=Men´cia of Mosquera= (_Donna_) married Don Alvaro de Mello. A few days after the marriage, Alvaro happened to quarrel with Don An´drea de Baesa and kill him. He was obliged to flee from Spain, leaving his bride behind, and his property was confiscated. For seven years she received no intelligence of his whereabouts (for he was a slave most of the time), but when seven years had elapsed the report of his death in Fez reached her. The young widow now married the marquis of Guardia, who lived in a grand castle near Burgos, but walking in the grounds one morning she was struck with the earnestness with which one of the under-gardeners looked at her. This man proved to be her first husband, Don Alvaro, with whom she now fled from the castle; but on the road a gang of robbers fell upon them. Alvaro was killed, and the lady taken to the robbers’ cave, where Gil Blas saw her and heard her sad tale. The lady was soon released, and sent to the castle of the marquis of Guardia. She found the marquis dying from grief, and indeed he died the day following, and Mencia retired to a convent.--Lesage, _Gil Blas_, i. 11-14 (1715). =Mendo´za=, a Jew prize-fighter, who held the belt at the close of the last century, and in 1791 opened the Lyceum in the Strand, to teach “the noble art of self-defence.” I would have dealt the fellow that abused you such a recompense in the fifth button, that my friend Mendoza could not have placed it better.--R. Cumberland, _Shiva, the Jew_, iv. 2 (1776). There is a print often seen in old picture shops, of Humphreys and Mendoza sparring, and a queer angular exhibition it is. What that is to the modern art of boxing, Quick’s style of acting was to Dowton’s.--_Records of a Stage Veteran._ _Mendoza_ (_Isaac_), a rich Jew, who thinks himself monstrously wise, but is duped by every one. (See under ISAAC.)--Sheridan, _The Duenna_ (1775). =Menech´mians=, persons exactly like each other, as the brothers Dromio. So called from the Mencœchmi of Plautus. =Menec´rates= (4 _syl._), a physician of Syracuse, of unbounded vanity and arrogance. He assumed to himself the title of Jupiter, and in a letter to Philip, king of Macedon, began thus: “Menecratês Jupiter to King Philip, greeting.” Being asked by Philip to a banquet, the physician was served only with frankincense, like the gods; but Menecratês was greatly offended, and hurried home. =Mengs= (_John_), the surly innkeeper at Kirchhoff village.--Sir W. Scott, _Anne of Geierstein_ (time, Edward IV.). =Menippee= (_Satyre_), a famous political satire, written during the time of what is called in French History the Holy League, the objects of which were to exterminate the Huguenots, to confine the king (Henri III.) in a monastery, and to crown the duc de Guise. The satire is partly in verse, and partly in prose, and its object is to expose the perfidious intentions of Philip of Spain and the culpable ambition of the Guises.