Chapter Prisoner of State to Prophet of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Prisoner of State to Prophet

Prisoner of State (The), Ernest de Fridberg. E. Stirling has a drama so called. (For the plot, see Ernest de Fridberg, p. 330.)

Pritchard (William), commander of H.M. sloop the Shark.—Sir W. Scott: Guy Mannering (time George II.)

Priuli, a senator of Venice, of unbending pride. His daughter had been saved from the Adriatic by Juffier, and gratitude led to love. As it was quite hopeless to expect Priuli to consent to the match, Belvidera eloped in the night, and married Jaffier. Priuli now discarded them both. Jaffier joined Pierre’s conspiracy to murder the Venetian senators, but, in order to save his father-in-law, revealed to him the plot under the promise of a general free pardon. The promise was broken, and all the conspirators except Jaffier were condemned to death by torture. Jaffier stabbed Pierre, to save him from the wheel, and then killed himself. Belvidera went mad and died. Priuli lived on, a broken-down old man, sick of life, and begging to be left alone in some “place that’s fit for mourning;” there all leave me—

Sparing no tears when you this tale relate,
But bid all cruel fathers dread my fate.

otway: Venice Preserved, v. the end (1682).

Privolvans, the antagonists of the Subvolvans.

These silly, ranting Privolvans
Have every summer their campaigns,
And muster like the warlike sons
Of Rawhead and of Bloody-bones.

S. Butler: The Elephant in the Moon, v. 85 (1754).

Proa, a Malay skiff of great swiftness, much used by pirates in the Eastern Archipelago, and called the flying proa.

The proa darted like a shooting star.

Byron: The Island, iv. 3 (1819).

Probe , a priggish surgeon, who magnifies mole-hill ailments into mountain maladies, in order to enhance his skill and increase his charges. Thus, when lord Foppington received a small flesh-wound in the arm from a foil, Probe drew a long face, frightened his lordship greatly, and pretended the consequences might be serious; but when lord Foppington promised him £500 for a cure, he set his patient on his legs the next day.—Sheridan: A Trip to Scarborough (1777).

Probus and Pomposus, names which frequently occur in the earlier poems of lord Byron, are meant respectively for Dr. Drury and Dr. Butler, successive headmasters of Harrow School. Byron was a great admirer of the former, but had at first a great dislike to the latter, who was appointed while Byron was a pupil. The poet, however, became reconciled to Dr. Butler before his departure for Greece, in 1809.

Procession of the Black Breeches. This is the heading of a chapter in vol. ii. of Carlyle’s French Revolution. The chapter contains a description of the mob procession, headed by Santerre carrying a pair of black breeches on a pole. The mob forced its way into the Tuileries on June 30, 1792, and presented the king with a bonnet rouge and a tricolor cockade.

Procida (John of), a tragedy by S. Knowles (1840). John of Procida was an Italian gentleman of the thirteenth century, a skilful physician, high in favour with king Fernando II., Conrad, Manfred, and Conradine. The French invaded the island, put the last two monarchs to the sword, usurped the sovereignty, and made Charles d’Anjou king. The cruelty, licentiousness, and extortion of the French being quite unbearable, provoked a general rising of the Sicilians, and in one night (the Sicilian Vespers, March 3 0, 1282) every Frenchman, Frenchwoman, a