _Edwin and Emma_. (3) The hero of Beattie’s _Minstrel_.

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

=Egeus= (_ējē´us_).--Father of Hermia in Shakespeare’s _Midsummer Night’s Dream_.

=Eglamour.=--A character, in Shakespeare’s _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, who is an agent of Silvia in her escape.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

=Elim.=--_The Messiah_, Klopstock. The guardian angel of Libbeus the Apostle. Libbeus, the tenderest and most gentle of the apostles, at the death of Jesus also died from grief.

=Elissa.=--Step-sister of Medina and Perissa, in Spenser’s _Faërie Queene_. They could never agree upon any subject.

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

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

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

=Elspeth= (_el´speth_).--(1) A character in Sir Walter Scott’s _Antiquary_. (2) An old servant to Dandie Dinmont in Scott’s _Guy Mannering_.

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

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

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

=Emilia= (_ē-mil´i-ä_).--(1) A lady attending Hermione in Shakespeare’s _Winter’s Tale_. (2) Wife to Iago, and waiting woman to Desdemona, in the tragedy of _Othello_, a woman of thorough vulgarity and loose principles, united to a high degree of spirit, energetic feeling, strong sense, and low cunning. (3) The sweetheart of Peregrine Pickle in Smollett’s novel _The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle_.

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

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

=Endell, Martha.=--_David Copperfield_, Dickens. A poor girl, to whom Em’ly goes when Steerforth deserts her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

=Ermangarde of Baldringham, Lady.=--_The Betrothed_, Scott. Aunt of the Lady Eveline Berenger, “the Betrothed.”

=Ermeline.=--The wife of Reynard, in the tale of _Reynard the Fox_.

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

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

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

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

=Escanes= (_es´ka-nēz_).--A lord of Tyre, in Shakespeare’s _Pericles_.

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

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

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

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

=Essay on Man.=--A poem by Alexander Pope, in four epistles: _Of the Nature and State of Man With Respect to the Universe_; _Of the Nature and State of Man With Respect to Himself as an Individual_; _Of the Nature and State of Man With Respect to Society_; and _Of the Nature and State of Man With Respect to Happiness_. Its fundamental idea is to the effect that the system of the universe is a “benevolent system, in which every virtue, as well as every passion, has its object and end.”

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

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

=Estella.=--The heroine of Dickens’ novel of _Great Expectations_.

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

=Etzel= (_et´sel_), _i. e._, =Attila=.--King of the Huns, a monarch ruling over three kingdoms and more than thirty principalities; being a widower, he married Kriemhild, the widow of Siegfried. In the _Nibelungenlied_, where he is introduced, he is made very insignificant.

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

=Eulalia= (_ū-lā´li-ä_), =St.=--In the calendar of saints there is a virgin martyr called Eulalia. She was martyred by torture February 12, 308. Longfellow calls Evangeline the _Sunshine of St. Eulalia_.

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

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

=Evan Dhu M’Combich.=--_Waverley_, Scott. The foster-brother of M’Ivor.

=Evan Dhu of Lochiel.=--_Legend of Montrose_, Scott. A Highland chief in the army of Montrose.