Adicia From brow to jaw, the steel-shod paw, The poem was written at the time Czar Nicholas II proposed the Peace Congress and the disarmament of all the powers. Adicia, in Spenser's Faerie Queene (1596) v. 8, wife of a soldan whom she incites to distress Mercilla's kingdom. Mercilla's ambassador, Samient, is sent to arrange a peace; is ignominiously thrust out of doors, and two knights are set upon her. Ill would it have fared with the lady diplomat but that the good knight Artegal comes to the rescue, defeats the assailants, and disarms Adicia of a knife with which she rushes at Samient. Adicia is metamorphosed into a tigress. The intended allegory is aimed at Philip II of Spain, prefigured by the soldan. Adicia is papist bigotry; Mercilla, Queen Elizabeth; and Samient is a composite of certain ambassadors to Holland, who, seeking peace from Philip, were by him detained as prisoners in defiance of international law. " Adlerkron, Rupert Von, hero of a novel, Cyrilla (1853), by the Baroness Tautphoeus. I happened to say that I thought Rupert von Adlerkron at once the most heroic and most lovable of modern imaginary heroes. "But," I added, laughing, "you have much to answer for in putting forth such an impossibly delightful ideal. How many girls must have fallen hopelessly in love with Rupert; and you know that your conscience must make you say, with Iago, 'There is no such man!'' I saw her glance at a miniature which hung on the wall. It represented an officer in Bavarian uniform, with brown hair and mustache, and beautiful dark blue eyes. I knew it was her husband's portrait, and ventured to say that I had always imagined he must have been something like Rupert. "Well," she answered, with a sad smile, "in his courage, and the equability and brightness of his temperament, he was like Rupert. In the forty-eight years we lived together, I never had an angry word from him."-Baroness Tautphoeus, an interview, Atlantic Monthly, July, 1894. Admirable Crichton (see CHRICH proud, reserved, sensitive and rather feeble youth, a product of the age of René and Werther; the victim alike of culture and ennui-culture without a purpose and ennui without a cause. Partly urged by restless vanity, partly in hopes of gaining an object in life, he deliberately decides to fall in love. He selects Ellenore, a Polish lady, the acknowledged mistress of the Count de P., who in her equivocal position has borne herself with such single-hearted devotion as to win a certain position. He deliberately lays siege to her, she struggles, and finally succumbs to an overwhelming passion. He, poor man, had contemplated only a brief liaison but his sense of honor will not allow him to desert Ellenore after he wearies of her. He even gives up his family, blasts all his worldly prospects, and follows the lady to Poland. At last she learns the truth; it proves her death blow, leaving Adolphe prostrated by suffering and remorse. Adon-Ai, in Lytton's romance Zanoni, a mysterious spirit of love and beauty apparently typifying pure intellect. Adonais, the name under which Shelley laments his friend Keats (1796-1821) in Adonais, an Elegy on the Death of John Keats (1821). It begins: I weep for Adonais, he is dead! Oh weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! " Shelley borrowed the name from the title of an elegy on the death of Adonis, written by Bion, a bucolic poet who flourished about B.C. 280. Bion's poem is called Adonais. This is properly an adjective meaning "of" or belonging to Adonis,' but Shelley has wrenched the word from its original use and made it a proper noun. As to his own poem, Shelley was deeply stirred by the opinion, since discredited, but then very generally entertained, that Keats's untimely death was the result of a brutal criticism of Endymion in the Quarterly Review. Shelley's lament is for the poet, not Adonbeck el Hakim the man (whom he barely knew), and for the loss that poetry, not Shelley himself, had sustained. Adonbeck el Hakim, in Scott's historical romance, The Talisman, the name assumed by Saladin when he visited Sir Kenneth's squire as a doctor. 8 Agape most elaborate of the Rowley forgeries. Æmilia, the lady Abbess in Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors (1593). A shipwreck had separated her from her husband, Ægeon, and her twin sons, both named Antipholus. At Ephesus, whither she was taken, she entered a convent and became abbess. One of her sons likewise settled in Ephesus, and, all unknown to her, was one of its wealthiest citizens. It happened that the other son and Adosinda, in Southey's epic Roderick, the Last of the Goths (1814), the daughter of the Gothic governor of Auria in Spain. Her husband and child having been massacred by the Moors, she dedicates herself to the geon simultaneously, but without work of liberating and avenging Spain. Being assigned to the captain of Alcahan's regiment, she murders him in his sleep and escapes by the assistance of Roderick in his disguise as a monk. In the great battle that resulted in the overthrow of the Moors (Canto iii) she gave the word of attack," Victory and Vengeance!" Adraste, hero of Molière's comedy, Le Sicilien ou l'Amour Peintre (1667), from whose disguise as an artist comes the sub-title of the piece. Adrastus, in Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, an Indian prince from the Ganges, an ally of the king of Egypt against the Christians. He rode an elephant and wore a serpent skin. In Book xx he is slain by Rinaldo. There is no historical basis for this character. Adrastus of Helvetia was the name of one of the Crusaders. Adriana, in Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, the wife of Antipholus of Ephesus. Adriel, in Dryden's satirical poem Absalom and Achitophel, is intended for John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave (1649-1721), author of an Essay on Poetry: Sharp-judging Adriel, the Muses' friend; That from his disobedient son were torn. Part i, 838, etc. Egeon, in Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, a merchant of Syracuse. See EMILIA. Ella, hero of a tragedy of that name by Thomas Chatterton, the knowledge of each other, arrived in Ephesus, occasioning many complications until the matter was set right at the duke's court, where the family were reunited. Etion, a character in Spenser's pastoral, Colin Clout's Come Home Again (1591), usually believed to be intended for Shakespeare: And there, though last, not least, is Ation: A gentler shepherd may nowhere be found, Whose Muse, full of high thought's invention, Doth like himself heroically sound. In similar vein Fuller speaks of the poet as "martial in the warlike sound of his surname, whence some may conjecture him of military extraction, hasti-vibrans or Shake-spear." Worthies of Warwickshire (1662). Fleay, Todd and others believe the name refers to Drayton, who published his Idea in 1593, and his Idea's Mirrour in 1594. What more natural," asks Fleay, "than to indicate Drayton by Etion, which is the synonym of Idea?" The original Etion (4th century B.C.) was a Greek painter famed for his picture of Alexander the Great's marriage. Agape, in Edmund Spenser's Faërie Queene, a fairy who, having been delivered of triplets-Priamond, Diamond, and Triamond-visited the abyss of Demogorgon to consult the three fates as to what the future held for her sons. Clotho showed her that the threads of their lives were as thin as those spun by a spider. Agape begged the sisters at least to lengthen the life threads, but they could only | which Sheridan utilized in Bob Acres. be urged to a compromise: When ye shred with fatal knife His line which is the shortest of the three, Eftsoon his life may pass into the next; And when the next shall likewise ended be, That both their lives may likewise be annext Unto the third, that his may be so trebly wext. SPENSER: Faerie Queene, iv, 2 (1590). Agatha, heroine of a poem of that name by George Eliot. Aged P., ie., Aged Parent in Dickens's novel, Great Expectations (1860), the nickname under which Wemmick playfully alluded to his father, who lived with him at the castle at Walworth, was very deaf and very proud of his son. 44 Agnes, in Molière's comedy L'École des Femmes (The School for Wives), a typical ingenue, simple, ignorant and spotless, whose name has passed into the French language as a synonym for girlish innocence, real or pretended. Arnolphe, her guardian, has brought her up as his future wife on the theory that extreme ignorance" is the only safeguard for maiden virtue and that all she needs to know is "to pray, to love me, to sew and to spin." She develops all the transparent simplicity of Miranda, although Shakespeare's more poetic theme imposed upon him a more imaginative treatment of a similar condition and character. Honest and openhearted, she is frankly inquisitive about matters she does not understand, pushes her ignorance to ridiculous extremes, rejoices with candid delight in the mere experience of being wooed, and is utterly unable to understand Arnolphe's sufferings. See ARNOLPHE, CELIMENE, PINCHWIFE. Viola is afraid of Aguecheek, but Aguecheek is still more afraid of her. Sir Toby Belch urges them both on; luckily the duel is interrupted. Ah Sin, hero of Bret Harte's humorous poem known familiarly as The Heathen Chinee, but originally published under the title Plain Language from Truthful James (1870). There is much humor in the quiet undertone of incredulous surprise and outraged moral feeling with which the Pacific coast gambler discovers that the mild-looking coolie is as great a rogue and cheat as himself. With the assistance of Mark Twain, Bret Harte in 1880 produced a play entitled "Ah Sin.' Aiglon, L' (Fr. the eaglet), a name first given by Victor Hugo to Napoleon II, i.e., the Duke of Reichstadt, son of Napoleon I and Marie Louise. Edmond Rostand took it as the title of a play (1900) of which this unfortunate lad is the hero. Brought up under the influence of Metternich at the Austrian court, every effort is made to keep him in ignorance of his father's achievements and of the possibilities that lie before him. In spite of this he learns all. attempts flight, but his fellow conspirators are scattered on the field of Wagram and he himself is taken back to die in Vienna. He Aimwell, Thomas, Viscount, in The Beaux Stratagem, a comedy by George Farquhar. Aimwell is a bankrupt nobleman who joins his friend, Francis Archer, in redeeming their fortunes by stratagem. They appear in Lichfield as master and valet. Aimwell feigns to be ill and works on the sympathies of Lady Bountiful, who, true to her name and character, removes him to her own house. Here Dorinda, her daughter, falls in love with him and he wins her as his bride. Archer meanwhile prosecutes an intrigue with a married woman, the wife of Squire Sullen, reaping nothing but temporary amusement. Airy, Sir George, in The Busybody (1709), a comedy by Mrs. Centlivre, a young gentleman, gay, generous Alastor and gallant, possessing a further virtue in an income of £4,000 a year, the wooer of Miranda. Alastor, the tutelary spirit in Shelley's Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, who drives the hero, evidently meant for Shelley himself, far from the haunts of men in wild pursuit of an unattainable ideal that had been vaguely hinted to him in dreams. He crosses the Balkans and the steppes of southern Russia. Using his cloak as a sail, he drives a small boat up one of the rivers that flow down from the Caucasus, his hair turning gray all the time, and finally dies in a spot of apparently impossible geography. The title of the poem is said to have been suggested to Shelley by his friend T. L. Peacock, who was amused," says Robert Buchanan, "to the day of his death by the fact that the public, and even the critics, persisted in assuming Alastor to be the name of the hero of the poem, whereas the Greek word 'Aháorwp signifies 'an evil genius,' and the evil genius depicted in the poem is the Spirit of Solitude." Albert, in Knowles' drama, The Beggar of Bethnal Green, the assumed name of Lord Wilfrid. Albion, in Dryden's opera of Albion and Albinus (1685), represents Charles II as Albinus represents his brother, the Duke of York, afterwards James II. While the opera was actually in rehearsal the original of Albion died. It was produced, Downes says, on a very unlucky day, being the day the Duke of Monmouth landed in the west." Albovine, hero of Sir William Davenant's Albovine, King of the Lombards (1629). He marries Rhodolinda, but shocks her on the wedding day by drinking out of the skull of her dead father. She intrigues with Paradine and incites him to slay the king. Paradine betrays the plot. Albovine fights a duel with Paradine and allows himself to be slain, whereupon the victor immolates Rhodolinda. The story is obviously taken with only a slight change of proper names from that of Albumazar (the name is that of a famous Persian astronomer, 776-885), hero of a comedy so entitled (1606) which Thomas Tomkis founded upon L'Astrologo of G. B. Della Porta. Dryden, in a prologue written for a revival of this play (1668), accused Ben Jonson of having plagiarized his Alchemist from Albumazar. The plot of Tomkis's play turns upon the complications arising from the fact that Albumazar has metamorphosed Trincalo into Antonio. See SUBTLE. Alceste, hero of Molière's comedy, The Misanthrope, a cynic whose originally generous, impulsive and sensitive nature, soured by contact with the coldness, artificiality and insincerity of conventional society, has encrusted itself behind an appearance of callous brutality. Alceste is the Hamlet of artificial eighteenth century France, a Hamlet drawn by an observer who keeps a keen eye upon the humorous possibilities of the character. Like Hamlet, too, his creator looked into his own heart to write. Alceste has much in common with Molière himself. Other originals have been suggested, especially the Duke de Montaussier, who in his native kindliness and acquired moroseness resembled both Molière and his hero. The duke, being informed that this portrait had been | drawn by Molière, went to see the play and only said, "I have no ill will against Molière, for the original of Alceste, whoever it is, must be a fine character since the portrait is one." Molière exhibited in his Misanthrope a pure and noble mind which had been sorely vexed by the sight of perfidy and malev. olence disguised under the forms of politeness. He adopts a standard of good and evil directly opposed to that of the society which surrounded him. Courtesy seems to him to be a vice, and those stern virtues which are neglected by the fops and coquettes of Paris become too exclusively the he is often ridiculous, but he is always a objects of veneration. He is often to blame, good man. MACAULAY ESSAYS, Comic Dramatists of the Restoration. Alcina, a personification of carnal licentiousness or sensuality. Bojardo Alciphron introduces her into Orlando Innamorato as a seductive fairy who carries off Astolfo. Ariosto, in Orlando Furioso, paints her in darker colors as a later Circe, living in an enchanted garden whither she decoys her lovers, and, after a brief season, converts them at her own will into trees, stones or brutes. 44 Alciphron, the chief character in Alciphron or the Minute Philosopher (1735), by Bishop George Berkeley, a dialogue on the model of Plato written with the intention to expose the weakness of infidelity," and especially directed against the Earl of Shaftesbury. The original Alciphron was a Greek rhetorician who flourished about the second century A.D. His chief literary remains are three books of letters which profess to be written by peasants, fishermen, courtesans and parasites. Alciphron, hero of The Epicurean (1837), a prose romance by Thomas Moore, a Greek youth brought up in the Epicurean school of philosophy who goes to Memphis in search of the priestly mysteries and there becomes enamoured of a young Christian girl, and the hero is thus introduced to the secret religion" which he joins. This is a prose amplification of a poem of the same name by the same author. Aldegonde, Lord St., in Benjamin Disraeli's novel Lothair (1870), a clever, witty and agreeable young nobleman into whose mouth the author puts some of his most successful epigrams. Though son and heir of a duke he is " a republican of the deepest dye" and is "opposed to all privileges and all orders of men except dukes, who were a necessity." Bored with the emptiness of an existence which he knows not how to amend, a man who in other times might have ridden beside King Richard at Ascalon, or charged with the Black Prince at Poitiers, he lounges through life in good-humored weariness of amusements which will not amuse, and outrages conventionalism by his frank contempt for humbug. A perfect specimen of a young English noble, who will not cant or lie; the wisest and truest when council or action is needed of him, yet with his fine qualities all running to waste in a world where there is no employment for them. Alden, John (1599-1687), one of the Pilgrim Fathers, a cooper who came over in the Mayflower, settled at Duxbury, and married Priscilla Mullens. According to an accredited tradition, versified by Longfellow in The Courtship of Miles Standish, Alden was deputed by Captain Standish to win the maiden for him, but she gave John to understand that he had better woo for himself and he took the hint. See STANDISH, MILES. Aldiborontiphoscophornio, a courtier in Henry Carey's burlesque drama, Chrononhotonthologos (1734). Sir Walter Scott used to call James Ballantyne, the printer, this nickname, from his pomposity and formality of speech. Aldrick, in Scott's Peveril of the Peak, the Jesuit confessor to the Countess of Derby. Aleshine, Mrs. See LECKS, MRS. Alexander the Great has figured in numerous modern dramas. The most notable examples in English literature are: (1) Alexander and Campaspe (1581), by John Lyly; (2) The Rival Queens (1677), by Nathaniel Lee; (3) Alexander the Great in Little (1837), a grand tragi-comic operatic burlesque spectacle," by T. Dibdin. Alfarata, an Indian maiden, heroine of one of the most popular songs ever produced in America-The Blue Juniata, by Mrs. Marion Dix Sullivan. The opening stanza runs thus: Wild roved an Indian girl, Bright Alfarata, Through the forest going, In waving tresses flowing. There is no great poetical merit in the lines, but they have a musical lilt which caught the public_fancy. Every one sang them; girls and mares and boats and other things feminine were called Alfarata, and the name still survives in such corruptions as Alfareta, Alfaretta and Alfretta. The Juniata (or Choniata) River, which is formed by the union of three smaller streams that rise in the Allegheny |