Part 69 (1/2)

108). The widow succeeded to the throne (pt. iii. 10).--Sir T. Malory, _History of Prince Arthur_ (1470).

Milton calls the name ”Pellenore” (2 _syl._).

Fair damsels, met in forests wide By knights of Logres, or of Lyones, Lancelot, or Pelleas, or Pellenore.

Milton.

=Pelob'ates= (4 _syl._), one of the frog champions. The word means ”mud-wader.” In the battle he flings a heap of mud against Psycarpax, the Hector of the mice, and half blinds him; but the warrior mouse heaves a stone ”whose bulk would need ten degenerate mice of modern days to lift,” and the ma.s.s, falling on the ”mud-wader,” breaks his leg.--Parnell, _Battle of the Frogs and Mice_, iii. (about 1712).

=Pel'ops' Shoulder=, ivory. The tale is that Demeter ate the shoulder of Pelops when it was served up by Tan'talos for food. The G.o.ds restored Pelops to life by putting the dismembered body into a caldron, but found that it lacked a shoulder; whereupon Demeter supplied him with an ivory shoulder, and all his descendants bore this distinctive mark.

N.B.--It will be remembered that Pythag'oras had a _golden thigh_.

Your forehead high, And smooth as Pelop's shoulder.

John Fletcher, _The Faithful Shepherdess_, ii. 1 (1610).

=Pelos=, father of Physigna'thos, king of the frogs. The word means ”mud.”--Parnell, _Battle of the Frogs and Mice_ (about 1712).

=Pembroke= (_The earl of_), uncle to Sir Aymer de Valence.--Sir W. Scott, _Castle Dangerous_ (time, Henry I.).

_Pembroke_ (_the Rev. Mr._), chaplain at Waverley Honor.--Sir W. Scott, _Waverley_ (time, George II.).

=Pen=, Philemon Holland, translator-general of the cla.s.sics. Of him was the epigram written:

Holland, with his translations doth so fill us, He will not let _Suetonius_ be _Tranquillus_.

(The point of which is, of course, that the name of the Roman historian was _C. Suetonius Tranquillus_.)

Many of these translations were written from beginning to end with one pen, and hence he himself wrote:

With one sole pen I writ this book, Made of a grey goose-quill; A pen it was when it I took, And a pen I leave it still.

=Pendennis= (_Arthur_), pseudonym of W. M. Thackeray in _The Newcomes_ (1854).

_Pendennis_, a novel by Thackeray (1849), in which much of his own history and experience is recorded with a novelist's license.

_Pendennis_ stands in relation to Thackeray as _David Copperfield_ to Charles d.i.c.kens.

_Arthur Pendennis_, a young man of ardent feelings and lively intellect, but conceited and selfish. He has a keen sense of honor, and a capacity for loving, but altogether he is not an attractive character.

_Laura Pendennis._ This is one of the best of Thackeray's characters.