Part 99 (1/2)

Shakespeare has introduced a burlesque of this pretty love story in his _Midsummer Night's Dream_, but Ovid has told the tale beautifully.

=Pyrgo Polini'ces=, an extravagant bl.u.s.terer. (The word means ”tower and town taker.”)--Plautus, _Miles Gloriosus_.

If the modern reader knows nothing of Pyrgo Polinices and Thraso, Pistol and Parolles; if he is shut out from Nephelo-Coccygia, he may take refuge in Lilliput.--Macaulay.

? ”Thraso,” a bully in Terence (_The Eunuch_); ”Pistol,” in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_ and 2 _Henry IV._; ”Parolles,” in _All's Well that Ends Well_; ”Nephelo-Coccygia,” or cloud cuckoo-town, in Aristophane's (_The Birds_); and ”Lilliput,” in Swift (_Gulliver's Travels_).

=Py'rocles= (3 _syl._) and his brother, Cy'mocles (3 _syl._) sons of Acrates (_incontinence_). The two brothers are about to strip Sir Guyon, when Prince Arthur comes up and slays both of them.--Spenser, _Faery Queen_, ii. 8 (1590).

=Pyroc'les and Musidorous=, heroes, whose exploits are told by Sir Philip Sidney in his _Arcadia_ (1581).

=Pyr'rho=, the founder of the sceptics or Pyrrhonian school of philosophy.

He was a native of Elis, in Peloponne'sus, and died at the age of 90 (B.C. 285).

It is a pleasant voyage, perhaps, to float, Like Pyrrho, on a sea of speculation.

Byron, _Don Juan_, ix. 18 (1824).

? ”Pyrrhonism” means absolute and unlimited infidelity.

=Pythag'oras=, the Greek philosopher, is said to have discovered the musical scale from hearing the sounds produced by a blacksmith hammering iron on his anvil.--See _Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_, 722.

As great Pythagoras of yore, Standing beside the blacksmith's door.

And hearing the hammers, as he smote The anvils with a different note ...

... formed the seven-chorded lyre.

Longfellow, _To a Child_.

Handel wrote an ”air with variations” which he called _The Harmonious Blacksmith_, said to have been suggested by the sounds proceeding from a smithy, where he heard the village blacksmiths swinging their heavy sledges ”with measured beat and slow.”

=Pyth'ias=, a Syracusan soldier, noted for his friends.h.i.+p for Damon. When Damon was condemned to death by Dionysius, the new-made king of Syracuse, Pythias obtained for him a respite of six hours, to go and bid farewell to his wife and child. The condition of this respite was that Pythias should be bound, and even executed, if Damon did not return at the hour appointed. Damon returned in due time, and Dionysius was so struck with this proof of friends.h.i.+p, that he not only pardoned Damon, but even begged to be ranked among his friends. The day of execution was the day that Pythias was to have been married to Calanthe.--_Damon and Pythias_, a drama by R. Edwards (1571), and another by John Banim in 1825.

=Python=, a huge serpent engendered from the mud of the deluge, and slain by Apollo. In other words, pytho is the miasma or mist from the evaporation of the overflow, dried up by the sun. (Greek, _puthesthai_, ”to rot;” because the serpent was left to rot in the sun.)

=Q= (_Old_), the earl of March, afterwards duke of Queensberry, at the close of the last century and the beginning of this.

=Quacks= (_Noted_).

BECHIC, known for his ”cough pills,” consisting of _digitalis_, _white oxide of antimony_ and _licorice_. Sometimes, but erroneously, called ”Beecham's magic cough pills.”

BOOKER (_John_), astrologer, etc. (1601-1667).

BOSSY (_Dr._), a German by birth. He was well known in the beginning of the nineteenth century in Covent Garden, and in other parts of London.