Mina, a famous guerilla chief in the Peninsular war, and (in 1834) against Don Carlo (1781-1834). Empecinado (="covered with pitch") a nick-name given to Juan Matin Diaz, an early comrade of Mina Mirabel and Millamont, the Benedick and Beatrice of Beaumont and Fletcher's Wildgoose Chase Mithridates, king of Pontus (B.C. 120-63), famous for his struggle against Rome, and the general vigour and ability of his intellect Moliere's doctors (see L'Amour Medecin (II. iii.), Le Malade Imaginaire, and Le Medicin malgre lui)
Mompesson, Sir Giles, one of the Commissioners for the granting of monopoly licenses Monks and Giants, "These stanzas are from a poem by Hookham Frere, really entitled Prospectus and specimen of an inteneded national Work . . . relating to King Arthur and his Round Table,"
Monmouth Street, now called Dudley Street Morgante Maggiore, a serio-comic romance in verse, by Pulci of Florence (1494)
Morone, an Italian cardinal and diplomatist (1509-80)
Murillo, Spain's greatest painter (1618-82)
Murphy, Arthur, an actor-author, who, besides writing some plays, edited Fielding, and published an Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson (1727-1815)
Murray, Lindley, the Pennsylvania grammarian (1745-1826), who settled near York, and there produced his Grammar of the English Language NARSES the Roman general (d. 573) who drove the Goths out of Rome. In his youth he had been a slave Nephelococcygia, i.e. "Cuckoo town in the cloud"--a fictitious city referred to in the Birds of Aristophanes, Newdigate and Seatonian poetry, verse written in competition for prizes founded by Sir R..Newdigate and Rev. Thos. Seaton at Oxford and Cambridge respectively, Dodsley (ib.) was an honest publisher and author who brought out Poems by Several Hands in 1748, Nugent, Dr., one of the original members and a regular attendant at the meetings of the Literary Club OCTOBER CLUB, a High Church Tory Club of Queen Anne's time, which met at the Bell Tavern, Westminster o Daphnis K. T. L., "Daphnis went into the waters; the eddies swirled over the man whom the Muses loved and the nymphs held dear" (Theocritus, Idylls, i.). An allusion to Shelley's death Odoacer, a Hun, who became emperor, and was assassinated by his colleague Theodoric the Ostrogoth in 493
Oldmixon, John, a dull and insipid historian (1673-1742), roughly handled by Pope in the Dunciad (ii. 283)
Orlando Furioso, Ariosto's (1471-1533) great poem of chivalry suggested by the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo (c. 1430-94).
Alcina is a kind of Circe in the Orlando Furioso Ortiz, eighteenth-century historian, author of Compendio de la Historia de Espana Osborn, John, a notorious bookseller who "sweated" Pope and Johnson among other authors (d. 1767)
Otho, Roman emperor (69 A.D.) The only brass coins bearing his name were struck in the provinces, and are very rare PADALON, the Hindu abode of departed Spirits Paestum, ancient Posidonia, mod. Pesto, 22 miles S.E. from Salerno, 471
Pantheon, a circular temple in Rome, erected by Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus, and dedicated to the gods in general: now a church and place of burial for the illustrious Italian dead Paoli, the Corsican general (1796-1807) who, failing against the might of France, made his home in England, and was chaperoned by Boswell Parnell, Thomas, Archdeacon of Clogher, satirist and translator.
He was a sweet and easy poet with a high moral tone; friend of Addison and Swift (1679-1718)
Parson Barnabas, Parson Trulliber (see Fielding's Joseph Andrews)
Pasquin, Antony, a fifteenth-century Italian tailor, noted for his caustic wit Paulician Theology originated in Armenia, and flourished c.660-970 A.D. Besides certain Manichee elements it denied the deity of Jesus and abjured Mariolatry and the sacraments Pescara, Marquis of, an Italian general who betrayed to the emperor, Charles V., the plot of Francesco Sforza for driving the Spaniards and Germans out of Italy Peter Martyr, a name borne by three personages. The reference here is to the Italian Protestant reformer who made his home successively in Switzerland, England, Strasburg, and Zurich (d. 1562)
Phidias, Athens's greatest sculptor. A contemporary of Pericles (d. 432 B. C.)
Philips, John, best remembered by The Splendid Shilling, a good burlesque in imitation of Milton (1676-1708)
Pilpay, the Indian Aesop. For the pedigree of the Pilpay literature, see Jacobs: Fables of Bidpai (1888), 641
Pisistratus and Gelon, two able Grecian tyrants who ruled beneficially at Athens (541-527 B.C.), and at Syracuse (484-473 B.C.), respectively Pococurante, one who cares little and knows less: a dabbler Porridge Island, the slang name of an alley near St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, which was pulled down c. 1830
Politian, a distinguished poet and scholar in the time of the Italian Renaissance; professor of Greek and Latin at Florence (1454-94)
Pompadour, Madame de, mistress of Louis XV., and virtually ruler of France from 1745 till her death in 1764
Prior, Matthew, a wit and poet of the early eighteenth century whose lyrics were pronounced by Thackeray to be "amongst the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humorous" in the English language, Pudding, Jack, a clown who swallows black puddings, etc. Cp.
Germ. Hans Worst, Fr. Jean-potage Pulci, a Florentine poet (noted for his humorous Sonnets), and friend of Lorenzo de' Medici (1432-84)