again into the lake, and again the hand "clothed
in white samite" appeared, caught it, and disappeared (ch. 23).--Sir
T. Malory, _History of Prince Arthur_, i. 3, 23 (1470).
King Arthur's sword, Excalibur,
Wrought by the lonely maiden of the lake;
Nine years she wrought it, sitting in the deeps,
Upon the hidden bases of the hills.
Tennyson, _Morte d'Arthur_.
_Excalibur's Sheath_. "Sir," said Merlin, "look that ye keep well the
scabbard of Excalibur, for ye shall lose no blood as long as ye have
the scabbard upon you, though ye have never so many wounds."--Sir T.
Malory, _History of Prince Arthur_, i. 36 (1470).
EXECUTIONER (_No_). When Francis, viscount d'Aspremont, governor
of Bayonne, was commanded by Charles IX. of France to massacre the
Huguenots, he replied, "Sire, there are many under my government
devoted to your majesty, but not a single executioner."
EXHAUSTED WORLDS ... Dr. Johnson, in the prologue spoken by Garrick at
the opening of Drury Lane, in 1747, says of Shakespeare:
Each change of many-colored life he drew?
Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new.
EXTERMINATOR (_The_), Montbars, chief of a set of filibusters in the
seventeenth century. He was a native of Languedoc, and conceived an
intense hatred against the Spaniards on reading of their cruelties
in the New World. Embarking at Havre, in 1667, Montbars attacked the
Spaniards in the Antilles and in Honduras, took from them Vera Cruz
and Carthagena, and slew them most mercilessly wherever he encountered
them (1645-1707).
EYE. _Terrible as the eye of Vathek_. One of the eyes of this caliph
was so terrible in anger that those died who ventured to look thereon,
and had he given way to his wrath, he would have depopulated his whole
dominion.--W. Beckford, _Vathek_ (1784).
EYED _(One-)_ people. The Arimaspians of Scythia were a one-eyed
people.
The Cyclops were giants with only one eye, and that in the middle of
the forehead.
Tartaro, in Basque legends, was a one-eyed giant. Sindbad the sailor,
in his third voyage, was cast on an island inhabited by one-eyed
giants.
EYRE _(Jane)_, a governess, who stoutly copes with adverse
circumstances, and ultimately marries a used-up man of fortune, in
whom the germs of good feeling and sound sense were only exhausted,
and not destroyed.--Charlotte Bronte, _Jane Eyre_ (1847).
EZ'ZELIN _(Sir)_, the gentleman who recognizes Lara at the table of
Lord Otho, and charges him with be
|