Chapter Traveller to Trees noted for Specific Virtues and Uses of T by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Traveller to Trees noted for Specific Virtues and Uses

Traveller (The). The scheme of this poem is very simple: The poet supposes himself seated among Alpine solitudes, looking down upon a hundred kingdoms. He would fain find some spot where happiness can be attained, but the natives of each realm think their own the best; yet the amount of happiness in each is pretty well equal. To illustrate this, the poet describes the manners and government of Italy, Switzerland, France, Holland, and England.—Goldsmith (1764).

Traveller (Mr.), the stranger who tried to reason with Mr. Mopes and bring him back to society, but found the truth of the tinker’s remark, “When iron is thoroughly rotten, you cannot botch it.”—Dickens: A Christmas Number (1861).

Traveller’s Refuge, the valley of Fakreddin.—Beckford: Vathek (1784).

Travellers’ Tales. (1) Marco Polo says, “Certain islands lie so far north in the Northern Ocean, that one going thither actually leaves the pole-star a trifle behind to the south.”

(2) A Dutch skipper told Master Moxon, the hydrographer of Charles II., that he had himself sailed two degrees beyond the pole.

(3) Maundeville says, in Prester John’s country is a sea of sand which ebbs and flows in great waves without one drop of water. This sea, says the knight of St. Alban’s, men find full of right good fish of most delicious eating.

(2) At the time of the discovery of America by Co lumbus, many marvellous tales were rife in Spain. It was said that in one part of the coast of El N ombre de Dios, the natives had such long ears that one ear served for bed and the other for counterpane. Th is reminds one of Gwevyl mab Gwestad, one of whose lips hung down to his waist, and the other covered his head like a cowl. Another tale was that one of the crew of Columbus had come across a people who lived on sweet scents alone, and were killed by foul smells. This invention was hardly original, inasmuch as both Plutarch and Pliny tell us of an Indian people who lived on sweet odours, and Democritos lived for several days on the mere effluvia of hot bread. Another tale was that the noses of these smell-feeders were so huge that their heads were all nose. We are also told of one-eyed men; of men who carried their head under one of their arms; of others whose head was in their breast; of others who were conquered, not by arms, but by the priests holding up before them a little ivory crucifix—a sort of Christian version of the taking of Jericho by the blast of the rams’-horn trumpets of the Levites in the time of Joshua. (See Three Diademed Chiefs, p. 1103; Odours for Food, p. 769.)

Travels in…Remote Nations, by “Lemuel Gulliver.” He is first shipwrecked and cast o n the coast of Lilliput, a country of pygmies. Subsequently he is thrown among the people of Brobdingnag, giants of tremendous size. In his third expedition he is driven to Laputa, an empire of quack pretenders to science and knavish projectors. And in his fourth voyage he visits the Houyhnhnms [Whin-n’ms], where horses were the dominant powers.—Swift (1726).

Travers, a retainer of the earl of Northumberland.—Shakespeare: 2 Henry IV. (1598).

Travers (Sir Edmund), an old bachelor, the guardian and uncle of lady Davenant. He is a tedious gossip, fond of meddling, prosy, and wise in his own conceit. “It is surprising,” he says, “how unwilling people are to hear my stories. When in parliament I make a speech, there is nothing but coughing, hemming, and shuffling of feet—no desire of information.” By his instigation the match was broken off between his niece and captain Dormer, and she was given in marriage to lord Davenant; but it turned out that his lordship was already married, and his wife living.—Cumberland: The Mysterious Husband (1783).

Traviata, an opera, representing the progress of a courtezan. Music by Verdi, and libretto from La Dame aux Camelias, a novel by Alexandre Dumas fils (1856).