Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama Part 64

Consider, sir, I pray you, how the n.o.ble Patelin, having a mind to extol to the third heavens, the father of William Josseaume, said no more than this: he did lend his goods freely to those who were desirous of them.--Rabelais, _Pantagruel_, iii. 4 (1545).

=Pater Patrum.= St. Gregory, of Nyssa is so called by the council of Nice (332-395).

=Paterson= (_Pate_), serving-boy to Bryce Snailsfoot, the pedlar.--Sir W.

Scott, _The Pirate_ (time, William III.).

=Pathfinder= (_The_), Natty b.u.mpo; also called "The Deerslayer"[TN-67]

"The Hawk-eye," and "The Trapper."--Fenimore Cooper, (five novels called _The Pathfinder_, _The Pioneers_, _The Deerslayer_, _The Last of the Mohicans_, and _The Prairie_).

=Pathfinder of the Rocky Mountains.=[TN-68] (_The_), Major-General John Charles Fremont, who conducted four exploring expeditions across the Rocky Mountains in 1842.

=Patient Griselda= or =Grisildis=, the wife of Wautier, marquis of Saluces. Boccaccio says she was a poor country la.s.s, who became the wife of Gualtiere, marquis of Saluzzo. She was robbed of her children by her husband, reduced to abject poverty, divorced, and commanded to a.s.sist in the marriage of her husband with another woman; but she bore every affront patiently, and without complaint.--Chaucer, _Canterbury Tales_ ("The Clerk's Tale," 1388); Boccaccio, _Decameron_, x. 10 (1352).

=Patience Strong.= Delightful old maid, who, after pa.s.sing most of her life in a quiet New England towns.h.i.+p, goes abroad and tells her experiences in _Sights and Insights_.--A. D. T. Whitney (1860).

She is also the central figure in a quiet story of domestic life, ent.i.tled _Patience Strong's Outings_ (1858).

=Patin=, brother of the emperor of Rome. He fights with Am'adis of Gaul, and has his horse killed under him.--Vasco de Lobeira, _Amadis de Gaul_ (thirteenth century).

=Patison=, licensed jester to Sir Thos. More. Hans Holbein has introduced this jester in his famous picture of the lord chancellor.

=Patriarch of Dorchester=,[TN-69] John White, of Dorchester, a puritan divine (1574-1648).

=Patriarchs= (_The Last of the_). So _Christopher Casby_, of Bleeding-heart Yard was called. "So grey, so slow, so quiet, so impa.s.sionate, so very b.u.mpy in the head, that patriarch was the word for him." Painters implored him to be a model for some patriarch they designed to paint. Philanthropists looked on him as famous capital for a platform. He had once been town agent in the Circ.u.mlocution Office, and was well-to-do.

His face had a bloom on it like ripe wall-fruit, and his blue eyes seemed to be the eyes of wisdom and virtue. His whole face teemed with the look of benignity. n.o.body could say where the wisdom was, or where the virtue was, or where the benignity was, but they seemed to be somewhere about him.... He wore a long wide-skirted bottle-green coat, and a bottle-green pair of trousers, and a bottle-green waistcoat. The patriarchs were not dressed in bottle-green broadcloth, and yet his clothes looked patriarchal.--C. d.i.c.kens, _Little Dorrit_ (1857).

=Patrick=, an old domestic at Shaw's Castle.--Sir W. Scott, _St. Ronan's Well_ (time, George III.).

_Patrick_ (_St._), the tutelar saint of Ireland. Born at Kirk Patrick, near Dumbarton. His baptismal name was "Succeath" ("valor in war"), changed by Milcho, to whom he was sold as a slave into "Cotharig" (four families or four masters, to whom he had been sold). It was Pope Celestine who changed the name to "Patricius," when he sent him to convert the Irish.

Certainly the most marvellous of all the miracles ascribed to the saints is that recorded of St. Patrick. "He swam across the Shannon with his head in his mouth!"

_Saint Patrick and King O'Neil._ One day, the saint set the end of his crozier on the foot of O'Neil, king of Ulster, and, leaning heavily on it, hurt the king's foot severely; but the royal convert showed no indication of pain or annoyance whatsoever.

A similar anecdote is told of St. Areed, who went to show the king of Abyssinia a musical instrument he had invented. His majesty rested the head of his spear on the saint's foot, and leaned with both his hands on the spear while he listened to the music. St. Areed, though his great toe was severely pierced, showed no sign of pain, but went on playing as if nothing was the matter.

_St. Patrick and the Serpent._ St[TN-70] Patrick cleared Ireland of vermin. One old serpent resisted, but St. Patrick overcame it by cunning. He made a box, and invited the serpent to enter in. The serpent insisted it was too small; and so high the contention grew that the serpent got into the box to prove that he was right, whereupon St.

Patrick slammed down the lid, and cast the box into the sea.

This tradition is marvellously like an incident of the _Arabian Nights'

Entertainments_. A fisherman had drawn up a box or vase in his net, and on breaking it open a genius issued therefrom, and threatened the fisherman with immediate destruction because he had been enclosed so long. Said the fisherman to the genius, "I wish to know whether you really were in that vase." "I certainly was," said the genius. "I cannot believe it," replied the fisherman, "for the vase could not contain even one of your feet." Then the genius, to prove his a.s.sertion, changed into smoke, and entered into the vase, saying, "Now, incredulous fisherman, dost thou believe me?" But the fisherman clapped the leaden cover on the vase, and told the genius that he was about to throw the box into the sea, and that he would build a house on the spot to warn others not to fish up so wicked a genius.--_Arabian Nights_ ("The Fisherman," one of the early tales).

? St. Patrick, I fear, had read the _Arabian Nights_, and stole a leaf from the fisherman's book.

_St. Patrick a Gentleman._

Oh, St. Patrick was a gentleman, Who came of dacent people ...

This song was written by Messrs. Bennet and Toleken, of Cork, and was first sung by them at a masquerade in 1814. It was afterwards lengthened for Webbe, the comedian, who made it popular.

=Patriot King= (_The_), Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751).

He hired Mallet to traduce Pope after his decease, because the poet refused to give up certain copies of a work which the statesman wished to have destroyed.

Write as if St. John's soul could still inspire, And do from hate what Mallet did for hire.

Byron, _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ (1809).

=Patriot of Humanity.= So Byron calls Henry Grattan (1750-1820).--_Don Juan_ (preface to canto vi., etc..[TN-71] 1824).

=Patron= (_The_), a farce by S. Foote (1764). The patron is Sir Thomas Lofty, called by his friends, "sharp-judging Adriel, the Muse's friend, himself a Muse," but by those who loved him less, "the modern Midas."

Books without number were dedicated to him, and the writers addressed him as the "British Pollio, Atticus, the Maecenas of England, protector of arts, paragon of poets, arbiter of taste, and sworn appraiser of Apollo and the Muses." The plot is very simple: Sir Thomas Lofty has written a play called _Robinson Crusoe_, and gets Richard Bever to stand G.o.dfather to it. The play is d.a.m.ned past redemption, and to soothe Bever, Sir Thomas allows him to marry his niece, Juliet.

Horace Walpole, earl of Orford, is the original of "Sir Thomas Lofty"

(1717-1797).

=Patten=, according to Gay, is so called from Patty, the pretty daughter of a Lincolns.h.i.+re farmer, with whom the village blacksmith fell in love.

To save her from wet feet when she went to milk the cows, he mounted her clogs on an iron eke.

The patten now supports each frugal dame, Which from the blue-eyed Patty takes its name.

Gay, _Trivia_, i. (1712).

(Of course, the word is the French _patin_, "a skate or high-heeled shoe," from the Greek, _patein_, "to walk.")

=Pattieson= (_Mr. Peter_), in the introduction of _The Heart of Midlothian_, by Sir W. Scott, and again in the introduction of _The Bride of Lammermoor_. He is a hypothetical a.s.sistant teacher at Gandercleuch, and the feigned author of _The Tales of My Landlord_, which Sir Walter Scott pretends were published by Jedediah Cleishbotham, after the death of Pattieson.

=Patton= (_Mrs._). Tailoress and talker, otherwise known as "the Widow Jim," who has all genealogy and relations.h.i.+p at her tongue's end. "She chatters all day as the swallows chatter, and you do not tire of her."--Sarah Orne Jewett, _Deephaven_ (1877).

=Patterson= (_Elizabeth_). One of the most remarkable women of this century. The beautiful daughter of a Baltimore merchant prince, she captivated Jerome Bonaparte, (then a minor, and dependent on his brother), who was visiting America. In the face of parental opposition, she married him Dec. 24, 1803. Napoleon (First Consul) promptly repudiated the marriage, ordered his brother home, and forbade all French vessels to receive as a pa.s.senger, "_the young person_ with whom Citizen Joseph has connected himself." In October, 1804, the young couple sailed for France in the s.h.i.+p _Philadelphia_, but were blown ash.o.r.e at Lewes, Del. In March, 1805, they embarked again, reaching Lisbon, April 2. Napoleon (now emperor) refused to allow them to enter France, but sent to know "what he could do for _Miss Patterson_." She replied that "Madame Bonaparte demanded her rights as one of the imperial family." The contest was unequal. She was sent back to America, and the marriage declared null and void. Her son, Jerome, was born in England, July 7, 1805. She was never allowed to see her husband again, yet her ambitious projects for "Bo," as she called her son, were unremitting until the downfall of the Bonarparte[TN-72] family. After this, she aimed to ally him with the English n.o.bility, a design thwarted by his love-match with a lovely Baltimorean. She was an able financier, and became one of the richest women in Baltimore. Retaining her mind and many traces of her extraordinary beauty to the last, she died, April 3, 1879, at the age of ninety-four.