and amongst
other things wrote farces. Grarrick said of him:

For physic and farces, his equal there scarce is:
His farces are physic, his physic a farce is.

=Physician= (_The Beloved_), St. Luke, the evangelist (_Col._ iv. 14).

=Physicians= (_The prince of_), Avicenna, the Arabian (980-1037).

=Physigna'thos=, king of the frogs, and son of Pelus ("mud"). Being
wounded in the battle of the frogs and mice by Troxartas, the mouse
king, he flees ingloriously to a pool, "and half in anguish of the
flight, expires" (bk. iii. 112). The word means "puffed chaps."

Great Physignathos I from Pelus' race,
Begot in fair Hydromed[^e]'s embrace.

Parnell, _Battle of the Frogs and Mice_, i. (about 1712).

=Pibrac= (_Seigneur de_), poet and diplomatist, author of _Cinquante
Quatrains_ (1574). Gorgibus bids his daughter to study Pibrac instead of
trashy novels and poetry.

Lisez-moi, comme il faut, au lieu de ces sornettes,
Les _Quatrains_ de Pibrac, et les doctes _Tablettes_
Du conseiller Matthieu; l'ouvrage est de valeur, ...
_La Guide des p['e]cheurs_ est encore un bon livre.

Moli[`e]re, _Sganarelle_, i. 1 (1660).

(Pierre Matthieu, poet and historian, wrote _Quatrains de la Vanit['e] du
Monde_, 1629.)

=Picanninies= (4 _syl._), little children; the small fry of a
village.--_West Indian Negroes._

There were at the marriage the picanninies and the Joblilies, but
not the Grand Panjandrum.--Yonge.

=Pic'atrix=, the pseudonym of a Spanish monk; author of a book on
demonology.

When I was a student ... that same Rev. Picatrix ... was wont to
tell us that devils did naturally fear the bright flashes of swords
as much as he feared the splendor of the sun.--Rabelais,
_Pantag'ruel_, iii. 23 (1545).

=Picciola=, flower that, springing up in the court-yard of his prison,
cheers and elevates the lonely life of the prisoner whom X. B. Saintine
makes the hero of his charming tale, _Picciola_ (1837).

=Piccolino=, an opera by Mons. Guiraud (1875); libretto by MM. Sardou
and Nuittier. This opera was first introduced to an English audience in
1879. The tale is this: Marth['e], an orphan girl adopted by a Swiss
pastor, is in love with Fr['e]d['e]ric Auvray, a young artist, who
"loved and left his love." Marth['e] plods through the snow from
Switzerland to Rome to find her young artist, but, for greater security,
puts on boy's clothes, and as