Chapter Vehmique Tribunal to Venison of V by Brewer's Readers Handbook

brought low, every valley of the filled up, the crooked ways are made straight, and even in the valley of the shadow of death they need fear no evil, for One will be with them to comfort them.”

Venedotia, Wales.

The Venedotian floods, that ancient Britons were,
The mountains kept them back.
   —Drayton: Polyolbion, iv. (1612).

Veneering (Mr.), a new man, “forty, wavy-haired, dark, tending to corpulence, sly, mysterious, filmy; a kind of well-looking veiled prophet, not prophesying.” He was a drug merchant of the firm of Chicksey, Stobbles, and Veneering. The two former were his quondam masters, but their names had “become absorbed in Veneering, once their traveller or commission agent.”

Mrs. Veneering, a new woman, “fair, aquiline-nosed and fingered, not so much light hair as she might have, gorgeous in raiment and jewels, enthusiastic, propitiatory, conscious that a corner of her husband’s veil is over herself.”

Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-new people, in a bran-new house, in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick and span new. All their furniture was new, all their friends were new, all their furniture was new, their plate was new, their carriage was new, their harness was new, their horses were new, their pictures were new, they themselves were new, they were as newly married as was lawfully compatible with their having a bran-new baby.

In the Veneering establishment, from the hall chairs with the new coat of arms, to the grand pianofortê with the new action, and upstairs again to the new fire-escape, all things were in a state of high varnish and polish.—Dickens: Our Mutual Friend, ii. (1864).

The Veneerings of society, flashy, rich merchants, who delight to overpower their guests with the splendour of their furniture, the provisions of their tables, and the jewels of their wives and daughters.

Venerable Bede (The). Two accounts are given respecting the word venerable attached to the name of this “wise Saxon.” One is this: On one occasion he preached to a heap of stones, thinking himself in a church; and the stones were so affected by his eloquence that they exclaimed, “Amen, venerable Bede!” This, of course, is based on the verse Luke xix. 40.

The other is that his scholars, wishing to honour his name, wrote for epitaph—

Hæc sunt in fossa,
Bedæ presbyteri ossa;
   —hanged the second line into “Bedæ venerabilis ossa” (672-735).

(The chair in which he sat is still preserved at Jarrow. Some years ago a sailor used to show it, and always called it the chair of the “great admiral Bede.”)

Venerable Doctor (The), William de Champeaux (*-1121).

Venerable Initiator (The), William of Occam (1276–1347).

Venery. Sir Tristram was the inventor of the laws and terms of venery. Hence a book of venery was called A Book of Tristram.

Of sir Tristram came all the good terms of venery and of hunting; and the sizes and measures of blowing of an horn. And of him we had first all the terms of hawking; and which were beasts of chase and beasts of venery, and which were vermin; and all the blasts that belong to all manner of games. First to the uncoupling, to the seeking, to the rechase, to the flight, to the death, and to the strake; and many other blasts and terms shall all manner of gentlemen have cause to the world’s end to praise sir Tristram, and to pray for his soul.—Sir T. Malory: History of Prince Arthur, ii. 138 (1470).