Chapter Charge to Chase of C by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Charge to Chase

Charge (To ). To make an attack or onset in battle. “To charge with bayonets” is to rush on the enemy with levelled bayonets.
   To return to the charge. To renew the attack.

Charge d'Affaires The proxy of an ambassador, or the diplomatic agent where none higher has been appointed.

Charicleia The lady-love of Theagenës in the exquisite erotic Greek romance called The Loves of Theagenes and Charicleia, by Heliodoros, Bishop of Trikka, in the fourth century.

Charing Cross Not from chère reine, in honour of Eleanor, the dear wife of Edward I., but la chère reine (the Blessed Virgin). Hence, in the Close Roll, Richard II, part I (1382), we read that the custody of the falcons at Charryng, near Westminster, was granted to Simon Burley, who was to receive 12d. a day from the Wardrobe.
    A correspondent in Notes and Queries, Dec. 28th, 1889, p. 507, suggests the Anglo-Saxon cérran (to turn), alluding to the bend of the Thames.

“Queen Eleanor died at Harby, Nottinghamshire, and was buried at Westminster. In every town where the corpse rested the king caused a cross `of cunning workmanship' to be erected in remembrance of her. There were fourteen, some say fifteen, altogether. The three which remain are in capitals: Lincoln, Newark, Grantham, Leicester, Stamford, GEDDINGTON, NORTHAMPTON, Stony-Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, WALTHAM, West-Cheap (Cheapside), Charing, and (15th Herdly?)”

   In front of the South Eastern Railway station (Strand) is a model, in the original dimensions, of the old cross, which was made of Caen stone, and was demolished in 1643.

Chariot According to Greek mythology, the chariot was invented by Erichthonius to conceal his feet, which were those of a dragon.

“Seated in car, by him constructed first
To hide his hideous feet.”
Rose: Orlando Furioso, xxxvii. 27.

Chariot of the Gods So the Greeks called Sierra Leone, in Africa, a ridge of mountains of great height. A sierra means a saw, and is applied to a ridge of peaked mountains.

“Her palmy forests, mingling with the skies,
Leona's rugged steep behind us flies.”
Camoens. Lusiad, book 5.

Chariots or Cars. That of
   ADME'TOS was drawn by lions and wild boars.
   BACCHUS by panthers.
   CERES (2 syl.) by winged dragons.
   CYB'ELE (3 syl.) by lions.
   DIANA by stags.
   JUNO by peacocks.
   NEPTUNE by sea-horses.
   PLUTO by black horses.
   The SUN by seven horses (the seven days of the week).
   VENUS by doves.

Charioteers (in Rome) were classed under four factions, distinguished by their liveries:- white, red, sky- blue, and green. Domitian added two more, viz. the golden and the purple.

Charities Masks.

“Our ladies laugh at bare-faced trulls when they have those mufflers on, which they call masks, and which were formerly much more properly called charity, because they cover a multitude of sins.”- Rabelais: Pantagruel, v. 27.

Charity Charity begins at home. “Let them learn first to show piety at home” (1 Tim. v. 4 and 8).
   Cold as charity. Than which what's colder to him who gives and him who takes?

Charivari The clatter made with pots and pans, whistling, bawling, hissing, and so on. Our concert of “marrow-bones and cleavers”; the German Katzenmusik, got up to salute with ridicule unequal marriages. Punch is our national Charivari, and clatters weekly against political and social wrong-sidedness.

Charlatan The following etymology is suitable to a book of Phrase and Fable. It is said that one Latan, a famous quack, used to go about Paris in a gorgeous car, in which he had a traveling dispensary. A man with a horn announced the approach of this magnate, and the delighted sightseers used to cry out, “Voila! le char de Latan. ” When I lived in Paris I often saw this gorgeous car; the horn-man had a drum also, and M. Latan, dressed in a long showy robe, wore sometimes a hat with feathers, sometimes a