Part 84 (1/2)

=Pleasures of Memory=, a poem in two parts, by Samuel Rogers (1793). The first part is restricted to the pleasure of memory afforded by the five senses, as that arising from visiting celebrated places, and that afforded by pictures. Pt. ii. goes into the pleasures of the mind, as imagination and memory of past griefs and dangers. The poem concludes with the supposition that in the life to come this faculty will be greatly enlarged. The episode is this: Florio, a young sportsman, accidentally met Julia in a grot, and followed her home, when her father, a rich squire, welcomed him as his guest, and talked with delight of his younger days, when hawk and hound were his joy of joys.

Florio took Julia for a sail on the lake, but the vessel was capsized, and, though Julia was saved from the water, she died on being brought to sh.o.r.e. It was Florio's delight to haunt the places which Julia frequented.

Her charm around the enchantress Memory threw, A charm that soothes the mind and sweetens too.

Pt. ii.

=Pleiads= (_The_), a cl.u.s.ter of seven stars in the constellation _Taurus_, and applied to a cl.u.s.ter of seven celebrated contemporaries. The stars were the seven daughters of Atlas: Maia, Electra, Taygete, (4 _syl._), Asterope, Merope, Alcyone and Celeno.

_The Pleiad of Alexandria_ consisted of Callimachos, Apollonios Rhodios, Aratos, Homer the Younger, Lycophron, Nicander, and Theocritos. All of Alexandria, in the time of Ptolemy Philadelphos.

_The Pleiad of Charlemagne_ consisted of Alcuin, called ”Albinus;”

Angilbert, called ”Homer;” Adelard, called ”Augustine;” Riculfe, called ”Damaetas;” Varnefrid; Eginhard; and Charlemagne himself, who was called ”David.”

_The First French Pleiad_ (sixteenth century): Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, Antoine de Baf, Remi-Belleau, Jodelle, Ponthus de Thiard, and the seventh is either Dorat or Amadis de Jamyn. All under Henri III.

_The Second French Pleiad_ (seventeenth century): Rapin, Commire, Larue, Santeuil, Menage, Duperier, and Pet.i.t.

_We have also our English cl.u.s.ters. There were those born in the second half of the sixteenth century_: Spenser (1553), Drayton (1563), Shakespeare and Marlowe (1564), Ben Jonson (1574), Fletcher (1576), Ma.s.singer (1585), Beaumont (Fletcher's colleague) and Ford (1586).

Besides these there were Tusser (1515), Raleigh (1552), Sir Philip Sidney (1554), Phineas Fletcher (1584), Herbert (1593), and several others.

_Another cl.u.s.ter came a century later_: Prior (1664), Swift (1667), Addison and Congreve (1672), Rowe (1673), Farquhar (1678), Young (1684), Gay and Pope (1688), Macklin (1690).

_These were born in the latter half of the eighteenth century_: Sheridan (1751), Crabbe (1754), Burns (1759), Rogers (1763), Wordsworth (1770), Scott (1771), Coleridge (1772), Southey (1774), Campbell (1777), Moore (1779), Byron (1788), Sh.e.l.ley and Keble (1792), and Keats (1796).

Butler (1600), Milton (1608), and Dryden (1630) came between the first and second cl.u.s.ters. Thomson (1700), Gray (1717), Collins (1720), Akenside (1721), Goldsmith (1728), and Cowper (1731), between the second and the third.

=Pleonec'tes= (4 _syl._), Covetousness personified, in _The Purple Island_, by Phineas Fletcher (1633). ”His gold his G.o.d” ... he ”much fears to keep, much more to lose his l.u.s.ting.” Fully described in canto viii. (Greek, _pleonektes_, ”covetous.”)

=Pleydell= (_Mr. Paulus_), an advocate in Edinburgh, shrewd and witty. He was at one time the sheriff at Ellangowan.

Mr. Counsellor Pleydell was a lively, sharp-looking gentleman, with a professional shrewdness in his eye, and, generally speaking, a professional formality in his manner; but this he could slip off on a Sat.u.r.day evening, when ... he joined in the ancient pastime of High Jinks.--Sir W. Scott, _Guy Mannering_, x.x.xix. (time, George II.).

=Pliable=, a neighbor of Christian, whom he accompanied as far as the ”Slough of Despond,” when he turned back.--Bunyan, _Pilgrim's Progress_, i. (1678).

=Pliant= (_Sir Paul_), a hen-pecked husband, who dares not even touch a letter addressed to himself till my lady has read it first. His perpetual oath is ”Gadsbud!” He is such a dolt that he would not believe his own eyes and ears, if they bore testimony against his wife's fidelity and continency. (See PLACID.)

_Lady Pliant_, second wife of Sir Paul. ”She's handsome, and knows it; is very silly, and thinks herself wise; has a choleric old husband” very fond of her, but whom she rules with spirit, and snubs ”afore folk.” My lady says, ”If one has once sworn, it is most unchristian, inhuman, and obscene that one should break it.” Her conduct with Mr. Careless is most reprehensible.--Congreve, _The Double Dealer_ (1694).

=Pliny= (_The German_), or ”Modern Pliny,” Konrad von Gesner of Zurich, who wrote _Historia Animalium_, etc. (1516-1565).

=Pliny of the East=, Zakarija ibn Muhammed, surnamed ”Kazwini,” from Kazwin, the place of his birth. He is so called by De Sacy (1200-1283).