Chapter Great Harry to Green Horse of G by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Great Harry to Green Horse

Great Harry (The). (See Harry.)

Great-Head or Canmore, Malcolm III. of Scotland (*, 1057–1093).

Great-heart (Mr.), the guide of Christiana and her family to the Celestial City.—Bunyan: Pilgrim’s Progress, ii. (1684).

Great Magician (The) or The Great Magician of the North, sir Walter Scott. So called first by professor John Wilson (1771–1832).

Great Marquis (The), James Graham, marquis of Montrose (1612–1650).

I’ve told thee how we swept Dundee,
And tamed the Lindsays’ pride;
But never have I told thee yet
How the Great Marquis died.
   —Aytoun.

The Great Marquis, dom Sebastiano Jose de Carvalho, marquis de Pombal, greatest of all the Portuguese statesmen (1699–1782).

Great Moralist (The), Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784).

Great Sea (The). The Mediterranean Sea was so called by the ancients.

Great Unknown (The), sir Walter Scott, who published his Waverley Novels anonymously (1771–1832).

Great Unwashed (The). The artisan class were first so called by Burke, but sir W. Scott popularized the phrase.

Greaves (Sir Launcelot), a well-bred young English squire of the George II. period; handsome, virtuous, and enlightened, but crack-brained. He sets out, attended by an old sea-captain, to detect fraud and treason, abase insolence, mortify pride, discourage slander, disgrace immodesty, and punish ingratitude. Sir Launcelot, in fact, is a modern don Quixote, and captain Crow is his Sancho Panza.—Smollett: The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves (1760).

Smollett became editor of the Critical Review, and an attack in that journal on admiral Knowles led to a trial for libel. The author was sentenced to pay a fine of £100, and suffer three months’ imprisonment. He consoled himself in prison by writing his novel of Launcelot Greaves.—Chambers: English Literature, ii. 65.

Grecian Daughter (The), Euphrasia, daughter of Evander a Greek, who dethroned Dionysius the Elder, and became king of Syracuse. In his old age he was himself dethroned by Dionysius the Younger, and confined in a dungeon in a rock, where he was saved from starvation by his daughter, who fed him with “the milk designed for her own babe.” Timoleon having made himself master of Syracuse, Dionysius accidentally encountered Evander his prisoner, and was about to kill him, when Euphrasia rushed forwards and stabbed the tyrant to the heart.—Murphy: The Grecian Daughter (1772).

N.B.—As an historical drama this plot is much the same as if the writer had said that James I. (of England) abdicated and retired to St. Germain, and when his son James II. succeeded to the crown, he was beheaded at White Hall; for Murphy makes Dionysius the Elder to have been dethroned, and going to Corinth to live (act i.), and Dionysius the Younger to have been slain by the dagger of Euphrasia; whereas Dionysius the Elder never was dethroned, but died in Syracuse at the age of 63; and Dionysius the Younger was not slain in Syracuse, but, being dethroned, went to Corinth, where he lived and died in exile. (See Roman Daughter.)

The same story is told of Xantippê daughter of Cimonos.

This, of course, is not Xantippe the wife of Socratês. (See Childe Harold, v. 148; and Little Dorrit, xix.)