Black. And finds, with keen, discriminating sight, G. CANNING, New Morality. Black Assize, The.-A common designation of the sitting of the courts held at Oxford in 1577, during which judges, jurymen, and counsel were swept away by a violent epidemic. Black Death, The.-A name given to the celebrated Oriental plague that devastated Europe during the 14th century. Black Monday.--A memorable Easter Monday in 1351, very dark and misty. A great deal of hail fell, and the cold was so extreme that many died from its effects. The name afterwards came to be applied to the Monday after Easter of each year. My nose fell a bleeding on BLACK MONDAY last.-SHAKESPERE. Blasphemy. That in the captain's but a choleric word, SHAKESPERE, Measure for Measure. Blessedness.-BLESSEDNESS is a whole eternity older than damnation.-JEAN PAUL RICHTER. Blessings.--How BLESSINGS brighten as they take their flight! YOUNG, Night Thoughts. Blind. A BLIND man is a poor man, and blind a poor man is; He that is stricken BLIND, cannot forget The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.--SHAKESPERE, Romeo. Bloody Assizes, The.--A common designation of the horrid judicial massacre perpetrated, in 1685, by George Jeffreys, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, while on a circuit through the western counties of England. About three hundred persons were executed after short trials; very many were whipped, imprisoned, and fined; and nearly one thousand were sent as slaves to the American plantations. Blue-Stocking.-A literary lady. The Society de la Calza (Stocking) was formed at Venice in 1500,--the members being distinguished by the prevailing colour of their STOCKINGS, BLUE. The society lasted till 1590, when some other symbol came into fashion. Bliss. The hues of BLISS more brightly glow, Chastis'd by sabler tints of woe.-GRAY, Ode on Vicissitude. Body. Here in the BODY pent, Absent from him I roam; Yet nightly pitch my moving tent A day's march nearer home. J. MONTGOMERY, For ever with the Lord Bondman's Key. In a BONDMAN'S KEY, With 'bated breath, and whisp'ring humbleness. SHAKESPERE, Merchant of Venice Bone and Skin.-BONE AND SKIN, two millers thin, But be it known to Skin and Bone That Flesh and Blood can't bear it.-J. BYROM. Bone to Pick, A.-A difficult undertaking. It was an old marriage custom in Sicily for the bride's father to give the bridegroom a bone, saying, "Pick this in order to show that you can manage a wife, which is more difficult than picking a bone." This is a common explanation; but the practice of throwing bones to dogs is a more natural method of accounting for the saying. Bookful. The BOOKFUL blockhead, ignorantly read, Book of Nature.-Boughs are daily rifled By the gusty thieves, And the BoOK OF NATURE POPE, Essay on Criticism. Getteth short of leaves.-HOOD, The Seasons. Books.-BOOKS cannot always please, however good; CRABBE, The Borough. Books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good; Round these, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness will grow.-WORDSWORTH. Books which are no books.--CHARLES LAMB. Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.--JOHNSONIANA. Deep vers'd in BOOKS, and shallow in himself. MILTON, Paradise Regained. Learning hath gained most by those BOOKS by which the printers have lost.-J. FULLER, Of Books. Often have I sighed to measure By myself a lonely pleasure, Sighed to think I read a BOOK, Only read, perhaps, by me.--WORDSWORTH. Up! up! my friend, and quit your BOOKS, Up! up! my friend, and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble?—Ibid., The Tables Turned. Books. He hath never fed of the dainties that are bred in a BOOK.SHAKESPERE, Love's Labour's Lost. As good almost kill a man as kill a good BOOK; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself.-MILTON, Areopagitica. A good BOOK is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit em. balmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.—Ibid. Books are men of higher stature, And the only men who speak aloud for future times to hear. E. B. BROWNING. If the secret history of BOOKS could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!-THACKERAY. A novel was a BOOK Three-volumed, and once read, and oft cramm'd full With nature, with itself and truth at war; And nothing found but dreaming emptiness.-POLLOK. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some BOOKS are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. BACON, Essays. Bores.--Society is now one polished horde, Formed of two mighty tribes, the BORES and bored. Borrower-Neither a BORROWER nor a lender be, And it must follow, as the night the day, BYRON, Don Juan. Thou canst not then be false to any man.-SHAKESPERE, Hamlet. Bounty.-Large was his BOUNTY, and his soul sincere, Heaven did a recompense as largely send: He gave to misery (all he had) a tear, He gain'd from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend. GRAY, Elegy. Bow. Two strings to his BOW.-HOOKER'S Polity. BUTLER, Hudibras. CHURCHILL, The Ghost. FIELDING, Love in Several Маздиев. Boy.-Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a BOY? BYRON, Childe Harold Eager-hearted as a BOY, when first he leaves his father's field. The BOY stood on the burning deck, The flame that lit the battle's wreck Shone round him o'er the dead.—MRS. HEMANS, Casabianca. A happy boy, at Drury's.-PRAED, School and School-fellows. Boz.-A pseudonym under which Charles Dickens contributed a series of "Sketches of Life and Character" to the London " Morning Chronicle." Of this nom de plume he has given the following account: "Boz, my signature in the 'Morning Chronicle,' was the nickname of a pet child, younger brother, whom I had dubbed Moses, in honour of the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' which, being facetiously pronounced through the nose, became Boses, and being shortened, Boz. Bor was a very familiar household word to me long before I was an author, and so I came to adopt it." Though a pledge I had to shiver, And the longest ever was, Ere his vessel leaves our river I would drink a health to Boz.-HoOD. Brain.-With curious art the BRAIN, too finely wrought, Preys on herself, and is destroyed by thought. CHURCHILL, Epistle to Hogarth. Brains.-Beard was never the true standard of BRAINS.-T. FULLER. Brandy.-Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink BRANDY.-BOSWELL, Life of Johnson. Brave. How sleep the BRAVE who sink to rest, By all their country's wishes bless'd!--COLLINS, Ode, 1746. None but the BRAVE deserves the fair.-DRYDEN, Alexander':8 Feast. Toll for the BRAVE! The brave that are no more! COWPER, On the Loss of the Royal George. Bravest of the Brave.-A title conferred upon the celebrated Marshal Ney (1769-1815) by the French troops at Friedland (1807), on account of his fearless bravery. He was in command of the right wing, which bore the brunt of the battle, and stormed the town. Napoleon, as he watched him passing unterrified through a shower of balls, exclaimed, "That man is a lion;" and henceforth the army styled him Le Brave des Braves. Breach.-Once more unto the BREACH, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead! But when the blast of war blows in our ears, SHAKESPERE, Henry V. Bread.-BREAD is the staff of life.-SWIFT, Tale of a Tub. Breeches Bibles.-A name given to editions of the so-called Genevan Bible (first printed at Geneva, by Rowland Hall, 1560, in 4to), from the peculiar rendering of Gen. iii. 7. Brevity.-BREVITY is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes. SHAKESPERE, Hamlet. BREVITY is the body and soul of wit. It is wit itself, for it alone isolates sufficiently for contrasts; because redundancy or diffuseness produces no distinctions.-JEAN PAUL RICHTER. Bridge of Sighs.-[It. Ponte del Sospiri.] The name popularly given to the covered passage-way which connects the Doge's palace in Venice with the state prisons, from the circumstance that the condemned prisoners were transported over this bridge from the hall of judgment to the place of execution. Hood has used the name as the title of one of his poems. I stood in Venice, on the BRIDGE OF SIGHS; A palace and a prison on each hand.-BYRON, Childe Harold. Brief. 'Tis better to be BRIEF than tedious. SHAKESPERE, Richard III. Bright. All that's BRIGHT must fade,— All that's sweet was made But to be lost when sweetest !-MOORE, All that's Bright. Brightest.-BRIGHTEST and best of the sons of the morning! Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid.—HEBER, Epiphany. Britain. When BRITAIN first, at Heaven's command Arose from out the azure main This was the charter of her land, And guardian angels sung the strain: Brother Jonathan.-[America.] When Washington was in Massa. chusetts with his army, he was often in great difficulty for supplies of all kinds; and having often been assisted by Jonathan Turnbull; governor of Connecticut, he was wont, in cases of emergency, tc say that he would "consult BROTHER JONATHAN," and the saying passed into a by-word. |