of two Greek words, _ou_, "not," and _topos_,
"place") was the name of the ideal state he described, and ever since
such imaginary states where all goes well have been described as
"Utopias."

Then, again, a scene or place in a great book may be so splendidly
described, and interest people so much, that it, too, comes to be used
in a general way. People often use the name _Vanity Fair_ to describe
a frivolous way of life. But the original _Vanity Fair_ was, of
course, one of the places of temptation through which Christian had to
pass on his way to the Heavenly City in John Bunyan's famous book, the
"Pilgrim's Progress." Another of these places was the _Slough of
Despond_, which is now quite generally used to describe a condition of
great discouragement and depression. The adjective _Lilliputian_,
meaning "very small," comes from _Lilliput_, the land of little people
in which Gulliver found himself in Swift's famous book, "Gulliver's
Travels."

Then many common expressions are taken from characters in well-known
books. We often speak of some one's _Man Friday_, meaning a right-hand
man or general helper; but the original Man Friday was, of course, the
savage whom Robinson Crusoe found on his desert island, and who acted
afterwards as his servant.

In describing a person as _quixotic_ we do not necessarily think of
the original Don Quixote in the novel of the great Spanish writer,
Cervantes. Don Quixote was always doing generous but rather foolish
things, and the adjective _quixotic_ now describes this sort of
action. A quite different character, the Jew in Shakespeare's play,
"The Merchant of Venice," has given us the expression "a Shylock."
From Dickens's famous character Mrs. Gamp in "Martin Chuzzlewit," who
always carried a bulgy umbrella, we get the word _gamp_, rather a
vulgar name for "umbrella."

We speak of "a Sherlock Holmes" when we mean to describe some one who
is very quick at finding out things. Sherlock Holmes is the hero of
the famous detective stories of Conan Doyle.

It is a very great testimony to the power of a writer when the names
of persons or places in his books become in this way part of the
English language.

CHAPTER VII.

WORDS THE BIBLE HAS GIVEN US.

A great English historian, writing of the sixteenth century, once
said, "The English people became the people of a book." The book he
meant was, of course, the Bible. When England became Protestant the
people found a new inte