Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama Part 79

Lady Carey was Elizabeth, the second of the six daughters of Sir John Spenser, of Althorpe, ancestor of the n.o.ble houses of Spenser and Marlborough.

No less praiseworthy are the sisters three, The honor of the n.o.ble family Of which I, meanest, boast myself to be, ...

Phyllis, Charyllis, and sweet Amaryllis: Phyllis the fair is eldest of the three.

Spenser, _Colin Clout's Come Home Again_ (1594).

=Phyllis and Brunetta=, rival beauties. Phyllis procured for a certain festival some marvellous fabric of gold brocade in order to eclipse her rival, but Brunetta dressed the slave who bore her train, in a robe of the same material and cut in precisely the same fas.h.i.+on, while she herself wore simple black. Phyllis died of mortification.--_The Spectator_ (1711, 1712, 1714).

=Phynnodderee=, a Manx spirit, similar to the Scotch brownie. Phynnodderee is an outlawed fairy, who absented himself from Fairy-court on the great _levee_ day of the harvest moon. Instead of paying his respects to King Oberon, he remained in the glen of Rushen, dancing with a pretty Manx maid whom he was courting.

=Physic a Farce is= (_His_). Sir John Hill began his career as an apothecary in St. Martin's Lane, London; became author, and amongst other things wrote farces. Grarrick said of him:

For physic and farces, his equal there scarce is: His farces are physic, his physic a farce is.

=Physician= (_The Beloved_), St. Luke, the evangelist (_Col._ iv. 14).

=Physicians= (_The prince of_), Avicenna, the Arabian (980-1037).

=Physigna'thos=, king of the frogs, and son of Pelus ("mud"). Being wounded in the battle of the frogs and mice by Troxartas, the mouse king, he flees ingloriously to a pool, "and half in anguish of the flight, expires" (bk. iii. 112). The word means "puffed chaps."

Great Physignathos I from Pelus' race, Begot in fair Hydromede's embrace.

Parnell, _Battle of the Frogs and Mice_, i. (about 1712).

=Pibrac= (_Seigneur de_), poet and diplomatist, author of _Cinquante Quatrains_ (1574). Gorgibus bids his daughter to study Pibrac instead of trashy novels and poetry.

Lisez-moi, comme il faut, au lieu de ces sornettes, Les _Quatrains_ de Pibrac, et les doctes _Tablettes_ Du conseiller Matthieu; l'ouvrage est de valeur, ...

_La Guide des pecheurs_ est encore un bon livre.

Moliere, _Sganarelle_, i. 1 (1660).

(Pierre Matthieu, poet and historian, wrote _Quatrains de la Vanite du Monde_, 1629.)

=Picanninies= (4 _syl._), little children; the small fry of a village.--_West Indian Negroes._

There were at the marriage the picanninies and the Joblilies, but not the Grand Panjandrum.--Yonge.

=Pic'atrix=, the pseudonym of a Spanish monk; author of a book on demonology.

When I was a student ... that same Rev. Picatrix ... was wont to tell us that devils did naturally fear the bright flashes of swords as much as he feared the splendor of the sun.--Rabelais, _Pantag'ruel_, iii. 23 (1545).

=Picciola=, flower that, springing up in the court-yard of his prison, cheers and elevates the lonely life of the prisoner whom X. B. Saintine makes the hero of his charming tale, _Picciola_ (1837).

=Piccolino=, an opera by Mons. Guiraud (1875); libretto by MM. Sardou and Nuittier. This opera was first introduced to an English audience in 1879. The tale is this: Marthe, an orphan girl adopted by a Swiss pastor, is in love with Frederic Auvray, a young artist, who "loved and left his love." Marthe plods through the snow from Switzerland to Rome to find her young artist, but, for greater security, puts on boy's clothes, and a.s.sumes the name of Piccolino. She sees Frederic, who knows her not; but, struck with her beauty, makes a drawing of her. Marthe discovers that the faithless Frederic is paying his addresses to Elena (sister of the Duke Strozzi). She tells the lady her love-tale; and Frederic, deserted by Elena, forbids Piccolino (Marthe) to come into his presence again. The poor Swiss wanderer throws herself into the Tiber, but is rescued. Frederic repents, and the curtain falls on a reconciliation and approaching marriage.

=Pickel-Herringe= (5 _syl._), a popular name among the Dutch for a buffoon; a corruption of _pickle-harin_ ("a hairy sprite"), answering to Ben Jonson's _Puck-hairy_.

=Pickle= (_Peregrine_), a savage, ungrateful spendthrift, fond of practical jokes, delighting in tormenting others; but suffering with ill temper the misfortunes which result from his own wilfulness. His ingrat.i.tude to his uncle, and his arrogance to Hatchway and Pipes, are simply hateful.--T. Smollett, _The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle_ (1751).

=Pickwick= (_Samuel_), the chief character of _The Pickwick Papers_, a novel by C. d.i.c.kens. He is general chairman of the Pickwick Club. A most verdant, benevolent elderly gentleman, who, as member of a club inst.i.tuted "for the purpose of investigating the source of the Hampstead ponds," travels about with three members of the club, to whom he acts as guardian and adviser. The adventures they encounter form the subject of the _Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club_ (1836).

The original of Seymour's picture of "Pickwick" was a Mr. John Foster (_not_ the biographer of d.i.c.kens, but a friend of Mr. Chapman's, the publisher). He lived at Richmond, and was "a fat old beau," noted for his "drab tights and black gaiters."

=Pickwickian Sense= (_In a_), an insult whitewashed. Mr. Pickwick accused Mr. Blotton of acting in "a vile and calumnious manner;" whereupon Mr.

Blotton retorted by calling Mr. Pickwick "a humbug," But it finally was made to appear that both had used the offensive words only in a parliamentary sense, and that each entertained for the other "the highest regard and esteem." So the difficulty was easily adjusted, and both were satisfied.

Lawyers and politicians daily abuse each other in a Pickwickian sense.--Bowditch.

=Pic'rochole=, king of Lerne, noted for his choleric temper, his thirst for empire, and his vast but ill-digested projects.--Rabelais, _Gargantua_, i. (1533).

Supposed to be a satire on Charles V. of Spain.

=Picrochole's Counsellors.= The duke of Smalltrash, the earl of Swashbuckler, and Captain Durtaille, advised King Picrochole to leave a small garrison at home, and to divide his army into two parts--to send one south, and the other north. The former was to take Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany (but was to spare the life of Barbarossa), to take the islands of the Mediterranean, the Morea, the Holy Land, and all Lesser Asia. The northern army was to take Belgium, Denmark, Prussia, Poland, Russia, Norway, Sweden, sail across the Sandy Sea, and meet the other half at Constantinople, when king Picrochole was to divide the nations amongst his great captains. Echephron said he had heard about a pitcher of milk which was to make its possessor a nabob, and give him for wife a sultan's daughter; only the poor fellow broke his pitcher, and had to go supperless to bed. (See BOBADIL.)--Rabelais, _Pantagruel_, i. 33 (1533).

A shoemaker bought a ha'p'orth of milk; with this he intended to make b.u.t.ter, the b.u.t.ter was to buy a cow, the cow was to have a calf, the calf was to be sold, and the man to become a nabob; only the poor dreamer cracked the jug, and spilt the milk and had to go supperless to bed.--_Pantagruel_, i. 33.

=Picts=, the Caledonians or inhabitants of Albin, _i.e._ northern Scotland. The Scots came from Scotia, north of Ireland, and established themselves under Kenneth M'Alpin in 843.

The etymology of "Picts" from the Latin _picti_ ("painted men") is about equal to Stevens's etymology of the word "brethren" from _tabernacle_ "because we breathe-therein.[TN-93]

=Picture= (_The_), a drama by Ma.s.singer (1629). The story of this play (like that of the _Twelfth Night_, by Shakespeare) is taken from the novelette of Bandello, of Piedmont, who died 1555.

=Pi'cus=, a soothsayer and augur; husband of Canens. In his prophetic art he made use of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r (_picus_), a prophetic bird sacred to Mars.

Circe fell in love with him, and as he did not requite her advances, she changed him into a woodp.e.c.k.e.r, whereby he still retained his prophetic power.

"There is Picus," said Maryx. "What a strange thing is tradition!

Perhaps it was in this very forest that Circe, gathering her herbs, saw the bold friend of Mars on his fiery courser, and tried to bewitch him, and, failing, metamorphosed him so. What, I wonder, ever first wedded that story to the woodp.e.c.k.e.r?"--Ouida, _Ariadne_, i. 11.