evonshire
(1738-1819).

=Peter Plymley's Letters=, attributed to the Rev. Sydney Smith
(1769-1845).

=Peter Porcupine=, William Cobbett, when he was a tory. He brought out
_Peter Porcupine's Gazette_, _The Porcupine Papers_, etc. (1762-1835).

=Peter Wilkins=, the hero of a tale of adventures, by Robert Pultock, of
Clifford's Inn. His "flying woman" (gawreys) suggested to Southey the
"glendoveer" in _The Curse of Kehama_.

=Peter of Provence and the Fair Magalo'na=, the chief characters of a
French romance so called. Peter comes into possession of Merlin's wooden
horse.

=Peter the Great of Egypt=, Mehemet Ali (1768-1848.[TN-86]

=Peter the Hermit=, a gentleman of Amiens, who renounced the military life
for the religious. He preached up the first crusade, and put himself at
the head of 100,000 men, all of whom, except a few stragglers, perished
at Nicea.

He is introduced by Tasso in _Jerusalem Delivered_ (1575); and by Sir W.
Scott in _Count Robert of Paris_, a novel laid in the time of Rufus. A
statue was erected to him at Amiens in 1854.

=Peter, the Wild Boy=, a savage discovered in November, 1725, in the
forest of Hertswold, Hanover. He walked on all fours, climbed trees like
a monkey, ate grass and other herbage. Efforts were made to reclaim him,
but without success. He died February, 1785.

=Peter's Gate= (_St._), the gate of purgatory, guarded by an angel
stationed there by St. Peter. Virgil conducted Dant[^e] through hell and
purgatory, and Beatrice was his guide through the planetary spheres.
Dant[^e] says to the Mantuan bard:

... lead me,
That I St. Peter's gate may view ...
Onward he moved, I close his steps pursued.

Dant[^e], _Hell_, i. (1300).

=Peterborough=, in Northamptonshire; so called from Peada (son of Pendar,
king of Mercia), who founded here a monastery in the seventh century. In
1541 the monastery (then a mitred abbey) was converted by Henry VIII.
into a cathedral and bishop's see. Before Peada's time, Peterborough was
a village called Medhamsted.--See Drayton, _Polyolbion_, xxiii. (1622).

=Peters= (_Dr._), benevolent, eccentric physician, who is a sympathetic
fellow-sinner to the most depraved of his patients, going through it all
"with a grimly humorous hope that some good, in some unseen direction,
may come of it." The waif, _Midge_, committed by fate to his
guardianship, steals his heart, and finally wrings it to bleeding by
marrying