=Picciola=, flower that, springing up in the court-yard of his prison, cheers and elevates the lonely life of the prisoner whom X. B. Saintine makes the hero of his charming tale, _Picciola_ (1837). =Piccolino=, an opera by Mons. Guiraud (1875); libretto by MM. Sardou and Nuittier. This opera was first introduced to an English audience in 1879. The tale is this: Marthé, an orphan girl adopted by a Swiss pastor, is in love with Frédéric Auvray, a young artist, who “loved and left his love.” Marthé plods through the snow from Switzerland to Rome to find her young artist, but, for greater security, puts on boy’s clothes, and assumes the name of Piccolino. She sees Frédéric, who knows her not; but, struck with her beauty, makes a drawing of her. Marthé discovers that the faithless Frédéric is paying his addresses to Elena (sister of the Duke Strozzi). She tells the lady her love-tale; and Frédéric, deserted by Elena, forbids Piccolino (Marthé) to come into his presence again. The poor Swiss wanderer throws herself into the Tiber, but is rescued. Frédéric repents, and the curtain falls on a reconciliation and approaching marriage. =Pickel-Herringe= (5 _syl._), a popular name among the Dutch for a buffoon; a corruption of _pickle-härin_ (“a hairy sprite”), answering to Ben Jonson’s _Puck-hairy_. =Pickle= (_Peregrine_), a savage, ungrateful spendthrift, fond of practical jokes, delighting in tormenting others; but suffering with ill temper the misfortunes which result from his own wilfulness. His ingratitude to his uncle, and his arrogance to Hatchway and Pipes, are simply hateful.--T. Smollett, _The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle_ (1751). =Pickwick= (_Samuel_), the chief character of _The Pickwick Papers_, a novel by C. Dickens. He is general chairman of the Pickwick Club. A most verdant, 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 of the club, to whom he acts as guardian and adviser. The adventures they encounter form the subject of the _Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club_ (1836). The original of Seymour’s picture of “Pickwick” was a Mr. John Foster (_not_ the biographer of Dickens, but a friend of Mr. Chapman’s, the publisher). He lived at Richmond, and was “a fat old beau,” noted for his “drab tights and black gaiters.” =Pickwickian Sense= (_In a_), an insult whitewashed. Mr. Pickwick accused Mr. Blotton of acting in “a vile and calumnious manner;” whereupon Mr. Blotton retorted by calling Mr. Pickwick “a humbug,” But it finally was made to appear that both had used the offensive words only in a parliamentary sense, and that each entertained for the other “the highest regard and esteem.” So the difficulty was easily adjusted, and both were satisfied. Lawyers and politicians daily abuse each other in a Pickwickian sense.--Bowditch.