Abdiel killed by the King of Spain. Devoting his life to revenge he begins by accepting the advances of the lascivious queen, proceeds to slay the king, his son, and then the queen herself, and is finally slain by the King's other son, Philip. The outlines of Young's Zanga (q.v.) are evidently borrowed from Abdelazer, but Zanga keeps true to his single aim of vengeance, while Abdelazer is furthermore swayed by ambition, jealousy, and lubricity. Abdiel (Hebrew abd, servant, and 'el, God), in Milton's Paradise Lost, the one seraph who refused to join Satan's rebellion against the Almighty in Heaven. Faithful found, Among the faithless, faithful only he; Like Zophiel in the same poem he seems to have owed his introduction into the heavenly hierarchy to Milton himself. The name, indeed, may be found in I Chronicles v, 15, as the son of Guni, but thorough search has failed to reveal any mention of a seraph of this name in Biblical, Cabalistic or patriotic literature. As to the character itself Milton may have modelled it upon the herald angel Raphael in Vondel's choral drama of Lucifer. The lines quoted above apply equally well to Raphael as to Abdiel. In each case a single seraph opposes the enemy in his own palace, all undaunted by the hostile scorn of myriads. That this is no mere coincidence is shown by many other similarities between the Dutch drama and the English epic. Abellino, hero of M. G. Lewis's tale, The Bravo of Venice, a bandit who for the furtherance of his schemes assumes staccato disguises as a beggar and winds up in glory as the husband of the Doge's niece. Lewis founded his tale on a German story by Zschokke, Aballino the Great Bandit, which was adapted for the American stage by William Dunlap (1801). Other plays were also based on Zschokke. Abencerages. A powerful Moorish family whose quarrels with their rivals, the Zegris, hastened the fall of the kingdom of Granada in Spain. The love of Aben Hamad, an Abencerage, for the wife or sister of Boabdil, led, in 1485, to the slaughter of all the heads of the family in the Alhambra palace. This legend has been utilized by Chateaubriand in his romance of The Last of the Abencerages (1827). Aben Hamad, the hero, is accused of adultery with Queen Daxara and perishes with thirty-five other members of his family in a general massacre. Aben-Ezra, Raphael, in Charles Kingsley's historical novel, Hypatia, a friend of the Prefect of Alexandria. Abessa, in Spenser's Faerie Queene (1590), an impersonation in female form of abbeys, convents and monasteries. She is the daughter of Corceca ("blind-heart") and the paramour of Kirkrapine. Una on her lion, searching for the Red Cross Knight, called out to Abessa, who was so terrified at sight of the lion that she ran into the house of Blind Superstition. The lion, however, broke down the door. The allegory means that when Truth arrived the abbeys and convents became alarmed and barred her out. But that noble lion, Henry VIII, broke in as the royal advocate of the true faith. Abhorson. An executioner introduced in Measure for Measure into a single scene (Act iv, Sc. 2), who has given much food for conjecture by his principal speech: Every true man's apparel fits your thief. Abner flight from Saul when her husband Nabal refused to do so. Abigail, heroine of Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta (1591). When the house of Barabas, her father, is seized by the Christians and turned into a convent, she, at her father's command, becomes a nun in order to recoup the treasures concealed there. Her simulated conversion becomes real, she turns Christian in earnest, and Barabas goes mad, poisons her and ends by being precipitated into a boiling cauldron which he had prepared for a Turkish prince. Abner, in Racine's tragedy of Athalie, the confidential friend of Joad. It is to him that the high priest addresses the famous line: Je crains Dieu, Abner, et n'ai point autre crainte. (I fear God, Abner, and have no other fear.) Abou Ben Adhem, in Leigh Hunt's short poem of that name, learns from an angelic vision that “ one who loves his fellow-man stands first in the regards of the Almighty. Abra, in Matthew Prior's historical and didactic poem Solomon on the Vanity of the World (1718), a concubine who captivates the weary and sated monarch by her obedience and fidelity. Two lines in Solomon's speech are specially famous as calling up in concise form an image of womanly devotion: Abra was ready ere I called her name, And though I called another, Abra came. ii, 364. Prior possibly borrowed the name from the mediaval romance of Amadis of Gaul, wherein the Sultan of Babylon has a sister, Abra, who secures his throne after he is slain by her lover, Lisuarte. Abraham-Cupid, in Romeo and Juliet (Act ii, Sc. 1), is an expression which has given much trouble to the commentators. Upton conjectures it to be a printer's error for Adam Cupid, which he twists into an allusion to Adam Bell, the outlawed archer. Dyce, more plausibly, thinks that Abraham is merely a corruption of auburn, and supports his view by 3 Absolute citing passages from old books where the corruption is unquestionable. Mr. R. G. White remarks, in confirmation of Dyce, that " Cupid is always represented by the old painters as auburn-haired." Abram or Abraham-men, a cant term for a certain class of beggars of the sixteenth century. The anonymous Fraternity of Vacabondes (1575) supplies this definition: An Abraham-man is he that walketh bare armed and bare-legged, and feigneth himself mad, and carrieth a pack of wool, a stick with bacon on it, or such like toy and nameth himself Poor Tom. He Absalom, in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel (1681), a political satire in verse, is intended for James, Duke of Monmouth, a natural son of Charles II by Lucy Waters. resembles the Absalom of the Old Testament in his personal charms, his popularity with the masses and his unfilial behavior towards his putative father. See ACHITOPHEL. Absent-minded Beggar. Kipling's jovial_nickname for Tommy Atkins (the British soldier), in a poem of that name written at the beginning of the Boer war and printed in the Daily Mail, October 31, 1899. Absolon, in The Miller's Tale, one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1388), a pompous and conceited parish clerk, full of many small accomplishments of which he is inordinately vain. He is outwitted in his designs on Alison (q.v.), the young wife of an old carpenter, by his rival Nicholas. Absolute, Sir Anthony, and Captain Absolute, father and son in Sheridan's comedy of The Rivals (1775). Sir Anthony is a boisterous, blustering, domineering old gentleman, firmly persuaded that he is the most amiable of beings and really hiding a warm heart under his fierce exterior. The son, though gallant and fine-mettled, is adroit enough to make his way by conciliation, strategy and dry humor. Under the name of Ensign Beverley he courts the heiress, Lydia Languish, and by this disguise precipitates a comedy of errors that are not cleared up until the end. Hazlitt thinks the Absolute Wisdom elder Absolute is a copy after Smollett's kind-hearted, high-spirited Matthew Bramble in Humphrey Clinker. See ACRES, BOB. Absolute Wisdom, a sobriquet popularly bestowed upon Sir Matthew Wood (1768-1843). A staunch supporter of Queen Caroline. On the death of George III, he escorted her from France to England and sat by her side in an open landau when she entered London (June 6, 1820). He thus drew upon himself the shafts of all the Tory wits and witlings of the period. Abudah, in James Ridley's Tales of the Geni (1764), a wealthy merchant of Bagdad. Nightly pestered by a little old hag of hideous aspect, he is driven by her threats to seek for "the talisman of Oromanes," and finds it after many terrible adventures only to learn that it is an injunction to love God and to obey His commandments. Like Abudah in the Arabian story, he is always looking out for the Fury and knows that the night will come and the inevitable hag with it.-THACKERAY. Acaste, in Molière's comedy Le Misanthrope, a self-satisfied young marquis, who easily consoles himself when his suit is scorned by Celimene. Achitophel, in Dryden's poetical satire Absalom and Achitophel, is meant for the Earl of Shaftesbury (1621-1683). He was thus nicknamed by his contemporaries because of the resemblance in character and career between him and Achitophel or Ahitophel, the treacherous friend and counsellor of David, and the fellow conspirator of Absalom (II Samuel xv). The poem was written at a critical juncture in public affairs (see ABSALOM). Shaftesbury, who had opposed the succession of the Duke of York (afterwards James II) to his brother Charles II and favored that of the illegitimate Duke of Monmouth, was then in the Tower awaiting trial for high treason. Dryden, assuming that Shaftesbury had nearly precipitated a civil war, found in Achitophel's relation to Absalom a Biblical parable sufficiently close for his purpose. Acrasia, in Spenser's Faerie Queene, an enchantress personifying intemperance, who dwells in the Bower of Bliss. Acrates, in The Purple Island, an allegorical poem by Phineas Fletcher, the personification of Incontinence and the father of Gluttony and Drunkenness. Acadia (Fr. Acadie, from the river Shubencadie), the original name of Nova Scotia given by the first French settlers under De Monts, in 1604, famous in literature as the scene of Longfellow's Evangeline. After being a subject of constant contention between France and England, the province was, by the treaty of Utrecht, 1713, ceded to England. But the original settlers, French by blood, remained French in feeling and in language, a bar to Anglo-Saxon colonizing and even a menace to British security. In 1755 it was determined as a measure of safety to expatriate the French Acadians. The Acres, Bob, in Sheridan's comedy, troops then in Nova Scotia were The Rivals (1775), is, with Captain enlisted New Englanders, under Absolute, one of the eponymic rivals Colonel John Winslow of Massa- for the hand of Lydia Languish. An chusetts. Acting by order of the ill-compounded mixture of the counEnglish governor, they gathered the try squire and the London man about people together, drove them aboard town (a degenerate type of the first ship and distributed them among the and a pinchbeck imitation of the Atlantic colonies from Massachusetts second), he is redeemed from ignoto Georgia. Parkman, in Montcalm miny only by native kindliness and and Wolfe (1885), asserts that Long-good nature. He wears flashy clothes, Acunha affects a bombastic swagger to cover his ludicrous cowardice and invents for himself a strange vocabulary of harmless profanity which he calls the oath sentimental or referential. Acunha, Teresa d', in Scott's novel, The Antiquary, a Spanish servant of the Countess of Glenallan, who aided Edward Geraldin Neville in carrying off the new-born child of Eveline Neville." If ever there was a fiend on earth in human form, that woman was one." Ada, to whom Byron in Childe Harold addressed the invocation: Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart. age. My age is like a lusty winter There is a tradition-supported by two of Shakespeare's editors who Canto iii, Stanza I. sought for their facts in Stratfordwas the Hon. Augusta Ada Byron, that Shakespeare used to play this the poet's only legitimate child (1815- part. Oldys tells us that in his day 1852), who in 1835 married William he had met people who had known King Noel, afterwards Earl of Love-Shakespeare's brother in extreme old lace. Unlike her father in feature and in the bent of her mind, which was towards mathematics rather than poetry, she inherited something of his mental vigor and intensity. Like him, too, she died in her thirtyseventh year. At her own request her coffin was placed by his in the vault at Hucknall Torkard. Thus it is evident that Byron realized his aspiration in Stanza cxvii of the same canto. Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught With desolation, and a broken claim: Though the grave closed between us,twere the same I know that thou wilt love me—though to My blood from out thy being were an aim, Adah, the name which Lord Byron in Cain, a Mystery, bestows upon the wife of Cain, explaining that he does so because Adah is the first female name to be met with in the Old Testament (with the exception of Eve), being that of the wife of Lamech (Genesis iv, 19). He paints her as a gentle wife and All that could be recollected from him of his brother Will, was the faint general and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies wherein being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company who were eating, and one of them sang a song. This obviously refers to As You Like Adam, in Arthur Hugh Clough's (1848), a nickname for the college poem, The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich tutor, probably intended as a portrait of the author himself. The grave man, nicknamed Adam, White-tied, clerical, silent, with antique square-cut waistcoat, Formal, unchanged, of black cloth, but with sense and feeling beneath it. Adamastor, "the spirit of the Cape "in Camoens' Lusiad, v (1569), a hideous monster guarding the Cape of Tempests-now known as the Cape of Good Hope-who appears to Vasco da Gama to warn him that he trespassed at his own risk on waters hitherto unvisited by man. The description of this monster has been greatly admired. These are the crucial lines: spread, Adamida Erect arose his hairs of withered red; blue rows. His haggard beard flowed quivering on the Revenge and horror in his mien combined; scarred 6 Adam-zad An earthly paleness o'er his cheek was ignorant of the world; easily duped, and little disposed to anger on his own account, he is yet a formidable champion for the rights of others. especially the weak and the innocent. Joseph Andrews in the novel calls him" the best man I ever knew." Sir Walter Scott considers the character one of the richest productions of the Muse of Fiction.' Hazlitt gives it the preference above all Fielding's creations: It is equally true to nature, and more ideal than any of the others. Its unsuspecting simplicity makes it not only more amiable, but doubly amusing, by gratifying the of superior sagacity in the reader. Our laughing at him does not once lessen our respect for him." The inward anguish of his soul declared. roar. "In me behold," he cried, While dark-red sparkles from his eyeballs rolled, "In me the Spirit of the Cape behold, By Neptune's rage, in horrid earthquakes framed, When Jove's red bolts o'er Titan's offspring flamed. With wide-stretched piles I guard the pathless strand." Adamida, a planet invented by Klopstock in The Messiah, Bk. viii (1771), to play an important part in the crucifixion. It is described as a spot whereon reside the unborn spirits of saints and martyrs and other humbler forms of true believers. When the crucial moment occurs on Calvary, Uriel, angel of the Sun, is despatched by the Almighty with a message to the planet (personified for the occasion) that she should place herself between the sun and the earth in such fashion as to cause a total eclipse. Adamida, in obedience to the divine command, flew amidst overwhelming storms, rushing clouds, falling mountains, and swelling seas. Uriel stood on the pole of the star, but so lost in deep contemplation on Golgotha, that he heard not the wild uproar. On coming to the region of the sun, Adamida slackened her course, and advancing before the sun, covered its face and intercepted all its rays." 46 Adams, Parson Abraham, in Henry Fielding's novel, Joseph Andrews (1742), an eccentric and amiable country curate, supposed to have been drawn from the author's friend, the Rev. William Young, who revised Ainsworth's Latin Dictionary in 1752. Deep read in books, he is utterly sense As to Parson Adams and his fist, and his good heart, and his Eschylus which he couldn't see to read, and his rejoicing at being delivered from a ride in the carriage with Mr. Peter Pounce, whom he had erroneously complimented on the smallness of his parochial means, let every body rejoice that there has been a man in the world called Henry Fielding to think of such a character, and thousands of good people sprinkled about that world to answer for the truth of it; for had there not been, what would have been its value? He is one of the simplest, but at the same time manliest of men; is anxious to read a man of the world his sermon on "vanity;" ready to lose his senses on the death of his preaches patience under affliction, and is little boy; in short, has "every virtue under heaven," except that of superiority to the common failings of humanity, or of being able to resist knocking a rascal down when he insults the innocent. He is very poor, in those days, is treated by the rich as if and, agreeably to the notions of refinement he were little better than a servant himself. Even their stewards think it a condescension to treat him on equal terms.-LEIGH HUNT. Adam-zad, in Kipling's poem, The Truce of the Bear (1898), a personification of Russia. The blind beggar Matzun, eyeless, noseless, lipless, bids the white men show no mercy when they "go by the pass Muttiance to shoot in the vale below." He tells how after a long hunt Adam-zad, the bear that walks like a man," had feigned exhaustion and begged for mercy; how Matzun had restrained his fire and how the bear tottering nearer with a single blow |