Chapter Tulkinghorn to Turpin of T by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Tulkinghorn to Turpin

Tulkinghorn (Mr.), attorney-at-law and legal adviser of the Dedlocks.— Dickens: Bleak House (1852).

Tulliver, the miller in The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot (Mrs. J. W. Cross). The heroine of the tale is Maggie the miller’s daughter. Both Maggie and her brother Tom are drowned by a tidal wave on the Floss (1860).

Tully, Marcus Tullius Cicero, the great Roman orator (B.C. 106-43). He was proscribed by Antony, one of the triumvirate, and his head and hands, being cut off, were nailed by the orders of Antony to the Rostra of Rome.

Ye fond adorers of departed fame,
Who warm at Scipio’s worth or Tully’s name.
   —Campbell: Pleasures of Hope, i. (1799).

The Judas who betrayed Tully to the sicarii was a cobbler. The man who murdered him was named Herennius.

Tun (The Heidelberg) or The Tun Of Erpach, a large butt, which holds four score hogsheads.

Quid vetat Erpachium vas annumerare vetustis
Miraclis? Quo non vastius orbis habet;
Dixeris hoc recte Pelagus vinique paludem;
Nectare quæ Bacchi nocte dieque fluit.
   —Althamar.

Of all earth’s wonders, Erpach’s monstrous tun
I deem to be the most astounding one;
A sea of wine ’twill hold. You say aright,
A sea of nectar flows thence day and night.
   —E. C. B.

The Cistertian tun, made by the order of St. Bernard, contained 300 hogsheads. —R. Cenault: De Vera Mensurarum Ponderumque Ratione (1547).

The tun of Clervaux contained as many hogsheads as there are days in a year.— Furetière (article “Tonne”).

St. Benet’s tun (“la sacre botte de St. Benoist”), still to be seen at the Benedictines of Bologna-on-the- Sea, is about the same size as that of Clervaux.—Menage (article “Couteille”).

“I will drink,” said the friar [John]. “both to thee and to thy horse…I have already supped, yet will I eat never a whit the less for that, for I have a paved stomach as hollow as…St. Benet’s boot.”— Rabelais: Gargantua, i. 39 (1533).

(St. Benet’s “boot” means St. Benet’s botte or “butt,” and to this Longfellow refers in The Golden Legend, when he speaks of “the rascal [friar John] who drank wine out of a boot.”)

Tune the Old Cow died of (The).

There was an old man, and he had an old cow,
But no fodder had he to give her;
So he took up his fiddle and played her this tune—
“Consider, good cow, consider;
This isn’t the time for grass to grow,
Consider, good cow, consider.”

Tupman (Tracy), M. P. C., a sleek, fat young man, of very amorous disposition. He falls in love with every pretty girl he sees, and is consequently always getting into trouble.—Dickens: The Pickwick Papers (1836).

M.P.C., that is, “Member of the Pickwick Club.”

Tura, a castle of Ulster.—Ossian: Fingal.

Turbulent School of Fiction (The, a school of German romance-writers, who returned to the feudal ages, and wrote between 1780 and 1800 in the style of Mrs. Radcliffe. The best known are Cramer, Spiers, Schlenkert, and Veit Weber.