Chapter Quidnuncs to Quotem of Q by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Quintessence (Queen), so vereign of Entéléchie, the country of speculative science visited by Pantagruel and his companions in their search for “the oracle of the Holy Bottle.”—Rabelais: Pantagruel, v. 19 (1545).

Quintessence of Heaven. Besides the four elements of earth, Aristotle imagined a fifth element, out of which the stars and other ethereal bodies were formed. The motion of this “quintessence,” he said, was orbicular.

…this ethereal “quintessence of heaven”
Flew upward, spirited with various forms,
That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars
Numberless.
   —Milton: Paradise Lost, iii. 716, etc. (1665).

Quintiquiniestra (Queen), a much-dreaded, fighting giantess. It was one of the romances in don Quixote’s library condemned by the priest and barber of the village to be burnt.—Cervantes: Don Quixote, I. (1605).

Quintus Fixlein [Fix-line], the title and chief character of a romance by Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1796).

Francia, like Quintus Fixlein, had perennial fireproof joys, namely, employments.—Carlyle.

Quirinus, Mars.

Now, by our sire Quirinus,
It was a goodly sight
To see the thirty standards
Swept down the tide of flight.
   —Macaulay: Lays of Ancient Rome (“Battle of the Lake Regillus,” xxxvi., 1842).

Quitam (Mr.), the lawyer at the Black Bear inn at Darlington.—Sir W. Scott: Rob Roy (time, George I.).

(The first two words in an action on a penal statute are Qui tam. Thus, Qui tam pro domina regina, quam pro seipso, sequitur.)

Quixada (Gutierre), lord of Villagarcia. Don Quixote calls himself a descendant of this brave knight.—Cervantes: Don Quixote, I. (1605).

Quixote (Don), a gaunt country gentleman of La Mancha, about 50 years of age, gentle and dignified, learned and high-minded; with strong imagination perverted by romance and crazed with ideas of chivalry. He is the hero of a Spanish romance by Cervantes. Don Quixote feels himself called on to become a knight-errant, to defend the oppressed and succour the injured. He engages for his ‘squire Sancho Panza, a middle-aged, ignorant rustic, selfish but full of good sense, a gourmand but attached to his master, shrewd but credulous. The knight goes forth on his adventures, thinks wind-mills to be giants, flocks of sheep to be armies, inns to be castles, and galley-slaves oppressed gentlemen; but the ‘squire sees them in their true light. Ultimately, the knight is restored to his right mind, and dies like a peaceful Christian. The object of this romance was to laugh down the romances of chivalry of the Middle Ages.

(Quixote means “armour for the thighs,” but Quixada means “lantern jaws.” Don Quixote’s favourite author was Feliciano de Sylva; his model knight was Amadis de Gaul. The romance is in two parts, of four books each. Pt. I. was published in 1605, and pt. II. in 1615.)

(The prototype of the knight was the duke of Lerma.)

Don Quixote is a tall, meagre, lantern-jawed, hawknosed, long-limbed, grizzle-haired man, with a pair of large black whiskers, and he styles himself “The Knight of the Woeful Countenance.”—Cervantes: Don Quixote, II. i. 14 (1615).

Don Quixote’s Horse, Rosinantê , all skin and bone.

The Female Quixote or Adventures of Arabella, a novel by Mrs. Lennox (1752).

The Quixote of the North, Charles XII. of Sweden; sometimes called “The Madman” (1682, 1697–1718).