--Le-sage, _Gil Blas_, vii. 3
(1715).

AR'CHER (_Francis_), friend of Aimwell, who joins him in
fortune-hunting. These are the two "beaux." Thomas viscount Aimwell
marries Dorinda, the daughter of lady Bountiful. Archer hands the
deeds and property taken from the highwaymen to sir Charles Freeman,
who takes his sister, Mrs. Sullen, under his charge again.--George
Farquhar, _The Beaux' Stratagem_ (1707).

ARCHIBALD (_John_), attendant on the duke of Argyle.--Sir W. Scott,
_Heart of Midlothian_ (time, George II.).

ARCHIMA'GO, the reverse of holiness, and therefore Satan the father of
lies and all deception. Assuming the guise of the Red Cross Knight, he
deceived Una; and under the guise of a hermit, he deceived the knight
himself. Archimago is introduced in bks. i. and ii. of Spenser's
_Faery Queen._ The poet says:

... he could take
As many forms and shapes in seeming wise
As ever Proteus to himself could make:
Sometimes a fowl, sometimes a fish in lake,
Now like a fox, now like a dragon fell.

Spenser, _The Faery Queen_, I. ii. 10 (1590).

ARCHIMEDES, Syracusan philosopher, who discovered, among other great
scientific facts, the functions of the lever. The solution of an
abstruse problem having occurred to him while in the bath, he
leaped out of the water, and ran naked through the city, shouting,
"_Eureka!_"

AR'CHY M'SAR'CASM _(Sir)_, "a proud Caledonian knight, whose tongue,
like the dart of death, spares neither sex nor age ... His insolence
of family and licentiousness of wit gained him the contempt of every
one" (i. 1). Sir Archy tells Charlotte, "In the house of M'Sarcasm are
two barons, three viscounts, six earls, one marquisate, and two dukes,
besides baronets and lairds oot o' a' reckoning" (i. 1). He makes love
to Charlotte Goodchild, but supposing it to be true that she has lost
her fortune, declares to her that he has just received letters "frae
the dukes, the marquis, and a' the dignitaries of the family ...
expressly prohibiting his contaminating the blood of M'Sarcasm wi'
onything sprung from a hogshead or a coonting-house" (ii. 1).

The man has something droll, something ridiculous in him. His
abominable Scotch accent, his grotesque visage almost buried in snuff,
the roll of his eyes and twist of his mouth, his strange inhuman
laugh, his tremendous periwig, and his manners altogether--why, one
might take him for a mountebank doctor at a Dutch fair.--C. Macklin,
_Love a-la-mode_,