Chapter I: The Anglo-Saxon Period, 449-1066 (3)

=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.