Chapter Essex to Etty's Nine Pictures of E by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Marie de Martigny (La comtesse), wife of the titular earl of Etherington.—Sir W. Scott: St. Ronan’s Well (time, George III.).

Ethiopian Wood, ebony.

The seats were made of Ethiopian wood,
The polished ebony.
   —Davenant: Gondibert, ii. 6 (died 1668).

Ethiopians, the same as Abassinians. The Arabians call these people El-habasen or Al-habasen, whence our Abassins; but they call themselves Ithiopians or Ethiopians.—Selden: Titles of Honour, vi. 64.

Where the Abassin kings their issue guard,
Mount Amara.
   —Milton: Paradise Lost, iv. 280 (1665).

Ethiops Queen, referred to by Milton in his Il Penseroso, was Cassiopea, wife of Cepheus king of Ethiopia. She had a daughter named Andromeda, whose beauty she affirmed exceeded that of the sea-nymphs. Nereus complained of this insult to Neptune, and old father Earth-Shaker sent a huge seamonster to ravage the kingdom of Ethiopia. At death Cassiopea was made a constellation of thirteen stars.

… that starred Ethiop queen that strove
To set her beauty’s praise above
The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended.
   —Milton: Il Penseroso, 19 (1638).

Ethnick Plot. The “Popish Plot” is so called in Dryden’s satire of Absalom and Achitophel. As Dryden calls the royalists “Jews,” and calls Charles II. “David king of the Jews,” the papists were “Gentiles” (or Ethnoi), whence the “Ethnic Plot” means the plot of the Ethnoi against the people of God.

… well versed of old
In godly faction, and in treason bold …
Saw with disdain an Ethnick plot begun,
And scorned by Jebusites [Catholics] to be outdone.
   —Part i., lines 513–518 (1681).

Etiquette (Madame), the duchesse de Noailles, grand-mistress of the ceremonies in the court of Marie Antoinette. So called from her rigid enforcement of all the formalities and ceremonies of the ancien régime.

Etna. Zeus buried under this mountain Enkelados, one of the hundred-handed giants.

The whole land weighed him down, as Etna does
The giant of mythology.
   —Tennyson: The Golden Supper.

Etteilla, the pseudonym of Alliette (spelt backwards), a perruquier and diviner of the eighteenth century. He became a professed cabalist, and was visited in his studio in the Hôtel de Crillon (Rue de la Verrerie) by all those who desired to unroll the Book of Fate. In 1783 he published Manière de se Récréer avec le Jeu de Cartes, nommées Tarots. In the British Museum are some divination cards published in Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century, called Grand Etteilla and Petit Etteilla, each pack being accompanied with a book of explication and instruction.

Ettercap, an ill-tempered person, who mars sociability. The ettercap is the poison-spider, and should be spelt “attercop.” (Anglo-Saxon, atter-cop, “poison-spider.”)

O sirs, was sic difference seen
As ’twixt wee Will and Tam ?
The ane’s a perfect ettercap,
The ither’s just a lamb.
   —W. Miller: Nursery Songs.

Ettrick Shepherd (The), James Hogg, the poet, who was born in the forest of Ettrick, in Selkirkshire, and in early life was a shepherd (1772–1835).

Etty’s Nine Pictures, “the Combat,” the three “Judith” pictures, “Benaiah,” “Ulysses and the Syrens,” and the three pictures of “Joan of Arc.”

“My aim,” says Etty, “in all my great pictures has been to paint some great moral on the heart. ‘The Combat’ represents the beauty of mercy; the three ‘Judith’ pictures, patriotism [1, self-devotion to God; 2,