Chapter Marinel to Marmion of M by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Marinel to Marmion

Marinel, the beloved o f Florimel “the Fair.” Marinel was the son of black-browed Cymoent (daughter of Nereus and Dumarin), and allowed no one to pass by the rocky cave where he lived without doing battle with him. When Marinel forbade Britomart to pass, she replied, “I mean not thee entreat to pass;” and with her spear knocked him “grovelling on the ground.” His mother, with the sea-nymphs, came to him; and the “lily-handed Liagore,” who knew leechcraft, feeling his pulse, said life was not extinct. So he was carried to his mother’s bower, “deep in the bottom of the sea,” where Tryphon (the sea-gods’ physician) soon restored him to perfect health. One day, Proteus asked Marinel and his mother to a banquet, and while the young man was sauntering about, he heard a female voice lamenting her hard lot, and saying her hardships were brought about for her love to Marinel. The young man discovered that the person was Florimel, who had been shut up in a dungeon by Proteus for rejecting his suit; so he got a warrant of release from Neptune, and married her.—Spenser: Faërie Queene, iii. 8; iv. 11, 12 (1590, 1596).

Marini (F. B.), called Le cavalier Marin, born at Naples. He was a poet, and is known by his poem called Adonis or L’Adone, in twenty cantos (1623). The poem is noted for its description of the “Garden of Venus.”

If the r eader will … read over Ariosto’s picture of the garden of paradise, Tasso’s garden of Armida, and Marini’s garden of Venus, he will be persuaded that Milton imitates their manner, but … excels the originals.—Thyer.

Marino Faliero, the forty-ninth doge of Venice, elected 1354. A patrician named Michel Steno, having behaved indecently to some of the ladies at a great civic banquet given by the doge, was turned out of the house by order of the duke. In revenge, the young man wrote a scurrilous libel against the dogaressa, which he fastened to the doge’s chair of state. The insult being referred to “the Forty,” Steno was condemned to imprisonment for a month. This punishment was thought by the doge to be so inadequate to the offence, that he joined a conspiracy to overthrow the republic. The conspiracy was betrayed by Bertram, one of the members, and the doge, at the age of 76, was beheaded on the “Giants’ Staircase.”—Byron: Marino Faliero (1819).

(Casimir Delavigne, in 1829, brought out a tragedy on the same subject, and with the same title.)

Marion de Lorme, in whose house the conspirators met. She betrayed all their movements and designs to Richelieu.—Lord Lytton: Richelieu (1839).

Maritornes , an Asturian chamber-maid at the Crescent Moon tavern, to which don Quixote was taken by his ’squire after their drubbing by the goat-herds. The crazy knight insisted that the tavern was a castle, and that Maritornes, “the lord’s daughter,” was in love with him.

She was broad-faced, flat-nosed, blind of one eye, and had a most delightful squint with the other; the peculiar gentility of her shape, however, compensated for every defect, she being about three feet in height, and remarkably hunchbacked.—Cervantes: Don Quixote, I. iii 2 (1605).

Marius (Caïus), the Roman general, tribune of the people, B. C. 119; the rival of Sylla.

(Antony Vincent Arnault wrote a tragedy in French entitled Marius à Minturnes (1791). Thomas Lodge, M.D., in 1594, wrote a drama called Wounds of Civil War, lively set forth in the True Tragedies of Marius and Sylla.)

Marivaux (Pierre de Chamblain de), a French writer of comedies and romances (1678–1763).

(S. Richardson is called “The English Marivaux,” 1689–1761.)

Marjory of Douglas, daughter of Archibald earl of Douglas, and duchess of Rothsay.—Sir W. Scott: Fair Maid of Perth (time, Henry IV.).