Chapter Melyhalt to Mephostophilus of M by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Menevia, St. David’s, in Wales. A corruption of Henemenew, its old British name.

Mengs (John), the surly innkeeper at

Kirchhoff village.—Sir W. Scott: Anne of Geierstein (time, Edward IV.).

Menippee (Satyre), a famous political satire, written during the time of what is called in French history the Holy League, the objects of which were to exterminate the huguenots, to confine the king (Henri III.) in a monastery, and to crown the duc de Guise. The satire is partly in verse, and partly in prose; and its object is to expose the perfidious intentions of Philip of Spain and the culpable ambition of the Guises.

It is divided into two parts, the first of which is entitled Catholicon d’Espagne, by Pierre Leroy (1593), exposing those who had been corrupted by the gold of Spain; the second part is entitled Abrégé des Etats de la Ligue, by Gillot, Pithou, Rapin, and Passerat, published 1594.

Menippus was a cynic philosopher and poet of Gadara, in Phœnicia, who wrote twelve books of satires in prose and verse.

(Varro wrote in Latin a work called The Satires of Menippus (Satyrœ Menippeœ).)

Menteith (The earl of), a kinsman of the earl of Montrose. He marries Annot Lyle, the heroine.—Sir W. Scott: Legend of Montrose (time, Charles I.).

Mentor, a wise and faithful adviser or guide. So called from Mentor, a friend of Ulyssês, whose form Minerva assumed when she accompanied Telemachos in his search for his father.—Fénelon: Télémaque (1700).

Mephistopheles , the sneering, jeering, leering attendant demon of Faust in Goethe’s drama of Faust, and Gounod’s opera of the same name. Marlowe calls the name “Mephostophilis” in his drama entitled Dr. Faustus. Shakespeare, in his Merry Wives of Windsor, writes the name “Mephostophilus;” and in the opera he is called “M efistofele” . In the old demonology, Mephistophelês was one of the seven chief devils, and second of the fallen archangels.

Mephostophilis, the attendant demon of Faustus, in Marlowe’s tragedy of Dr. Faustus (1589).

There is an awful melancholy about Marlowe’s “Mephostophilis,” perhaps more expressive than the malignant mirth of that fiend in the renowned work of Goethe.—Hallam.

Mephostophilus, the spirit or familiar of sir John Faustus or [Dr.] John Faust (Shakespeare: Merry Wives of Windsor, 1596). Subsequently it became a term of reproach, about equal to “imp of the devil.”