Chapter Immortal to In for It of I by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Immortal to In for It

Immortal (The). Yông - Tching, third of the Manchoo dynasty of China, assumed the title. (1723-1736.)

Immortal Four of Italy (The).
   Dante (1265-1321).
   Petrarch (1301-1374).
   Ariosto (1474-1533), and
   Tasso (1544-1595).

"The poets read he o'er and o'er,
And most of all the immortal four
Of Italy." Longfellow: The Wayside Inn.

Immortal Three (The). Homer, Dante, and Milton.

"Three poets, in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn;
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed,
The next in majesty; in both the last:
The force of nature could no farther go,
To make a third, she joined the other two."
Dryden: A Tablet to the Memory of John Milton
(St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside).

   It was originally in the church of All Hallows, Bread Street.

Immortal Tinker (The). John Bunyan, a tinker by trade. (1628-1688.)

Immortals A regiment of 10,000 choice foot-soldiers, which constituted the body-guard of the Persian kings. There was also an army so named at Constantinople, according to Ducange, first embodied by Major Ducas.
    The 76th Foot were called "The Immortals," because so many were wounded, but not killed, in Hindûstan (1788-1806). This regiment, with the old 33rd, now form the two battalions of the West Riding.

Immortality Poseidon (Neptune) bestowed immortality on Taphian, and confined the gift in a golden lock of hair. His daughter cut off the lock, and the gift was lost. This seems very like the Bible tale of Samson and Delilah. (See Elecampane.)

Immuring (Latin). Burying in a wall. The Vestal virgins among the Romans, and the nuns among the Roman Catholics, who broke their vows of chastity, were buried in a niche sufficiently large to contain their body with a small pittance of bread and water. The sentence of immuring was Vade in pace, or more correctly, Vade in pacem (Go into peace - i.e. eternal rest). Some years ago a skeleton, believed to be the remains of an immured nun, was discovered in the walls of Coldingham Abbey.
   The immuring of Constance, a nun who had broken her vows, forms a leading incident in Scott's poem of Marmion.

Imogen Daughter of Cymbeline, the "most tender and artless of all Shakespeare's characters." (Cymbeline.)

Imogine The lady who broke her vow and was carried off by the ghost of her former lover, in the ballad of Alonzo the Brave, by Matthew Gregory Lewis, generally called Monk Lewis.

"Alonzo the brave was the name of the knight,
And the maiden's the fair Imogine."

Imp (Anglo-Saxon). A graft; whence also a child; as, "You little imp." In hawking, "to imp a feather" is to engraft or add a new feather for a broken one. The needles employed for the purpose were called "imping needles." Lord Cromwell, writing to Henry VIII., speaks of "that noble imp your son."

"Let us pray for ... the king's most excellent majesty and for ... his beloved son Edward, our prince, that most angelic imp." - Pathway to Prayer.

Imp of Darkness (An). Milton calls the serpent "fittest imp of fraud." (Paradise Lost, ix. 89.)

Impanation The dogma of Luther that the body and soul of Christ are infused into the eucharistic elements after consecration; and that the bread and wine are united with the body and soul of Christ in much the same way as the body and soul of man are united. The word means putting into the bread.

Impannata The Madonna del Impannata, by Raphael, takes its distinctive name from the oiled paper window in the background. (Italian, impannata, oiled paper.)

Impar Congressus Achilli No match for Achilles; the combatants were not equally matched. Said of Troilus. (Virgil: Æneid, i. 475.)