Chapter Panyer's Alley to Paradise Lost of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Paracelsus is said to have k ept a small devil prisoner in the pommel of his sword. He favoured for medicines metallic substances, while Galen preferred herbs. His full name was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus, but his family name was Bombastus (1493–1541).

Paracelsus, at the age of 20, thinks knowledge the summum bonum, and at the advice of his two friends, Festus and Michal, retires to a seat of learning in quest thereof. Eight years later, being dissatisfied, he falls in with Aprile, an Italian poet, and resolves to seek the summum bonum in love. Again he fails, and, when dying in a cell in the hospital of St. Sebastion, deserted by all but Festus, he declares the summum bonum to be, love and power. “To see good in evil, and a hope in ill-success.”—R. Browning: Paracelsus.

Paradine , son of Astolpho, and brother of Dargonet, both rivals for the love of Laura. In the combat provoked by prince Oswald against Gondibert, which was decided by four combatants on each side, Hugo “the Little” slew both the brothers.—Davenant: Gondibert, i. (died 1668).

Paradisaica [“the fruit of paradise”]. So the banana is called. The Mohammedans aver that the “forbidden fruit” was the banana or Indian fig, and cite in confirmation of this opinion that our first parents used fig leaves for their covering after their fall.

Paradise, in thirty-three cantos, by Dantê (1311). Paradise is separated from Purgatory by the river Lethê; and Dantê was conducted through nine of the spheres by Beatrice, who left him in the sphere of “unbodied light,” under the charge of St. Bernard (canto xxxi.). The entire region is divided into ten spheres, each of which is appropriated to its proper order. The first seven spheres are the seven planets, viz. (1) the Moon for angels, (2) Mercury for archangels, (3) Venus for virtues, (4) the Sun for powers, (5) Mars for principalities, (6) Jupiter for dominions, (7) Saturn for thrones. The eighth sphere is that of the fixed stars for the cherubim; the ninth is the primum mobilê fo r the seraphim; and the tenth is the empyrean for the Virgin Mary and the triune deity. Beatrice, with Rachel, Sarah, Judith, Rebecca, and Ruth, St. Augustin, St. Francis, St. Benedict, and others, were enthroned in Venus the sphere of the virtues. The empyrean, he says, is a sphere of “unbodied light,” “bright effluence of bright essence, uncreate.” This is what the Jews called “the heaven of the heavens.”

Paradise was placed, in the legendary maps of the Middle Ages, in Ceylon; but Mahomet placed it “in the seventh heaven.” The Arabs have a tradition that when our first parents were cast out of the garden, Adam fell in the isle of Ceylon, and Eve in Joddah (the port of Mecca).—Al Korân, ii.

Paradise of Central Africa, Fatiko.—Baker: Exploration of the Nile Sources (1866).

Paradise of Bohemia, the district round Leitmeritz.

The Dutch Paradise, the province of Gelderland, in South Holland.

The Portuguese Paradise, Cintra, north-west of Lisbon.

Paradise of Fools (Limbus Fatuorum), the limbo of all vanities, idiots, madmen, and those of mature age not accountable for their ill deeds.

Then might ye see
Cowls, hoods, and habits, with their wearers, tost
And fluttered into rags; then relics, beads,
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,
The sport of winds: all these, upwhirled aloft.
Fly…into a limbo large and broad, since called
“The Paradise of Fools.”

Milton: Paradise Lost, iii. 489 (1665).

Paradise and the Peri. A peri was told she would be admitted into heaven if she would bring thither the gift most acceptable to the Almighty. She first brought a drop of a young patriot’s blood, shed on his country’s behalf; but the gates would not open for such an offering. She next took thither the last sigh of a damsel who had died nursing her betrothed, who had been stricken by the plague; but the gates would