Chapter Psyche to Pumpkin of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Psyche to Pumpkin

Psyche [Si-ke], a most beautiful maiden, with whom Cupid fell in love. The god told her she was never to seek to know who he was; but Psychê could not resist the curiosity of looking at him as he lay asleep. A drop of the hot oil from Psychê’s lamp, falling on the love-god, woke him, and he instantly took to flight. Psychê now wandered from place to place, persecuted by Venus; but after enduring ineffable troubles, Cupid came at last to her rescue, married her, and bestowed on her immortality.

(This exquisite allegory is from the Golden Ass of Apuleios. Lafontaine has turned it into French verse. M. Laprade (born 1812) has rendered it into French most exquisitely. The English version, by Mrs. Tighe (1805), in six cantos, is simply unreadable.)

The story of Cupid and Psychê is an allegory, meaning that romances of love, like castles in the air, are exquisite till we look at them as realities, when they instantly vanish, and leave only disappointment and vexation behind.

Ptah, the Creator, in Egyptian mythology. “Amen” is the Egyptian god-head.

Hath not Ptah, the Creator, fashioned the form to fit the imperial garb?—H. Rider Haggard: Cleopatra, ch. ii.

O Amen, god of gods, who hast been from the beginning … the self-begot, who shall be to all eternity, … listen unto me.—H. Rider Haggard: Cleopatra, ch. iii.

Pternoglyphus [“bacon-scooper”], one of the mouse chieftains.—Parnell: Battle of the Frogs and Mice, iii. (about 1712).

Pternophagus [“bacon-eater”], one of the mouse chieftans.

But dire Pternophagus divides his way
Thro’ breaking ranks, and leads the dreadful day.
No nibbling prince excelled in fierceness more,—
His parents fed him on the savage boar.

Parnell: Battle of the Frogs and Mice, iii. (about 1712).

Pternotractas [“bacon-gnawer”], father of “the meal-licker,” Lycomilê (wife of Troxartas, “the bread-eater”). Psycarpas the king of the mice, was son of Lycomilê, and grandson of Pternotractas.—Parnell: Battle of the Frogs and Mice, i. (about 1712).

Ptolemean System (The). King Alfonso, speaking of this system, said, if he had been consulted at the creation of the world, he would have spared the Maker of it many absurdities.

I settle all these things by intuition…
Like king Alfonso.

Byron: Vision of Judgment (1819)

Ptolemy’s Great Book was called the Almagest (Arabic, al, “the,” majisti, “greatest”), meaning the chief book of astronomy on the geometric system. It was written in the second century of our era, and was the standard work for fourteen centuries, when Ptolemy was superseded by Copernicus, who pointed out the difference between real motion and apparent motion; and that the earth is a mere planet.

Travelling in a railway carriage, the hedges and houses seem to be running the opposite way to ourselves, and the carriage seems to be motionless.

Public Good (The League of the), a league between the dukes of Burgundy, Brittany, and other French Princes against Louis XI.

Publicola, of the Despatch newspaper, was the assumed name of Mr. Williams, a vigorous political writer.