Chapter Araphil to Ardven of A by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Araphil to Ardven

Araphil or Arphill the poetic pseudonym of William Habington. His lady-love, Miss Lucy Herbert, he calls Castara.

Araspes, king of Alexandria, who joined the Egyptian armament against the crusaders. He was “more famed for devices than for courage.”—Tasso: Jerusalem Delivered (1575).

Arbaces, king of Iberia, in the drama called A King or no King, by John Fletcher (1619).

Arbate, in Racine’s drama of Mithridate (3 syl 1673).

Arbate, governor of the prince of Ithaca in Molière’s comedy La Princesse d’Elide (1664). In his speech to Euryle prince of Ithaca, persuading him to love, he is supposed to refer to Louis XV., then 26 years of age.

Je dirai que l’amour sied bien à vos pareil…
Et qu’il est malaisé que, sans être amoreux,
Un jeune prince soft et grand et généreux!
   —Act i. sc. I.

Arbiter Elegantiæ. C. Petronius was appointed dietator-in-chief of the imperial pleasures at the court of Nero; and nothing was considered comme il faut till it had received the sanction of this Roman “beau Brummel.”

Behold the new Petronius of the day,
The arbiter of pleasure and of play.
   —Byron: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

Arbre Sec, a tree said to have dried up and withered when our Lord was erueified.—A Mediæval Christian Tradition.

Arbre Sol foretold, with audible voice, the place and manner of Alexander death. This tree figures in all he fabulous legends of Alexander.

Arbuthnot (Epistle to Dr.), by Alexander Pope. The prologue of the Satires. It contains the famous description of Addison, under the name of “Atticus,” and is most prolifie in lines familiar as household words.

Are (Joan of), or Jeanne la Pucelle, the Maid of Orleans, daughter of a rustic of Domrémy; near Vaucouleurs, in France. She was servant at an inn when she conceived the idea of liberating France from the English. Having gained admission to Charles VII., she was sent by him to raise the siege of Orleans, and actually succeeded in so doing. Schiller (1801) wrote a tragedy on the subject; Balfe (1839), an opera; Casimir Delavigne an elegy; T. Taylor (1870) a tragedy; Southey, an epic poem on her life and death; and Voltaire, a burlesque.

N.B.—In regard to her death, M. Octave Delepière, in his Doute Historique, denies the tradition of her having been burnt to death at Rouen; and Vignier discovered in a family muniment chest the “contract of marriage between” Robert des Armoise, knight, and Jeanne d’Arc, surnamed “The Maid of Orleans.”

Arcades Ambo, both fools alike; both “sweet innocents;” both alike eccentric. There is nothing in the character of Corydon and Thyrsis (Virgil’s Eclogue, vii. 4) to justify this disparaging application of the phrase. All Virgil says is that they were both “in the flower of their youth, and both Arcadians, both equal in setting a theme song or capping it epigrammatically;” but as Arcadia was the least intellectual part of Greece, and “Arcadian” came to signify dunce, and hence “Arcades ambo” received its present acceptation.

Arcadia, a pastoral romance in prose by sir Philip Sidney, in imitation of the Dian’a of Montemayor (1590).

Arcalaus , an enchanter who bound Amadis de Gaul to a pillar in his courtyard, and administered to him 200 stripes with his horse’s bridle.—Amadis de Gaul (fifteenth century).