ds as They Are_ (1797).

=Priscian=, a great grammarian of the fifth century. The Latin phrase,
_Diminu[)e]re Prisciani caput_ ("to break Priscian's head"), means to
"violate the rules of grammar." (See PEGASUS.)

Some, free from rhyme or reason, rule or check,
Break Priscian's head, and Pegasus's neck.

Pope, _The Dunciad_, iii. 161 (1728).

Quakers (that like to lanterns, bear
Their light within them) will not swear
And hold no sin so deeply red
As that of breaking Priscian's head.

Butler, _Hudibras_, II. ii. 219, etc. (1664).

=Priscilla=, daughter of a noble lord. She fell in love with Sir Aladine,
a poor knight.--Spenser, _Fa[:e]ry Queen_, vi. 1 (1596).

_Priscilla_, the beautiful puritan in love with John Alden. When Miles
Standish, a bluff old soldier, in the middle of life, wished to marry
her, he asked John Alden to go and plead his cause; but the puritan
maiden replied archly, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?" Upon
this hint, John did speak for himself, and Priscilla listened to his
suit.--Longfellow, _The Courtship of Miles Standish_ (1858).

_Priscilla._ Fragile, pretty, simple girl, whom Hollingsworth and
Coverdale love, instead of falling victims to the superb Zenobia. She is
thin-blooded and weak-limbed, and her very helplessness charms the
strong men, who suppose themselves proof against love of the ordinary
kind.--Nathaniel Hawthorne, _The Blithedale Romance_ (1852).

=Prison Life Endeared.= The following are examples of prisoners who, from
long habit, have grown attached to prison life:--

Comte de Lorge was confined for thirty years in the Bastile, and when
liberated (July 14, 1789) declared that freedom had no joys for him.
After imploring in vain to be allowed to return to his dungeon, he
lingered for six weeks and pined to death.

Goldsmith says, when Chinvang the Chaste, ascended the throne of China,
he commanded the prisons to be thrown open. Among the prisoners was a
venerable man of 85 years of age, who implored that he might be suffered
to return to his cell. For sixty-three years he had lived in its gloom
and solitude, which he preferred to the glare of the sun and the bustle
of a city.--_A Citizen of the World_ lxxiii. (1759).

Mr. Cogan once visited a prisoner of state in the King's Bench prison,
who told him he had grown to like the subdued light and extreme solitude
of his cell; he even liked the spots and patches on the wall, t