In

picture of Venus Rising from the Sea.

Phtha. See Ptah.

Phabus' son. Phæton (q.v.).

Phoebus, Captain. In Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris (q.v.), the betrothed of Fleur de Marie. He entertains a base love for Esmeralda, the beautiful gipsy girl.

Phoenix. A fabulous Arabian bird, the only one of its kind, that is said to live a certain number of years, at the close of which it makes in Arabia a nest of spices, sings a melodious dirge, flaps its wings to set fire to the pile, burns itself to ashes, and comes forth with new life, to repeat the former one.

The enchanted pile of that lonely bird,
Who sings at the last his own death-lay,
And in music and perfume dies away.

Thomas Moore: Paradise and the Peri. It is to this bird that Shakespeare refers in Cymbeline (i. 7):

If she be furnished with a mind so rare,
She is alone the Arabian bird.

The phoenix was adopted as a sign over chemists' shops through the association of this fabulous bird with alchemy. Paracelsus wrote about it, and several of the alchemists employed it to symbolize their vocation. It is a symbol of immortality.

Phanix period or cycle. The period between the transformations of the phoenix, generally supposed to be 500 years but sometimes estimated as high as 1500 years.

Phoo ka or Pooka. A hobgoblin of Irish folklore, a spirit of most malignant disposition, who hurrics people to their destruction. He sometimes comes in the form of an eagle, and sometimes in that of a horse, like the Scotch kelpie (q.v.).

Phor'cos. "The old man of the sea of Greek mythology. He was the father of the three Graiæ, who were grey from their birth, and had but one eyewhich was stolen by Perseus as one of the means through which he was to obtain the head of Medusa - and one tooth common to the three.

Phry'ne. A famous Athenian courtesan of the 4th century B. C., who acquired so much wealth by her beauty that she offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes if she might put on them this inscription: "Alexander destroyed them, but Phryne the hetæra rebuilt them." She is said to have been the model for Praxiteles'

Phyllis. A country girl in Virgil's third and fifth Eclogues. Hence, a Hence, a rustic maiden. Also spelt Phillis.

Physician's or Phisicien's Tale. (In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.) The Roman legend of Appius Claudius and Virginia. See Virginia.

Physicians, The Prince of. See under Prince.

Picaresque. The term applied to the class of literature that deals sympathetically with the adventures of clever and amusing rogues (Span. picaresco, roguish, knavish). The earliest example of the picaresque novel is Mendoza's Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). Le Sage's Gil Blas (1715) is perhaps the best known. Nash's Jack Wilton (1594) is the earliest English example, and others are Defoe's Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack.

Piccadilly. This well-known London thoroughfare is named from a house that stood near the corner of Sackville Street and, in the early 17th century, was nicknamed Pickadilly Hall. One early account (1656) says the house was so called because it was the "outmost or skirt house of the Suburbs that way "; another of the same date because it was built by one Higgins, a tailor, who made his fortune by selling" piccadilles."

The "piccadille" was originally "the round hem or the several divisions set together about the skirt of a Garment,' and was so called because it was pierced (Sp. picado) or slashed; thence it came to be applied to the stiff collar that supported the ruff of 17th century gallants.

Piccaninny, or Piccannin (West India negro, from Sp. pequeño, small). A little negro child of the West Indies and southern part of the United States; also, in South Africa, applied to small Kafir children, and sometimes to native children in Australia.

Piccinnists. See Glückists.

Pickle, Peregrine. See Peregrine Pickle. Pickwick Papers. A novel by Charles Dickens (1836), more formally entitled The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Aside from the immortal Sam Weller (q.v.), the chief character is Samuel Pickwick, general chairman of the Pickwick Club, a most naïve, benevolent, elderly gentleman, who, as member of a club instituted " for the purpose of investigating the source of the Hampstead ponds," travels about with three members

are

of the club, to whom he acts as guardian and adviser. His misadventures many, but worst of all is his sad experience with Mrs. Bardell (q.v.).

Said of words

In a Pickwickian sense. or epithets, usually of a derogatory or insulting kind, that, in the circumstances in which they are employed, are not to be taken as having quite the same force or implication as they naturally would have. The allusion is to the scene in ch. i when Mr. Pickwick accused Mr. Blotton of acting in "a vile and calumnious manner," whereupon Mr. Blotton retorted by calling Mr. Pickwick "a humbug." It finally was made to appear that both had used the offensive words only in a Pickwickian sense, and that each had, in fact, the highest regard and esteem for the other.

Pi'cus. In classic mythology, a soothsayer and augur; husband of Canens. In his prophetic art he made use of a woodpecker (picus), a prophetic bird sacred to Mars. Circe fell in love with him, and, as he did not respond to her advances, changed him into a woodpecker, whereby he still retained his prophetic power.

Pidgin-English. The semi-English jargon used by semi-Anglicized Chinamen, consisting principally of mispronounced English words with certain native grammatical constructions. For instance, the Chinese cannot pronounce r, so replace it with 1-te-le for "three," solly for “ sorry,' etc.—and, in Chinese, between a numeral and its noun there is always inserted a word (called the "classifier") and this, in Pidgin-English, is replaced by pieceeg. one piece knifee, two piece hingkichi (handkerchiefs). Pidgin is a corruption of business.

Pieces of Eight. The old Spanish silver peso (piastre) or dollar of 8 reals. It was marked with an 8, and was in use in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Pied-à-terre (Fr., foot on the ground). A temporary lodging, or a country residence; a footing.

Mr. Harding, however, did not allow himself to be talked over into giving up his own and only pied-à-terre in the High Street. Anthony Trollope: Barchester Towers.

Pied de la lettre, Au (Fr., to the foot of the letter). Quite literally close to

the letter.

A wild enthusiastic young fellow, whose opinions one must not take au pied de la lettre. Thackeray: Pendennis, I, xi.

Pied Piper of Ham'elin. The legend is that the town of Hamelin (Westphalia)

was infested with rats in 1284, that a mysterious Piper, clad in a parti-colored suit, appeared in the town and offered to rid it of the vermin for a certain sum, that the townspeople accepted the offer, the Pied Piper fulfilled his contract, and that then the payment was withheld. On the following St. John's Day he reappeared, and again played his pipe. This time all the children of the town, in place of the rats, followed him; he led them to a mountain cave where all disappeared save two one blind, the other dumb, or lame; and one legend adds that the children did not perish in the mountain, but were led over it to Transylvania, where they formed a German colony. Robert Browning popularized the legend in his children's poem The Pied Piper. More recently Josephine Preston Peabody made it the subject of her poetic drama The Piper (Am. 1909), which was awarded the Stratford-on-Avon prize.

Pierian Spring. Inspiration, from Pieria where the Muses were born.

Piero Maironi. (In Fogazzaro's novels.) See Maironi, Piero.

Pierre et Jean. A short novel by Guy de Maupassant (Fr. 1850-1893), a story of two brothers, one of whom receives an unexpected inheritance. The other brother, by his suspicions, forces his onceadored mother, Madame Roland, to confess that the money comes from a former lover who has left it to his own son.

Pierre Nozière. The second of a series of four autobiographical volumes by Anatole France (1899). The others are My Friend's Book (Livre de Mon Ami, 1885), Little Pierre (Le Petit Pierre, 1918) and The Bloom of Life (La Vie en Fleur, 1922).

Pierrot (ie. Little Peter). A favorite character of pantomime, a sort of clown lover. He is generally the tallest and thinnest man that can be got, has his face and hair covered with white powder or flour, and wears a white gown with very long sleeves and a row of big buttons down the front. Pierrot is the lover of Pierrette, or sometimes of Columbine. From the simple figure of the early pantomime, poets and artists have gradually evolved another, more romantic

(Am. 1906).

Pigwiggen. An elf in Drayton's Nymphidia (1627), in love with Queen Mab. He combats the jealous O'beron with great fury.

Pigwiggen was this Fairy Knight,

One wond'rous gracious in the sight

Piers Plowman, The Vision of. A long allegorical and satirical poem in Middle English alliterative verse, written between 1362 and 1400 by probably as many as four or five different authors. On internal evidence the first part has for long been ascribed to William Langland, or Langley, who came from Shropshire and settled in London.

The title should really be "The Vision Concerning Piers the Plowman," for in the earlier part Piers typifies the simple, pious English laborer, and in the later Christ Himself. The poet supposes himself falling asleep on the Malvern Hills, and in his dream sees various visions of an allegorical character, bearing on the vices of the times. The whole poem consists of nearly 15,000 verses, and is divided into twenty parts, each part being called a passus.

Pie'tro. In Browning's Ring and the Book (q.v.), the putative father of Pompilia.

Pietro of Abano. The greatest Italian philosopher and physician of the 13th century. He was an astrologer, and was persecuted as a wizard. Browning has a poem called Pietre of Abano (1880).

Pig. A pig in a poke. A blind bargain. The French say Acheter chat en poche (to buy a cat in a pocket). The reference is to a common trick in days gone by of trying to palm off on a greenhorn a cat for a sucking-pig. If he opened the sack he "let the cat out of the bag," and the trick was disclosed.

Pigs in clover. People who have any amount of money but don't know how to behave themselves as gentlefolk. Also, a game consisting of a box divided into recesses into which one has to roll marbles by tilting the box. The name was given to a novel by Mrs. Julia Frankau (“Frank Denby") (Am. 1904).

Pigs is Pigs. The title of a widely read

Of fair Queen Mab, which day and night
He amorously observed.

Pike. A term denoting the crude hardy Westerner in American literature. It came into use with the publication, almost simultaneously in the year 1871, of John Hay's Pike County Ballads and Bret Harte's East and West Poems, both of which attempted to express Western life in its own vernacular in ballad form. The best known of Bret Harte's poems are his Heathen Chinee (q.v.) and Jim Bludsoe; of Hay's, probably Little Breeches.

Pilate, Pontius. A Roman procurator before whom Jesus was tried. He attempted to persuade the mob of Jesus' innocence, but failing, washed his hands before them with the words, "I am innocent of the blood of this righteous man; see ye to it." Tradition has it that Pontius Pilate's later life was so full of misfortune that, in Caligula's time, he committed suicide in Rome. His body was cast into the Tiber, but evil spirits disturbed the water so much that it was retrieved and taken to Vienne, where it was thrown into the Rhone, eventually coming to rest in the recesses of a lake on Mount Pilatus opposite Lucerne. Another legend states that the suicide occurred so that he might escape the sentence of death passed on him by Tiberius because of his having ordered the crucifixion of Christ; and yet another that both he and his wife became penitent, embraced Christianity, and died peaceably in the faith.

Tradition gives the name Claudia Procula, or Procla, to Pilate's wife, and by some she has been identified with the Claudia of 2 Tim. iv, 21.

Pilate's voice. A loud, ranting voice. In the old mysteries all tyrants were made to speak in a rough, ranting manner.

Pilgrim Fathers. The first shipload of settlers in Massachusetts, who set sail in the ship Mayflower in 1620; also, by extension of the term, any early Puritan settlers of New England. The Mayflower brought English, Scotch and Dutch Puritans, one hundred and two in all.

Men in the middle of life, austere and grave in deportment...

The second part deals with Christiana and her family led by Greatheart through the same road, to join Christian, who had gone before.

Pillars of Hercules. The opposite rocks at the entrance of the Mediterranean, one in Spain and the other in Africa. The tale is that they were bound together

till Hercules tore them asunder in order to get to Gades (Cadiz). The ancients called them Calpe and Aby'la; we call them Gibraltar and Mount Hacho.

I will follow you even to the pillars of

Hercules. To the end of the world. The ancients supposed that these rocks marked the utmost limits of the habitable globe.

Pilot, The. A sea story by James Fenimore Cooper (Am. 1824) relating the adventures of the Revolutionary hero John Paul Jones. The sailor, Long Tom Coffin (q.v.), one of Cooper's most famous characters, appears in this book.

Pilpay' or Bidpay. The name given as that of the author of Kalilah and Dimnah (otherwise known as The Fables of Pilpay), which is the 8th century Arabic version of the Sanskrit Panchatantra. The word is not a true name, but means "wise man " (Arab. bidbah), and was applied to the chief scholar at the court of an Indian prince.

Pin. Pin money. A lady's allowance of money for her own personal expenditure. At one time pins were a great expense to a woman, and in 14th and 15th century wills there are often special bequests for the express purpose of buying

pins.

Policy of pin pricks. A policy of petty annoyances. The term came into prominence during the strained relations between England and France in 1898, and is an Anglicization of the very much older French phrase, un coup d'épingle.

Pinafore. H. M. S. Pinafore or The Lass that Loved a Sailor. A comic opera

66

by Gilbert and Sullivan (1878). The plot hinges on the fact that Josephine, the daughter of the Captain of H. M. S. Pinafore, refuses the advances of the allimportant Sir Joseph Porter (q.v.) because she loves a common sailor " named Ralph Rackstraw. Finally Little Buttercup, the bumboat woman, confesses to having changed the two babies, Ralph Rackstraw and the Captain, at nurse long years before.

Pinch. In Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, a schoolmaster and conjurer, who tries to exorcise Antiph'olus.

Pinch, Tom. In Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewitt, a clerk to Mr. Pecksniff, "architect and land surveyor"; simple as a child, green as a salad, and honest as truth itself. Tom was very fond of storybooks, but far more so of the organ.

Pinchwife, Mr. In Wycherly's comedy, The Country Wife (1675), the town husband of a raw country girl, unpractised in the ways of the world, whom he watches with ceaseless anxiety.

Mrs. Pinchwife. The counterpart of entitled L'Ecole des Femmes, a young Molière's Agnes (q.v.) in his comedy woman wholly unsophisticated in affairs of the heart.

Garrick altered Wycherly's comedy to The Country Girl (1766) and changed Mrs. Pinchwife's name to Peggy Thrift.

Pindar. The Theban poet (B.C. 518442), whose lyrics in irregular verse have furnished the word "pindaric."

The British Pindar. Thomas Gray (1716-1771). On his monument in Westminster Abbey are inscribed these lines

No more the Grecian muse unrivalled reigns;
To Britain let the nations homage pay:
She felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains,
A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray.

The French Pindar. (1) Jean Dorat (1507-1588); (2) Ponce Denis Lebrun (1729-1807).

The Italian Pindar. Gabriello Chiabrera (1552-1637).

The Pindar of England. Cowley (16181667) was called by the Duke of Buckingham, "The Pindar, Horace, and Virgil of England."

Pinda'ric Verse. Irregular verse; a poem of various meters, and of lofty style, in imitation of the odes of Pindar. Alexander's Feast, by Dryden, and The Bard, by Gray, are examples.

).

Pinero, Sir Arthur Wing (1855English dramatist. His best-known plays are The Amazons, The Second Mrs.

Tanqueray, Trelawny of the Wells and
The Gay Lord Quex. See those entries.
Pine-tree State. Maine. See States.
"Pink" Marsh. See Marsh.

66

Pinkerton, Miss. In Thackeray's Vanity Fair, a majestic lady, tall as a grenadier, and most proper. Miss Pinkerton kept an academy for young ladies on Chiswick Mall. She was the Semiramis of Hammersmith, the friend of Dr. Johnson, and the correspondent of Mrs. Chapone." This very distinguished lady "had a Roman nose, and wore a solemn turban." Amelia Sedley was educated at her academy, and Rebecca Sharp was a pupil teacher there.

Pioneers, The. A historical novel by Cooper (Am. 1823), one of the Leatherstocking series. (See also Leatherstocking.) In this novel Leatherstocking is an old man in the Otsego settlement of his boyhood days. The action takes place in post-Revolutionary times and shows the corrupting effects of the settlements upon the Indians. Leatherstocking, embittered by the inroads of civilization upon the old freedom of the open country, lives on in lonely rebellion.

Walt Whitman has a poem Pioneers! O Pioneers (Am. 1865) and Willa Cather a novel O Pioneers (Am. 1913).

Pip. The hero of Dickens' novel called Great Expectations (q.v.).

Pipchin, Mrs. In Dickens' Dombey and Son, an exceedingly "well-connected lady," living at Brighton, where she kept an establishment for the training of children. Mrs. Pipchin was an ill-favored old woman, with mottled cheeks and grey eyes. She was given to buttered toast and sweetbreads, but kept her children on the plainest fare and gave them "everything that they didn't like and nothing that they did.”

Piper of Hamelin. See Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Pipes, Tom. In Smollett's Peregrine Pickle, a retired boatswain's mate, living with Commodore Trunnion to keep the servants in order. Tom Pipes is noted for his taciturnity.

Pippa Passes. A dramatic poem by Browning (1841). Pippa is a very poor child, at work all the year round, except one day, in the silk mills at Asolo in Italy. Her one holiday is New Year's Day, and the drama hinges on her chance appearance at critical moments in the spiritual life-history of the leading characters in the play." Just at the supreme moment, Pippa passes, singing some refrain, and

All's right with the world!"

Robert Browning: Pippa Passes.

Pirate, The. A novel by Sir Walter Scott (1821). The action takes place in the wild sea country of the Shetlands, and the chief characters are Minna and Brenda Troil, daughters of old Magnus Troil. Minna becomes infatuated with "The Pirate," Captain Clement Cleveland, a son of Basil Mertoun who had sailed under the Jolly Roger himself, but later repented. His other son, Mordaunt Mertoun, falls in love with Minna's sister Brenda and finally wins the reluctant consent of old Magnus to his suit. See also Norna.

Pirates, The. In baseball parlance, the Pittsburgh Nationals. Cp. Baseball Teams.

Pirates of Penzance. A well-known comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan (1879), presenting the capers of a band of pirates, a bevy of girls and a Major General.

Pirithous. In classic myth, King of the Lapithæ in Thessaly, famed for his friendship with Theseus. He was the husband of Hippodamia (q.v.).

Pisanio. In Shakespeare's Cymbeline (q.v.), servant of Posthu'mus. Sent to murder Imogen, the wife of Posthumus, he persuades her to escape to Milford Haven in boy's clothes, and sends a bloody napkin to Posthumus, to make him believe that she has been murdered. Pisgah. The mountain from which Moses saw the Promised Land (Deut. iii. 27).

Piso's Justice. Verbally right, but morally wrong. Seneca tells us that Piso condemned a man on circumstantial evidence for murder; but when the suspect was at the place of execution, the man supposed to have been murdered appeared. The centurion sent the prisoner to Piso, and explained the case to him; whereupon Piso condemned all three to death, saying Fiat justitia (Lat. let justice be done). The condemned man executed because sentence of death had been passed upon him, the centurion because he had disobeyed orders, and the man supposed to have been murdered because he had been the cause of death

was