Chapter Phyllis to Picrochole's Counsellors of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

(Pierre Matthieu, poet and historian, wrote Quatrains de la Vanité du Monde, 1629.)

Pibroch. It is remarkable how common the error is of mistaking this word, which is the name of a kind of air, generally martial, for the instrument on which it is played, namely, the bag-pipe. Even lord Byron falls into it in his poem Oscar of Alva—

It is not war their aid demands,
The pioroch plays the song of peace.
   —Oscar of Alva. 24.

Picanninies , little children; the small fry of a village.—West Indian Negroes.

There were at the marriage the picanninies and the Joblillies, but not the Grand Panjandrum.—Yonge.

Picaresco School (The), romances of roguery; called in Spanish Gusto Picaresco. Gil Blas is one of this school of novels.

Picatrix, the pseudonym of a Spanish monk; author of a book on demonology.

When I was a student,…that same Rev. Picatrix …was wont to tell us that devils did naturally fear the bright flashes of swords as much as he feared the splendour of the sun.—Rabelais: Pantagruel, iii. 23 (1545).

Piccolino, an opera by Mons. Guiraud (1875); libretto by MM. Sardou and Nuittier. This opera was first introduced to an English audience in 1879. The tale is this: Marthe, an orphan girl adopted by a Swiss pastor, is in love with Frédéric Auvray, a young artist, who “loved and left his love.” Marthe plods through the snow from Switzerland to Rome to find her young artist, but, for greater security, puts on boy’s clothes, and assumes the name of Piccolino. She sees Frédéric, who knows her not; but, struck with her beauty, makes a drawing of her. Marthe discovers that the faithless Frédéric is paying his addresses to Elena (sister of the duke Strozzi). She tells the lady her love-tale; and Frédéric, deserted by Elena, forbids Piccolino (Marthe) to come into his presence again. The poor Swiss wanderer throws herself into the Tiber, but is rescued. Frédéric repents, and the curtain falls on a reconciliation and approaching marriage.

Pickel-Herringe , a popular name among the Dutch for a buffoon; a corruption of pickle-härin (“a hairy sprite”), answering to Ben Jonson’s Puck-hairy.

Pickle (Peregrine), a savage, ungrateful spendthrift, fond of practical jokes. He delighted in tormenting others, but bore with ill temper the misfortunes which resulted from his own wilfulness. His ingratitude to his uncle, and his arrogance to Hatchway and Pipes, are simply hateful.—Smollett: The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751).

Pickle the Spy, so scandalously mixed up with the history of “Bonnie prince Charles,” was Alastair Ruadh McDonnell, heir to the chieftainship of Glengarry. Charles Edward (the young Pretender) trusted this Scotch Judas to the very last.—Andrew Lang: Pickle the Spy (1896).

Pickwick (Samuel), the chief character of The Pickwick Papers, a novel by C. Dickens. He is general chairman of the Pickwick Club. A most verdant, benevolent, elderly gentleman, who, as member of a club instituted “for the purpose of investigating the source of the Hampstead ponds,” travels about with three members of the club, to whom he acts as guardian and adviser. The adventures they encounter form the subject of the Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1836).

(The original of Seymour’s picture of “Pickwick” was a Mr. John Foster (not the biographer of Dickens, but a friend of Mr. Chapman’s the publisher). He lived at Richmond, and was “a fat old beau,” noted for his “drab tights and black gaiters.”)

Pickwick Club (The Posthumous Papers of the), the title of the novel generally called the “Pickwick Papers,” by Dickens (1836). Mr. Seymour was retained to illustrate the papers, and after his death H. K. Browne, who assumed the name of Phiz. The first five monthly parts were a decided failure, but on the introduction of Sam Weller the sale rose twentyfold, and the publishers sent Dickens £500 on the