Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol. 1 | Page 4

mud.--A Basque Tale.
A similar tale occurs in Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_ (iii. 98), called "The Keg of Butter." The wolf chooses the bottom when "oats" were the object of choice, and the top when "potatoes" were the sowing.
Rabelais tells the same tale about a farmer and the devil. Each was to have on alternate years what grew under and over the soil. The farmer sowed turnips and carrots when the under-soil produce came to his lot, and barley or wheat when his turn was the over-soil produce.
ACHILLE GRANDISSIME, "A rather poor specimen of the Grandissime type, deficient in stature, but not in stage manner."--The Grandissimes, by George W. Cable (1880).
ACHIL'LES (3 syl.), the hero of the allied Greek army in the siege of Troy, and king of the Myr'midons.--See _Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_.
The English Achilles, John Talbot, first earl of Shrewsbury (1373-1453).
The duke of Wellington is so called sometimes, and is represented by a statue of Achilles of gigantic size in Hyde Park, London, close to Apsley House (1769-1852).
The Achilles of Germany, Albert, elector of Brandenburg (1414-1486).
Achilles of Rome, Sicin'ius Denta'tus (put to death B.C. 450).
ACHIT'OPHEL, "Him who drew Achitophel," Dryden, author of the famous political satire of Absalom and Achitophel. "David" is Charles II.; his rebellious son "Absalom" is the king's natural son, the handsome but rebellious James duke of Monmouth; and "Achitophel," the traitorous counsellor, is the earl of Shaftesbury, "for close designs and crooked counsels fit."
Can sneer at him who drew Achitophel.
Byron, Don Juan, iii. 100.
There is a portrait of the first earl of Shaftesbury (Dryden's "Achitophel") as lord chancellor of England, clad in ash-colored robes, because he had never been called to the bar.--E. Yates, Celebrities, xviii.
A'CIS, a Sicilian shepherd, loved by the nymph Galate'a. The monster Polypheme (3 syl.), a Cyclops, was his rival, and crushed him under a huge rock. The blood of Acis was changed into a river of the same name at the foot of mount Etna.
Not such a pipe, good reader, as that which Acis did sweetly tune in praise of his Galatea, but one of true Delft manufacture.--W. Irving (1783-1859).
ACK'LAND (Sir Thomas), a royalist.--Sir W. Scott, Woodstock (time, the Commonwealth).
AC'OE (3 syl.), "hearing," in the New Testament sense (Rom. x. 17), "Faith cometh by hearing." The nurse of Fido [faith]. Her daughter is Meditation. (Greek,[Illustration], "hearing.")
With him [Faith] his nurse went, careful Aco?, Whose hands first from his mother's womb did take him, And ever since have fostered tenderly. Phin. Fletcher, The Purple Island, ix. (1633).
ACRAS'IA, Intemperance personified. Spenser says she is an enchantress living in the "Bower of Bliss," in "Wandering Island." She had the power of transforming her lovers into monstrous shapes; but sir Guyon (temperance), having caught her in a net and bound her, broke down her bower and burnt it to ashes.--Fa?ry Queen, ii. 12 (1590).
ACRA'TES (3 syl.), Incontinence personified in The Purple Island, by Phineas Fletcher. He had two sons (twins) by Caro, viz., Methos (drunkenness) and Gluttony, both fully described in canto vii. (Greek, akrates, "incontinent.")
Acra'tes (3 syl.), Incontinence personified in The Fa?ry Queen, by Spenser. He is the father of Cymoch'l��s and Pyroch'l��s.--Bk. ii. 4 (1590).
ACRES (Bob), a country gentleman, the rival of ensign Beverley, alias captain Absolute, for the hand and heart of Lydia Languish, the heiress. He tries to ape the man of fashion, gets himself up as a loud swell, and uses "sentimental oaths," i. e. oaths bearing on the subject. Thus if duels are spoken of he says, _ods triggers and flints; if clothes, ods frogs and tambours; if music, ods minnums_ [minims] and crotchets; if ladies, ods blushes and blooms. This he learnt from a militia officer, who told him the ancients swore by Jove, Bacchus, Mars, Venus, Minerva, etc., according to the sentiment. Bob Acres is a great blusterer, and talks big of his daring, but when put to the push "his courage always oozed out of his fingers' ends." J. Quick was the original Bob Acres.--Sheridan, The Rivals (1775).
As thro' his palms Bob Acres' valor oozed, So Juan's virtue ebbed, I know not how.
Byron, Don Juan.
Joseph Jefferson's impersonation of Bob Acres is inimitable for fidelity to the spirit of the original, and informed throughout with exquisite humor that never degenerates into coarseness.
ACRIS'IUS, father of Dan'a��. An oracle declared that Dana�� would give birth to a son who would kill him, so Acrisius kept his daughter shut up in an apartment under ground, or (as some say) in a brazen tower. Here she became the mother of Per'seus (2 syl.), by Jupiter in the form of a shower of gold. The king of Argos now ordered his daughter and her infant to be put into a chest, and cast adrift on the sea, but they were rescued by Dictys, a fisherman. When grown