Chapter Stuarts' Fatal Number to Such Things Are of S by Brewer's Readers Handbook

the gibbet where Gardel is hanging; but, turning down a narrow lane to the left, as it might be about there, in order to possess a pigstye, that we might take the gallows in flank, and secure a retreat, who should come by but a drove of fat oxen for Smith-field? The drums beat in front, the dogs barked in the rear, the oxen set up a gallop; on they came, thundering upon us, broke through our ranks in an instant, and threw the whole corps into confusion.—Act i. 1.

Sturmthal (Melchoir), the banneret of Berne, one of the Swiss deputies.—Sir W. Scott: Anne of Geierstein (time, Edward IV.).

Stutly (Will), sometimes called Will Stukely, a companion of Little John. In the morris-dance on May- day, Little John occupied the right hand side of Robin Hood, and Will Stutly the left. His rescue from the sheriff of Nottingham by Robin Hood, forms the subject of one of the Robin Hood ballads.

When Robin Hood in the greenwood lived, Under the greenwood tree,
Tidings there came to him with speed, Tidings for certaintie,
That Will Stutly surprized was, And eke in prison lay;
Three varlets that the sheriff hired, Did likely him betray.

Robin Hood’s Rescuing Will Stutly, iv. 15.

Styles (Tom or John) or Tom o’ Styles a phrase name at one time used by lawyers in actions of ejectment. Jack Noakes and Tom Styles used to act in law the part that N or M acts in the church. The legal fiction has been abolished.

I have no connection with the company further than giving them, for a certain fee and reward, my poor opinion as a medical man, precisely as I may give it to Jack Noakes or Tom Styles.—Dickens.

(Tom Styles, Jack Noakes, John Doe, and Richard Roe are all Mrs. Harrises of the legal profession, nomina et præterea nihil.)

Styx, one of the five riv ers of hell. The others are Acheron (“the river of grief”), Cocytus (“the river of wailing”), Phlegethon (“the river of liquid fire”), and Lethê (“the river of oblivion”). Styx means “the river of hate.” (Greek, stugeo, “I hate.”)

Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;
Sad Acheron, of sorrow, black and deep;
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud,
Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage.
Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,
Lethê, the river of oblivion, rolls.
   —Milton: Paradise Lost, ii. 577, etc. (1665).

N.B.—Dantê place s the rivers in different circles of the Inferno; thus, he makes the Acheron divide the border-land from limbo. The former realm is for the “praiseless and the blameless dead;” limbo is for the unbaptized. He places the Stygian Lake of “inky hue” in the fifth circle, the realm of those who put no restraint on their anger. The fire-stream of Phlegethon he fixes to the eighth steep, the “hell of burning, where it snows flakes of fire,” and where blasphemers are confined. He places “the frozen river” of Cocytus in the tenth pit of Malêbolgê, a region of thick-ribbed ice, the lowest depth of hell, where Judas and Lucifer are imprisoned. Lethê, he says, is no river of hell at all; but it is the one wish of all the infernals to get to it, that they may drink its water and forget their torments; being, however, in “Purgatory,” they can never get near it.—The Divine Comedy (1300-11).

Sublime and Beautiful (An Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the), by Burke (1757).

Subtle, the “alchemist,” an artful quack, who pretends to be on the eve of discovering the philosopher’s stone. Sir Epicure Mammon, a rich knight, is his principal dupe, but by no means his only one.—Ben Jonson: The Alchemist (1610).