Character Sketches of Romance Volume I Part 25

We think of Astarte as young, beautiful, innocent,--guilty, lost, murdered, judged, pardoned; but still, in her permitted visit to earth, speaking in a voice of sorrow, and with a countenance yet pale with mortal trouble. We had but a glimpse of her in her beauty and innocence, but at last she rises before us in all the moral silence of a ghost, with fixed, glazed, and pa.s.sionless eyes, revealing death, judgment, and eternity.--Professor Wilson.

The lady Astarte his? Hush! who comes here? (iii. 4.) ...The same Astarte? no! (iii. 4.)

AS'TERY, a nymph in the train of Venus; the lightest of foot and most active of all. One day the G.o.ddess, walking abroad with her nymphs, bade them go gather flowers. Astery gathered most of all; but Venus, in a fit of jealousy, turned her into a b.u.t.terfly, and threw the flowers into the wings. Since then all b.u.t.terflies have borne wings of many gay colors.--Spenser, _Muiopotmos or the b.u.t.terfly's Fate_ (1590).

ASTOL'PHO, the English cousin of Orlando; his father was Otho. He was a great boaster, but was generous, courteous, gay, and singularly handsome. Astolpho was carried to Alci'na's isle on the back of a whale; and when Alcina tired of him, she changed him into a myrtle tree, but Melissa disenchanted him. Astolpho descended into the infernal regions; he also went to the moon, to cure Orlando of his madness by bringing back his lost wits in a phial.--Ariosto, _Orlando Furioso_ (1516).

AS'TON _(Sir Jacob)_, a cavalier during the Commonwealth; one of the partisans of the late king.--Sir W. Scott, _Woodstock_ (period, Commonwealth).

_As'ton (Enrico)._ So Henry Ashton is called in Donizetti's opera of _Lucia di Lammermoor_ (1835). (See ASHTON.)

AS'TORAX, king of Paphos and brother of the princess Calis.--Beaumont and Fletcher, _The Mad Lover_ (before 1618).

AS'TORETH, the G.o.ddess-moon of Syrian mythology; called by Jeremiah, "The Queen of Heaven," and by the Phoenicians, "Astar'te."

With these [_the host of heaven_] in troop Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns.

Milton, _Paradise Lost_, i. 438 (1665).

(Milton does not always preserve the difference between Ashtaroth and Ashtoreth; for he speaks of the "mooned Ashtaroth, heaven's queen and mother.")

AS'TRAGON, the philosopher and great physician, by whom Gondibert and his friends were cured of the wounds received in the faction fight stirred up by prince Oswald. Astragon had a splendid library and museum. One room was called "Great Nature's Office," another "Nature's Nursery," and the library was called "The Monument of Vanished Mind."

Astragon (the poet says) discovered the loadstone and its use in navigation. He had one child, Bertha, who loved duke Gondibert, and to whom she was promised in marriage. The tale being unfinished, the sequel is not known.--Sir W. Davenant, _Gondibert_ (died 1668).

ASTRE'A _(Mrs. Alphra Behn_), an auth.o.r.ess. She published the story of _Prince Oroonoka_ (died 1689).

The stage now loosely does Astrea tread. Pope.

ASTRINGER, a falconer. Shakespeare introduces an astringer in _All's Well that Ends Well_, act v. sc. 1. (From the French _austour_, Latin _austercus_, "a goshawk.") A "gentle astringer" is a gentleman falconer.

We usually call a falconer who keeps that kind of hawk [the goshawk]

an austringer.--Cowell, _Law Dictionary_.

AS'TRO-FIAMMAN'TE (5 _syl_.), queen of the night. The word means "flaming star."--Mozart, _Die Zauberflote_ (1791).

ASTRONOMER (_The_), in _Ra.s.selas_, an old enthusiast, who believed himself to have the control and direction of the weather. He leaves Imlac his successor, but implores him not to interfere with the const.i.tuted order.

"I have possessed," said he to Imlac, "for five years the regulation of the weather, and the distribution of the seasons: the sun has listened to my dictates, and pa.s.sed from tropic to tropic by my direction; the clouds, at my call, have poured their waters, and the Nile has overflowed at my command; I have restrained the rage of the Dog-star, and mitigated the fervor of the Crab. The winds alone ...

have hitherto refused my authority.... I am the first of human beings to whom this trust has been imparted."--Dr. Johnson, _Ra.s.selas_, xli.--xliii. (1759).

AS'TROPHEL (_Sir Philip Sidney_). "Phil. Sid." may be a contraction of _philos sidus_, and the Latin _sidus_ being changed to the Greek _astron_, we get _astron philos_ ("star-lover"). The "star" he loved was Penelope Devereux, whom he calls _Stella_ ("star"), and to whom he was betrothed. Spenser wrote a poem called _Astrophel_, to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney.

But while as Astrophel did live and reign, Amongst all swains was none his paragon.

Spenser, _Colin Clout's Come Home Again_ (1591).

ASTYN'OME (4 _syl_.) or CHRYSES, daughter of Chryses priest of Apollo. When Lyrnessus was taken, Astynome fell to the share of Agamemnon, but the father begged to be allowed to ransom her.

Agamemnon refused to comply, whereupon the priest invoked the anger of his patron G.o.d, and Apollo sent a plague into the Grecian camp. This was the cause of contention between Agamemnon and Achilles, and forms the subject of Homer's epic called _The Iliad_.

AS'WAD, son of Shedad king of Ad. He was saved alive when the angel of death destroyed Shedad and all his subjects, because he showed mercy to a camel which had been bound to a tomb to starve to death, that it might serve its master on the day of resurrection.--Southey, _Thalaba the Destroyer_ (1797).

ATABA'LIPA, the last emperor of Peru, subdued by Pizarro, the Spanish general. Milton refers to him in _Paradise Lost_, xi. 409 (1665).

AT'ALA, the name of a novel by Francois Auguste Chateaubriand. Atala, the daughter of a white man and a Christianized Indian, takes an oath of virginity, but subsequently falling in love with Chactas, a young Indian, she poisons herself for fear that she may be tempted to break her oath. The novel was received with extraordinary enthusiasm (1801).

(This has nothing to do with _Attila_, king of the Huns, nor with _Atlialie_ (queen of Judah), the subject of Racine's great tragedy.)

ATALANTA, of Arcadia, wished to remain single, and therefore gave out that she would marry no one who could not outstrip her in running; but if any challenged her and lost the race, he was to lose his life. Hippom'enes won the race by throwing down golden apples, which Atalanta kept stopping to pick up. William Morris has chosen this for one of his tales in _Earthly Paradise_ (March).

In short, she thus appeared like another Atalanta.--Comtesse D'Aunoy, _Fairy Tales_ ("Fortunio," 1682).

_Atalanta_, the central figure in Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem after aeschylus _Atalanta in Calydon_ (1864).

ATALI'BA, the inca of Peru, most dearly beloved by his subjects, on whom Pizarro makes war. An old man says of the inca--

The virtues of our monarch alike secure to him the affection of his people and the benign regard of heaven.--Sheridan, _Pizarro_; ii. 4 (from Kotzebue),(1799).

Ate (2 _syl_.), G.o.ddess of revenge.

With him along is come the mother queen. An Ate, stirring him to blood and strife. Shakespeare, _King John_, act ii. sc. I (1596).

_Ate_ (2 _syl_.), "mother of debate and all dissension," the friend of Duessa. She squinted, lied with a false tongue, and maligned even the best of beings. Her abode, "far under ground hard by the gates of h.e.l.l," is described at length in bk. iv. I. When Sir Blandamour was challenged by Braggadoccio (canto 4), the terms of the contest were that the conqueror should have "Florimel," and the other "the old hag Ate," who was always to ride beside him till he could pa.s.s her off to another.--Spenser, _Faery Queen_, iv. (1596).

ATH'ALIE (3 _syl_.), daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, and wife of Joram king of Judah. She ma.s.sacred all the remnant of the house of David; but Joash escaped, and six years afterwards was proclaimed king.

Athalie, attracted by the shouts, went to the temple, and was killed by the mob. This forms the subject and t.i.tle of Racine's _chef-d'oeuvre_ (1691), and was Mdlle. Rachel's great part.

(Racine's tragedy of _Athalie_, queen of Judah, must not be confounded with Corneille's tragedy of _Attila_, king of the Huns.)

ATHEIST'S TRAGEDY (_The_), by Cyril Tourneur. The "atheist"

is D'Amville, who murders his brother Montferrers for his estates.--(Seventeenth century.)

ATH'ELSTANE (3 _syl_.), surnamed "The Unready," thane of Coningsburgh.--Sir W. Scott, _Ivanhoe_ (time, Richard I.).

[Ill.u.s.tration] "Unready" does not mean _unprepared_ but _injudicious_ (from Anglo-Saxon _raed_, "wisdom, counsel").

ATHE'NA (_Pallas_) once meant "the air," but in Homer this G.o.ddess is the representative of civic prudence and military skill; the armed protectress of states and cities. The Romans called her Minerva.

ATHE'NIAN BEE, Plato, so called from, the honeyed sweetness of his composition. It is said that a bee settled on his lip while he was an infant asleep in his cradle, and indicated that "honeyed words" would fall from his lips, and flow from his pen. Sophocles is called "The Attic Bee."

ATH'LIOT, the most wretched of all women.

Her comfort is (if for her any be), That none can show more cause of grief than she.

Wm. Browne, _Britannia's Pastorals_, ii. 5 (1613).

ATH'OS. Dinoc'rates, a sculptor, proposed to Alexander to hew mount Athos into a statue representing the great conqueror, with a city in his left hand, and a basin in his right to receive all the waters which flowed from the mountain. Alexander greatly approved of the suggestion, but objected to the locality.

And hew out a huge mountain of pathos, As Philip's son proposed to do with Athos.