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
=I´nez= of Cadiz, addressed in _Childe Harold_, i. (after stanza 84).
Nothing known of her.
_Inez (Donna)_, mother of Don Juan. She trained her son according to
prescribed rules with the strictest propriety, and designed to make him
a model of all virtues. Her husband was Don José, whom she worried to
death by her prudery and want of sympathy. Donna Inez was a
“blue-stocking,” learned in all the sciences, her favorite one being
“the mathematical.” She knew every European language, “a little Latin
and less Greek.” In a word, she was “perfect as perfect is,” according
to the standard of Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Trimmer, and Hannah More, but
had “a great opinion of her own good qualities.” Like Tennyson’s “Maud,”
this paragon of women was, to those who did not look too narrowly,
“faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.”—Bryon, _Don Juan_,
i. 10-30 (1819).
=Inez de Castro=, crowned six years after her death. The tale is this:
Don Pedro, son of Alfonso IV. of Portugal, privately married, in 1345,
the “beauty of Castile,” and Alfonso was so indignant that he commanded
her to be put to death (1355). Two years afterwards, Don Pedro succeeded
to the crown, and in 1361 had the body of Inez exhumed and crowned.
Camoens, the Portuguese poet, has introduced this story in his _Lusiad_.
A. Ferreira, another Portuguese poet, has a tragedy called _Inez de
Castro_ (1554); Lamotte produced a tragedy with the same title (1723);
and Guiraud another in 1826. (See next art).
_Inez de Castro_, the bride of Prince Pedro, of Portugal, to whom she
was clandestinely married. The King Alfonso and his minister Gonzalez,
not knowing of this marriage, arranged a marriage for the young prince
with a Spanish princess, and when the prince refused his consent,
Gonzalez ferreted out the cause, and induced Inez to drink poison. He
then put the young prince under arrest, but as he was being led away,
the announcement came that Alfonso was dead and Don Pedro was his
successor. The tables were now turned, for Pedro was instantly released,
and Gonzalez led to execution.—Ross Neil, _Inez de Castro_ or _The Bride
of Portugal_. (See previous art).
=Inez Morse.= A New England woman, determined to pay off the mortgage
left by her dead father upon the farm. She sells all her honey to help
on this object; “When the mortgage is paid off, we’ll have warm biscuit
and honey for supper,” she says, half-jestingly. She holds off a suitor
for years, until the mortgage is paid. She promised her father it should
be done. The day the last payment is made, she hears that “Willy” has
married another girl. They have warm biscuits and honey for tea that
night.—Mary E. Wilkin’s _A Taste of Honey_ (1887).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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