Chapter Acestes to Adah of A by Brewer's Readers Handbook

the handsome but rebellious James duke of Monmouth; and “Achitophel” is the earl of Shaftesbury, “for close designs and crooked counsels fit” (1621–1683).

Can sneer at him who drew Achitophel.
   —Byron: Don Juan, iii. 100.

There is a portrait of the first earl of Shaftesbury (Dryden’s “Achitophel”) as lord Chancellor of England, clad in ash-coloured robes, because he had never been called to the bar.—E. Yates: Celebrities, xviii.

Acidalia, a fountain in Bœtia, sacred to Venus. The Graces used to bathe therein. Venus was called Acidalia (Virgil: Æneid, i. 720).

After she weary was
With bathing in the Acidalian brook.
   —Spenser: Epithalamion (1595).

Acis, a Sicilian shepherd, loved by the nymph Galatea. The monster Polypheme . a Cyclops, was his rival, and crushed him under a huge rock. The blood of Acis was changed into a river of the same name at the foot of mount Etna.

Gay has a serenata called Acis and Galatea, which was produced at the Hay-market in 1732. Music by Handel.

Not such a pipe, good reader, as that which Acis did sweetly tune in praise of his Galatea, but one of true Delft manufacture.—W. Irving.

Ackland (Sir Thomas), a royalist.—Sir W. Scott: Woodstock (time, the Commonwealth).

Acoe , “hearing,” in the New Testament sense (Rom. x. 17), “Faith cometh by hearing.” The nurse of Fido [faith]. Her daughter is Meditation. (Greek, akvê “hearing.”)

With him [Faith] his nurse went, careful Acoë,
Whose hands first from his mother’s womb did take him,
And ever since have fostered tenderly.
   —Phin Fletcher: The Purple Island, ix, (1633).

Acrasia, Intemperance personified. Spenser says she is an enchantress living in the “Bower of Bliss,” in “Wandering Island.” She had the power of transforming her lovers into monstrous shapes; but sir Guyon (temperance), having caught her in a net and bound her, broke down her bower and burnt it to ashes.—Faërie Queene, ii. 12 (1590).

Acrates , Incontinence personified in The Purple Island, by Phineas Fletcher. He had two sons (twins) by Caro, viz. Methos (drunkenness) and Gluttony, both fully described in canto vii. (Greek, akratês “incontinent.”)

Acrates , Incontinence personified in The Faërie Queene, by Spe nser. He is the father of Cymochlês and Pyrochlês.—Bk. ii. 4 (1590).

Acres (Bob), a country gentleman, the rival of ensign Beverley, alias captain Absolute, for the hand and heart of Lydia Languish, the heiress. He tries to ape the man of fashion, gets himself up as a loud swell, and uses “sentimental oaths,” i.e. oaths bearing on the subject. Thus if duels are spoken of he says, ods triggers and flints; if clothes, ods frogs and tambours; if music, ods minnums [minims] and crotchets; if ladies, ods blushes and blooms. This he learnt from a militia officer, who told him the ancients swore by Jove, Bacchus, Mars, Venus, Minerva, etc., according to the sentiment. Bob Acres is a great blusterer, and talks big of his daring, but when put to the push “his courage always oozed out of his fingers’ ends.” J. Quick was the original Bob Acres.—Sheridan: The Rivals (1775).

As thro’ his palms Bob Acres’ valour oozed,
So Juan’s virtue ebbed, I know not how.
   —Byron: Don Juan.

Acrisius, father of Danaê. An oracle declared that Danaê would give birth to a son who would kill him, so Acrisius kept his daughter shut up in an apartment under ground, or (as some say) in a brazen tower.