Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction, and the Drama, Vol. 2: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's HandbookBrewer, Ebenezer Cobham
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Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction, and the Drama, Vol. 2: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook
Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham
Allusions; Fiction -- Dictionaries; Literature -- Dictionaries
=Grundy= (_Mrs._). Dame Ashfield, a farmer’s wife, is jealous of a
neighboring farmer named Grundy. She tells her husband that Farmer
Grundy got five shillings a quarter more for his wheat than they did;
that the sun seemed to shine on purpose for Farmer Grundy; that Dame
Grundy’s butter was the crack butter of the market. She then goes into
her day-dreams, and says, “If our Nelly were to marry a great baronet, I
wonder what Mrs. Grundy would say?” Her husband makes answer:
“Why dan’t thee letten Mrs. Grundy alone? I do verily think when thee
goest to t’other world, the vurst question thee’ll ax ’ill be, if Mrs.
Grundy’s there?”—Th. Morton, _Speed the Plough_, i. 1 (1798).
=Gryll=, one of those changed by Acras´ia into a hog. He abused Sir
Guyon for disenchanting him; whereupon the palmer said to the knight,
“Let Gryll be Gryll, and have his hoggish mind.”—Spenser, _Faëry Queen_,
ii. 12 (1590).
Only a target light upon his arm
He careless bore, on which old Gryll was drawn,
Transformed into a hog.
Phin. Fletcher, _The Purple Island_, vii. (1633).
=Gryphon=, a fabulous monster, having the upper part like a vulture or
eagle, and the lower part like a lion. Gryphons were the supposed
guardians of goldmines, and were in perpetual strife with the
Arimas´pians, a people of Scythia, who rifled the mines for the
adornment of their hair.
As when a gryphon thro’ the wilderness,
With winged course, o’er hill or moory dale,
Pursues the Arimaspian, who, by stealth,
Had from his wakeful custody purloined
The guarded gold.
Milton, _Paradise Lost_, ii. 943, etc. (1665).
_The Gryphon_, symbolic of the divine and human union of Jesus Christ.
The fore part of the gryphon is an eagle, and the hinder part a lion.
Thus Dantê saw in purgatory the car of the Church drawn by a
gryphon.—Dantê, _Purgatory_, xxix. (1308).
=Guadia´na=, the ’squire of Durandartê, changed into a river of the same
name. He was so grieved at leaving his master that he plunged
instantaneously under ground, and when obliged to appear “where he might
be seen, he glided in sullen state to Portugal.”—Cervantes, _Don
Quixote_, II. ii. 6 (1615).
=Gualber´to= (_St._), heir of Valdespe´sa, and brought up with the
feudal notion that he was to be the avenger of blood. Anselmo was the
murderer he was to lie in wait for, and he was to make it the duty of
his life to have blood for blood. One day, as he was lying in ambush for
Anselmo, the vesper bell rang, and Gualberto (3 _syl._) fell in prayer,
but somehow could not pray. The thought struck him that if Christ died
to forgive sin, it could not be right in man to hold it beyond
forgiveness. At this moment Anselmo came up, was attacked, and cried for
mercy. Gualberto cast away his dagger, ran to the neighboring convent,
thanked God he had been saved from blood-guiltiness, and became a hermit
noted for his holiness of life.—Southey, _St. Gualberto_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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