Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction, and the Drama, Vol. 4: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's HandbookBrewer, Ebenezer Cobham
General
Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction, and the Drama, Vol. 4: A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook
Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham
Allusions; Fiction -- Dictionaries; Literature -- Dictionaries
=Urre= (_Sir_), one of the knights of the Round Table. Being wounded,
the king and his chief knights tried on him the effect of “handling
the wounds” (_i.e._, touching them to heal them), but failed. At last,
Sir Launcelot was invited to try, and as he touched the wounds they
severally healed.--_Arthurian Romance_.
=Urrie= (_Sir John_), a parliamentary leader.--Sir W. Scott, _Legend
of Montrose_ (time, Charles I.).
=Ursa Major=, Calisto, daughter of Lycāon, violated by Jupiter, and
converted by Juno into a bear; whereupon the king of gods and man
placed her in the Zodiac as a constellation. The Great Bear is also
called “Hellicê.”
_Ursa Major._ Dr. Johnson was so called by Boswell’s father
(1709-1784).
My father’s opinion of Dr. Johnson may be conjectured from the name he
afterwards gave him, which was “Ursa Major;” but it is not true, as
has been reported, that it was in consequence of my saying that he was
a constellation of genius and literature.--Boswell (1791).
=Ursel= (_Zedekias_), the imprisoned rival of the Emperor Alexius
Comnēnus of Greece.--Sir W. Scott, _Count Robert of Paris_ (time,
Rufus).
=Ur´sula=, mother of Elsie, and wife of Gottlieb [_Got.leeb_], a
cottage farmer, of Bavaria.--Hartmann von der Aue, _Poor Henry_
(twelfth century); Longfellow _Golden Legend_ (1851).
_Ursula_, a gentlewoman, attending on Hero.--Shakespeare, _Much Ado
about Nothing_ (1600).
_Ursula_, a silly old duenna, vain of her saraband dancing; though not
fair yet fat and fully forty. Don Diego leaves Leonora under her
charge, but Leander soon finds that a little flattery and a few gold
pieces will put the dragon to sleep, and leave him free of the garden
of his Hesperidês.--I. Bickerstaff, _The Padlock_ (1768).
_Ursula_ (_Sister_), a disguise assumed at St. Bride’s, by the Lady
Margaret de Hautlieu.--Sir W. Scott, _Castle Dangerous_ (time, Henry
I.).
_Ursula_ (_Saint_), daughter of Dianotus, king of Cornwall (brother
and successor of Caradoc, king of Cornwall). She was asked in marriage
by Conan [Meriadoc] of Armorica, or Little Britain. Going to France
with her maidens, the princess was driven by adverse winds to Cologne,
where she and “her 11,000 virgins” were martyred by the Huns and Picts
(October 21, 237). Visitors to Cologne are still shown piles of skulls
and bones heaped in the wall, faced with glass, which the verger
asserts to be the relics of the martyred virgins; but, like Iphis,
they must have changed their sex since death for most undoubtedly many
of the bones are those of men and boys.--See Geoffrey, _British
History_, v. 15, 16.
A calendar in the Freisingen Codex notices them as “SS. XI. M.
VIRGINUM” _i.e._, “eleven holy virgin martyrs;” but, by making the “M”
into a Roman figure equal 1000, we have XIM=11,000; so iiic=300.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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