Chapter Pandolfe to Panurge of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Pandolfe to Panurge

Pandolfe , father of Lélie.—Moliére: L’Etourdi (1653).

Pandora, the “all-gifted woman.” So called because all the gods bestowed some gift on her to enhance he r charms. Jove sent her to Prometheus for a wife, but Hermês gave her in marriage to his brother Epimetheus . It is said that Pandora enticed the curiosity of Epimetheus to open a box in her possession, from which flew out all the ills that flesh is heir to. Luckily the lid was closed in time to prevent the escape of Hope.

More lovely than Pandora, whom the gods
Endowed with all their gifts,… to the unwiser son
Of Japhet brought by Hermês, she insnared
Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged
On him [Prometheus] who had stole Jove’s….fire.

Milton: Paradise Lost, iv. 714, etc. (1665).

(“Unwiser son” is a Latinism, and means “not so wise as he should have been;” so audacior, timidior, vehementior, iracundior, etc.)

Pandosto or The Triumph of Time, a tale by Robert Greene (1588), the quarry of the plot of The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare.

Panel (The), by J. Kemble, is a modified version of Bickerstaff’s comedy ‘Tis Well’tis no Worse. It contains the popular quotation—

Perhaps it was right to dissemble your love;
But why do you kick me downstairs?

Pangloss (Dr. Peter), an L L.D. and A.S.S. He began life as a muffin-maker in Milk Alley. Daniel Dowlas, when he was raised from the chandler’s shop in Gosport to the peerage, employed the doctor “to larn him to talk English;” and subsequently made him tutor to his son Dick, with a salary of £300 a year. Dr. Pangloss was a literary prig of ponderous pomposity. He talked of a “locomotive morning,” of one’s “sponsorial and patronymic appellations,” and so on; was especially fond of quotations, to all of which he appended the author, as “Lend me your ears,—Shakespeare. Hem!” or “Verbum sat,—Horace. Hem!” He also indulged in an affected “He! he!”—Colman: The Heir-at-Law (1797).

N.B.—A.S.S. stands for Artium Societatis Socius (“Fellow of the Society of Arts”).

Pangloss, an optimist philosopher. (The word means “All Tongue.”)—Voltaire: Candide.

Panjam, a male idol of the Oroungou tribes of Africa; his wife is Aleka, and his priests are called panjans. Panjam is the special protector of kings and governments.

Panjandrum (The Grand), any village potentate or Brummagem magnate. The word occurs in Foote’s farrago of nonsense, which he wrote to test the memory of old Macklin, who said in a lecture “he had brought his own memory to such perfection that he could learn anything by rote on once hearing it.”

He was the Great Panjandrum of the place.—Fitsgerald.

The squire of a village is the Grand Panjandrum, and the small gentry the Pieninnies, Jobilillies, and Garyulies.

Foote’s nonsense lines are these—

So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great shebear, coming up the street, pops its head into the shop. “What I no soap?” So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Pieninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyulies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing