Chapter TOBY to Tom Scott of T by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Lord Byron refers to the “duel” between Francis Jeffrey editor of the Edinburgh Review, and Thomas Moore the poet, at Chalk Farm, in 1806. The duel was interrupted, and it was then found that neither of the pistols contained a bullet.

Can none remember that eventful day,
That ever-glorious, almost fatal fray,
When Little’s [Thomas Moore] leadless pistol met his eye,
And Bow Street myrmidons stood laughing by?
   —Ditto.

Toledo, famous for its sword-blades. Vienne, in the Lower Dauphiné, is also famous for its swords. Its martinets (i.e. the water-mills for an iron forge) are turned by a little river called Gere.

Gargantua gave Touchfaucet an excellent sword of a Vienne blade with a golden scabbard.—Rabelais: Gargantua, i. 46 (1533).

Tolmetes , Foolhardiness personified in The Purple Island, fully described in canto viii. His companions were Arrogance, Brag, Carelessness, and Fear. (Greek, tolmêtês, “a foolhardy man.”)

Thus ran the rash Tolmetes, never viewing
The fearful fiends that duly him attended…
Much would he boldly do, but much more boldly vaunt.
   —P. Fletcher: The Purple Island, viii. (1633).

Tom, “the Portugal dustman,” who joined the allied army against France in the war of the Spanish Succession.—Dr. Arbuthnot: History of John Bull (1712).

Tom, one of the servants of Mr. Peregrine Lovel, “with a good deal of surly honesty about him.” Tom is no sneak, and no tell-tale, but he refuses to abet Philip the butler in sponging on his master, and wasting his property in riotous living. When Lovel discovers the state of affairs, and clears out his household, he retains Tom, to whom he entrusts the cellar and the plate.—Townley: High Life Below Stairs (1759).

Tom (Uncle). (See Uncle Tom.)

Tom Brown’s School-days, a tale by Thomas Hughes (1856).

Tom Brown at Oxford, a sequel to the above, by Thomas Hughes (1861).

Tom Folio, Thomas Rawlinson, the bibliopolist (1681–1725).

Tom Jones , a model of generosity, openness, and manly spirit, mixed with dissipation. Lord Byron calls him “an accomplished blackguard” (Don Juan, xiii. 110, 1824).—Fielding: Tom Jones (1749).

A hero with a flawed reputation, a hero sponging for a guinea, a hero who cannot pay his landlady, and is obliged to let his honour out to hire, is absurd, and the claim of Tom Jones to heroic rank is quite untenable.—Thackeray

Tom Long, the hero of an old tale, entitled The Merry Conceits of Tom Long, the Carrier, being many Pleasant Passages and Mad Pranks which he observed in his Travels. This tale was at one time amazingly popular.

Tom Scott, Daniel Quilp’s boy, Tower Hill. Although Quilp was a demon incarnate, yet “between the boy and the dwarf there existed a strange kind of mutual liking.” Tom was very fond of standing on his head, and on one occasion Quilp said to him, “Stand on your head again, and I’ll cut one of your feet off.”

The boy made no answer, but directly Quilp had shut himself in, stood on his head before the door, then walked on his hands to the back, and stood on his head there, then to the opposite side and repeated the performance.…Quilp, knowing his disposition, was lying in wait at a little distance, armed with a large piece of wood, which, being rough and jagged, and studded with broken nails, might possibly have hurt him, if it had been thrown at him.—Dickens: The Old Curiosity Shop, v. (1840).