=Skettles= (_Sir Barnet_), of Fulham. He expressed his importance by an antique gold snuff-box and a silk handkerchief. His hobby was to extend his acquaintances, and to introduce people to each other. Skettles, junior, was a pupil of Dr. Blimber.--C. Dickens, _Dombey and Son_ (1846). =Skevington’s Daughter=, an instrument of torture invented by Skevington, lieutenant of the Tower, in the reign of Henry VIII. It consisted of a broad iron hoop, in two parts, jointed with a hinge. The victim was put into the hoop, which was then squeezed close and locked. Here he remained for about an hour and a half in the most inexpressible torture. (Generally corrupted into the “Scavenger’s Daughter.”) =Skewton= (_The Hon. Mrs._), mother of Edith (Mr. Dombey’s second wife). Having once been a beauty, she painted when old and shrivelled, became enthusiastic about the “charms of nature,” and reclined in her bath-chair in the attitude she assumed in her barouche when young and well off. A fashionable artist had painted her likeness in this attitude, and called his picture “Cleopatra.” The Hon. Mrs. Skewton was the sister of the late Lord Feenix, and aunt to the present lord.--C. Dickens, _Dombey and Son_ (1846). =Skiffins= (_Miss_), an angular, middle-aged woman, who wears “green kid gloves when dressed for company.” She marries Wemmick.--C. Dickens, _Great Expectations_ (1860). =Skimpole= (_Harold_), an amateur artist, always sponging on his friends. Under a plausible, light-hearted manner he was intensely selfish, but Mr. Jarndyce looked on him as a mere child, and believed in him implicitly.--C. Dickens, _Bleak House_ (1852). (The original of this character was Leigh Hunt, who was greatly displeased at the skit.) =Skin= (_The Man without a_), Richard Cumberland. So called by Garrick, on account of his painful sensitiveness of all criticism. The same irritability of temper made Sheridan caricature him in _The Critic_ as “Sir Fretful Plagiary” (1732-1811). =Skinfaxi= (“_shining mane_”), the horse which draws the chariot of day.--_Scandinavian Mythology._ =Skofnung=, the sword of King Rolf, the Norway hero, preserved for centuries in Iceland. =Skogan.= (See SCOGAN.) =Skreigh= (_Mr._), the precentor at the Gordon Arms inn, Kippletringan.--Sir W. Scott, _Guy Mannering_ (time, George II.). =Skulls at Banquets.= Plutarch tells us that towards the close of an Egyptian feast a servant brought in a skeleton, and cried to the guests, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you die!” Like skulls at Memphian banquets. Byron, _Don Juan_, iii. 65 (1820). =Skurliewhitter= (_Andrew_), the scrivener.--Sir W. Scott, _Fortunes of Nigel_ (time, James I.).