t is curable. Milton, speaking of his own
blindness, expresses a doubt whether it arose from the _Gutta Serena_
or the _suffusion of a cataract_.

So thick a 'drop serene' hath quenched their orbs,
Or dim 'suffusion' veiled.

Milton, _Paradise Lost_, iii. 25 (1665).

DROOD (_Edwin_), hero of Charles Dickens' unfinished novel of that
name.

DRUDGEIT (_Peter_), clerk to Lord Bladderskate.--Sir W. Scott,
_Redgauntlet_ (time, George III.).

DRUGGER (_Abel_), a seller of tobacco; artless and gullible in
the extreme. He was building a new house, and came to Subtle "the
alchemist" to know on which side to set the shop door, how to dispose
the shelves so as to ensure most luck, on what days he might trust his
customers, and when it would be unlucky for him so to do.--Ben Jonson,
_The Alchemist_ (1610).

Thomas Weston was "Abel Drugger" himself [1727-1776], but David
Garrick was fond of the part also [1716-1779].--C. Dibdin, _History of
the Stage_.

DRUGGET, a rich London haberdasher, who has married one of his
daughters to Sir Charles Racket. Drugget is "very fond of his garden,"
but his taste goes no further than a suburban tea-garden with leaden
images, cockney fountains, trees cut into the shapes of animals, and
other similar abominations. He is very headstrong, very passionate,
and very fond of flattery.

_Mrs. Druggett_, wife of the above. She knows her husband's foibles,
and, like a wise woman, never rubs the hair the wrong way.--A. Murphy,
_Three Weeks after Marriage_.

DRUID (_The_), the _nom de plume_ of Henry

Dixon, sportsman and sporting-writer; One of his books, called
_Steeple-chasing_, appeared in the _Gentleman's Magazine_. His last
work was called _The Saddle and Sirloin._

[Illustration] Collins calls James Thomson (author of _The Seasons_) a
druid, meaning a pastoral British poet or "Nature's High Priest."

In yonder grave a Druid lies.
Collins (1746).

_Druid (Dr.)_, a man of North Wales, 65 years of age, the travelling
tutor of Lord Abberville, who was only 23. The doctor is a pedant and
antiquary, choleric in temper, and immensely bigoted, wholly without
any knowledge of the human heart, or indeed any practical knowledge at
all.

"Money and trade, I scorn 'em both; ...I have traced the Oxus and
the Po, traversed the Riphaean Mountains, and pierced into the inmost
deserts of Kilmuc Tartary ...I have followed the ravages of Kuli
Chan with rapturous delight. There is a land of w