Chapter Prince of Peace to Prisoner of Chillon of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Yet spake this child, when spreint was the holy water, And sang O Alma redemptoris mater.

(Wordsworth has modernized this tale.)

Priory (Lord), an old-fashioned husband, who actually thinks that a wife should “love, honour, and obey” her husband; nay, more, that “forsaking all others, she should cleave to him so long as they both should live.”

Lady Priory, an old-fashioned wife, but young and beautiful. She was, however, so very old-fashioned that she went to bed at ten and rose at six; dressed in a cap and gown of her own making; respected and loved her husband; discouraged flirtation; and when assailed by any improper advances, instead of showing temper or conceited airs, quietly and tranquilly seated herself to some modest household duty till the assailant felt the irresistible power of modesty and virtue.—Mrs. Inchbald: Wives as They Were and Maids as They Are (1797).

Priscian, a great grammarian of the fifth century. The Latin phrase, Diminuere Prisciani caput (“to break Priscian’s head”), means to “violate the rules of grammar.” (See Pegasus, p. 819.)

Come, free from rhyme or reason, rule or check,
Break Priscian’s head, and Pegasus’s neck.

Pope: The Dunciad, iii. 161 (1728).

Quakers (that, like to lanterns, bear
Their light within them) will not swear; …
And hold no sin so deeply red
As that of breaking Priscian’s head.

S. Butler: Hudibras, II. ii. 219, etc. (1664).

Priscilla, daughter of a noble lord. She fell in love with sir Aladine, a poor knight.—Spenser: Faërie Queene, vi. 1 (1596).

Priscilla, the beautiful puritan in love with John Alden. When Miles Standish, a bluff soldier in the middle of life, wished to marry her, he asked John Alden to go and plead his cause; but the puritan maiden replied archly, “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” Soon after this, Standish being killed, as it was supposed by a poisoned arrow, John did speak for himself, and Priscilla listened to his seduction.—Longfellow: The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858).

Prison Life Endeared. The following are examples of prisoners who, from long habit, have grown attached to prison life:—

(1) Comte De Lorge was confined for thirty years in the Bastile, and when liberated (July 14, 1789) declared that freedom had no joys for him. After imploring in vain to be allowed to return to his dungeon, he lingered for six weeks and pined to death.

(2) Goldsmith says, when Chinvang the Chaste ascended the throne of China, he commanded the prisons to be thrown open. Among the prisoners was a venerable man of 85 years of age, who implored that he might be suffered to return to his cell. For sixty-three years he had lived in its gloom and solitude, which he preferred to the glare of the sun and the bustle of a city.—A Citizen of the World, lxxiii. (1759).

(3) Mr. Cogan once visited a prisoner of state in the King’s Bench prison, who told him he had grown to like the subdued light and extreme solitude of his cell; he even liked the spots and patches on the wall, the hardness of his bed, the regularity, and the freedom from all the cares and worries of active life. He did not wish to be released, and felt sure he should never be so happy in any other place.

(4) A woman of Leyden, on the expiration of a long imprisonment, applied for permission to return to her cell, and added, if the request were refused as a favour, she would commit some offence which would give her a title to her old quarters.