Chapter Inis-Thona to Iras of I by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Inis-Thona to Iras

Drayton: Polyolbion, xi. (1613).

Inis-Thona, an island of Scandinavia.—Ossian.

Inistore, the Orkney Islands. Let no vessel of the kingdom of snow [Norway] bound on the dark-rolling waves of Inistore.—Ossian: Fingal, i.

Inkle and Yarico, hero and heroine of a story by sir Richard Steele, in the Spectator (No. II). Inkle is a young Englishman who is lost in the Spanish main. He falls in love with Yarico, an Indian maiden, with whom he consorts; but no sooner does a vessel arrive to take him to Barbadoes than he sells Yarico as a slave.

Colman has dramatized this tale (1787).

Inn. The well-known lines subjoined were written by Shenstone at an inn at Henley— Whoe’er has travelled Life’s dull round, Where’er his stages may have been, May sigh to think he still has found His warmest welcome at an inn.

Innisfail or Inisfail, an ancient name of Ireland (isle of destiny).

Oh, once the harp of Innisfail
Was strung full high to notes of gladness;
But yet it often told a tale
Of more prevailing sadness.
   —Campbell: O’Connor’s Child, i.

I raised my sails, and rushed into the bay of Croma, into Croma’s sounding bay in lovely Inisfail.—Ossian: Croma.

Innocents (The), the babes of Bethlehem cut off by Herod the Great.

John Baptist Marino, an Italian poet, has a poem on The Massacre of the Innocents (1569–1625).

Innogen or INOGEN E , wife of Brute (I syl.) mythical king of Britain. She was daughter of Pandrasos of Greece.

Thus Brute this realme unto his rule subdewd…
And left three sons, his famous progeny,
Born of fayre Inogene of Italy.
   —Spenser: Faërie Queene, i. 10 (1590).

And for a lasting league of amity and peace,
Bright Innogen, his child, for wife to Brutus gave.
   —Drayton: Polyolbion, i. (1612).

Insane Root (The), hemlock. It is said that those who eat hemlock can see objects otherwise invisible. Thus when Banquo had encountered the witches, who vanished as mysteriously as they appeared, he says to Macbeth, “Were such things [really] here… or have we eaten [hemlock] the insane root, that takes the reason prisoner,” so that our eyes see things that are not?—Shakespeare: Macbeth, act i. sc. 3 (1606).

Inspired Idiot (The). Oliver Goldsmith was so called by Horace Walpole 1728–1774).

Insubri, the district of Lombardy. which contained Milan, Como, Pavia, Lodi, Novara, and Vercelli.

Intellectual System (The), by Cudworth (1678). It professes to confute to demonstration all the arguments in favour of atheism. In 1731 was published his attack on The Leviathan of Hobbes, in a treatise called Eternal and Immutable Morality (1617–1688).

Intercepted Letters (or The Twopenny Postbag), by Thomas Brown the younger [T. Moore]. A series of satirical poems published in 1811. There are eight letters, supposed to have been dropped by the postman, bought for a trifle by “Thomas Brown,” and turned into verse. They are exposées of the foibles of persons in “high life.”