Chapter Proof Spirit to Protector of P by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Pro.'s Professionals- that is, actors by profession.

“A big crowd slowly gathers,
And stretches across the street;
The pit door opens sharply,
And I hear the trampling feet;
And the quiet pro.'s pass onward
To the stage-door up the court.”
Sims: Ballads of Babylon; Forgotten, etc.

Proscenium The front part of the stage, between the drop-curtain and orchestra. (Greek, proskenion; Latin, proscenium.)

Proscription A sort of hue and cry; so called because among the Romans the names of the persons proscribed were written out, and the tablets bearing their names were fixed up in the public forum, sometimes with the offer of a reward for those who should aid in bringing them before the court. If the proscribed did not answer the summons, their goods were confiscated and their persons outlawed. In this case the name was engraved on brass or marble, the offence stated, and the tablet placed conspicuously in the market-place.

Prose means straightforward speaking or writing (Latin, oratio prosa- i.e. proversa), in opposition to foot-bound speaking or writing, oratio vincta (fettered speech- i.e. poetry).

Prose Il y a plus de vingt ans que je dis de la prose, sans que j'en susse rien. I have known this these twenty years without being conscious of it. (Molière: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.)

“ `Really,' exclaimed Lady Ambrose, brightening, `Il y a plus de vingt ans que je dis de la prose, sans que j'en susse rien.' And so it seems that I have known history without suspecting it, just as Mons. Jourdain talked prose.”- Mallock: The New Republic, bk. iii. chap. 2.

   Father of Greek prose. Herodotos (B.C. 484-405).
   Father of English prose. Wycliffe (1324-1384); and Roger Ascham (1515-1568).
   Father of French prose. Villehardouin (pron. Veal-hard-whah'n.) (1167-1213.)

Proselytes (3 syl.) among Jewish writers were of two kinds- viz. “The proselyte of righteousness” and the “stranger of the gate.” The former submitted to circumcision and conformed to the laws of Moses. The latter abstained from offering sacrifice to heathen gods, and from working on the Sabbath. “The stranger that is within thy gate” = the stranger of the gate.

“I must confess that his society was at first irksome; but ... I now have hope that he may become a stranger of the gate.”- Eldad the Pilgrim, ch. iii.

Proserpina or Proserpine (3 syl.). One day, as she was amusing herself in the meadows of Sicily, Pluto seized her and carried her off in his chariot to the infernal regions for his bride. In her terror she dropped some of the lilies she had been gathering, and they turned to daffodils.

“O Proserpina,
For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall
From Dis's waggon! daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty.”
Shakespeare: Winter's Tale, iv. 4.

Proserpine's Divine Calidore Sleep. In the beautiful legend of Cupid and Psyche, by Apuleius, after Psyche had long wandered about searching for her lost Cupid, she is sent to Prosperine for “the casket of divine beauty,” which she was not to open till she came into the light of day. Psyche received the casket, but just as she was about to step on earth, she thought how much more Cupid would love her if she was divinely beautiful; so she opened the casket and found the calidore it contained was sleep, which instantly filled all her limbs with drowsiness, and she slept as it were the sleep of death.
   This is the very perfection of allegory. Of course, sleep is the only beautifier of the weary and heart-sick; and this calidore Psyche found before Cupid again came to her.

Prosperity Robinson Viscount Goderich, Earl of Ripon, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1823. In 1825 he boasted in the House of the prosperity of the nation, and his boast was not yet cold when the great financial crisis occurred. It was Cobbett who gave him the name of “Prosperity Robinson.”

Prospero Rightful Duke of Milan, deposed by his brother. Drifted on a desert island, he practised magic, and raised a tempest in which his brother was shipwrecked. Ultimately Prospero broke his wand, and his daughter married the son of the King of Naples. (Shakespeare: Tempest.)