Chapter Measure One's Length on the Ground to Meissonier-like Exactness of M by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

cannon given by the Fishmongers of London, and used in 1689. Burton says, “Music is a roaring Meg against melancholy.

Meg Dods An old landlady in Scott's novel called St. Roman's Well.

Meg Merrilies (in Sir W. Scott's Guy Mannering). This character was based on that of Jean Gordon, an inhabitant of the village of Kirk Yetholm, in the Cheviot Hills, in the middle of the eighteenth century. A sketch of Jean Gordon's life will be found in Blackwood's Magazine, vol. i. p. 54. She is a half-crazy sibyl or gipsy.

Megarian School A philosophical school, founded by Euclid, a native of Megara, and disciple of Socrates.

Megarians (The). A people of Greece proverbial for their stupidity; hence the proverb, “Wise as a Megarian”- i.e. not wise at all; yet see above.

Megatherium (Greek, great-beast). A gigantic extinct quadruped of the sloth kind.

Megrims A corruption of the Greek hemi-crania (half the skull), through the French migraine. A neuralgic affection generally confined to one brow, or to one side of the forehead; whims, fancies.

Meigle (in Strathmore). The place where Guinever, Arthur's queen, was buried.

Meiny (2 syl.). A company of attendants. (Norman, meignal and mesnie, a household, our menial.)

“With that the smiling Kriemhild forth stepped a little space,
And Brunhild and her meiny greeted with gentle grace.”
Lettsom's Nibelungen Lied, stanza 604.

Meissonier-like Exactness Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier, R.A., a French artist, born at Lyons, 1815, exhibited in 1836 a microscopic painting called Petit Messager, and became proverbial for the utmost possible precision