Chapter Gradus to Grapes Painted of G by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Granary of Europe. Sicily was so called once.

Granby and Devon. (See Devon.)

Grand Jument, meant for Diana of Poitiers.—Rabelais: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1533).

Grand Monarque [mo-nark], Louis XIV. (1638, 1643–1715).

Grand Pendu (Le), in cards, the king of diamonds. Whoever draws this card in cartomancy, is destined to die by the hands of the executioner. (See Lenormand.)

Joachim Murat, when king of Naples, sought the aid of Mdlle. Lenormand, by whom he was received with her customary haughtiness. The cards being produced, Murat cut the Grand Pendu, the portent of ill-fortune. Murat cut four times, and in every instance it was the king of diamonds.—See W. H. Wiltshire: Playing and other Cards, 162.

(The card called le pendu in tarot cards is represented by a man with his hands tied behind his back, and in some cases with two bags of money attached to his armpits. The man is hanging by the right leg to a gibbet. Probably an emblematic figure in alchemy.)

Grand Pré, a village of Acadia (now Nova Scotia), inhabited by a colony from Normandy, of very primitive manners, preserving the very costume of their old Norman forefathers. They had no locks to their doors nor bolts to their windows. There “the richest man was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance.” Grand Pré is the scene of Longfellow’s Evangeline (1849).

Grandamour. (See Graunde Amoure.)

Grandison (Sir Charles), the hero of a novel by S. Richardson, entitled The History of Sir Charles Grandison. Sir Charles is the beau-ideal of a perfect hero, the union of a good Christian and perfect English gentleman; but such a “faultless monster the world ne’er saw.” Richardson’s ideal of this character was Robert Nelson, reputed author of the Whole Duty of Man (1753).

Like the old lady mentioned by sir Walter Scott, who chose Sir Charles Grandison because she could go to sleep for half an hour at any time during its reading, and still find the personages just where she left them, conversing in the cedar parlour.—Encyclopœdia Britannica (article “Romance”).

Grandison is the English Emile, but an Emile completely instructed. His discourses are continual precepts, and his actions are examples. Miss Biron is the object of his affection.—Editor of Arabian Nights Continued, iv. 72.

Grandmother. Lord Byron calls the British Review “My Grandmother’s Review,” and says he purchased its favourable criticism of Don Juan with a bribe.

For fear some prudish readers should grow skittish,
I’ve bribed “My Grandmother’s Review,” The British;
I sent it in a letter to the editor,
Who thanked me duly by return of post. …
And if my gentle Muse he please to roast …
All I can say is—that he had the money.
   —Byron: Don Juan, i. 209, 210 (1819).

Grane, Siegfried’s horse, whose speed outstripped the wind.

Graneangowl (Rev. Mr.), chaplain to sir Duncan Campbell, at Ardenvohr Castle.—Sir W. Scott: Legend of Montrose (time, Charles I.).

Granger (Captain), in love with Elizabeth Doiley, daughter of a retired slop-seller. The old father resolves to give her to the best scholar, himself being judge. Gradus, an Oxford pedant, quotes two lines of Greek in which the word panta occurs four times. “Pantry!” cries old Doiley; “no, no; you can’t persuade me that’s Greek.” The captain talks of “refulgent scintillations in the ambient void opake; chrysalic spheroids