366 



THE STANDARD DICTIONARY OF FACTS 



The appellation seems to have originated in a custom of ment and trial, and happy deliverance from the many 



the Enclish universities of presenting a laurel wreath to treasons laid to his charge. . 



graduates? the new graduate being then styled "Poeta Leander. Ihe story of Hero and Leander is so old 



"..*" . . _: i.. _ 1... an( j go we ii known as to nearly belong to mjtnoiogy. 



\ young man of Abydos, who swam nightly across the 

 Hellespont to visit his lady-love, Hero, a priestess of 

 Sestos. One night he was drowned in his attempt, and 



Laureatus." 



ated rhetorician in 



The king's laureate was simply a grad 

 an in the service of the king. R. W h 



radu- 

 it- 



, 



received 

 mention 

 reign 



21LCT-1 I 11CHJI 1V101-1 A1A v. ww. . -~~ - -c- 



tington, in 1512, seems to have been the last man who 

 ' a rhetorical degree at Oxford. The earliest 

 , u of a poet-laureate in England occurs in the 

 ,,," of Edward IV., when John Key received the 

 appointment. In 1630, the first patent of the office was 

 granted. The salary was fixed at 100 per annum, 

 with a tierce of canary; which latter emolument was 

 in Southey's time, commuted into an annual payment ot 

 27. It used to be the duty of the laureate to write 

 an ode on the birthday of the sovereign, and on the 

 occasion of a national victory; but this custom was 



occason 



abolished towards the end of the reign of George III. 

 The poets who have held this office are Edmund Spenser, 

 ,-ni iznn. c_ ..*>! rto n ;*>l i=;oo_lfi1Q- Hpn .Innson. 



1591-1599; 

 1619-1637. 



Samuel Daniel. 

 Interregnum. 



. , Ben Jonson, 

 William Davenant, 



Knight, 1660-1668; John Dryden, 1670-1689; Thomas 

 Shadwell, 1689-1692; Nahum Tate, 1692-1715- Nicho- 

 las Rowe. 1715-1718; Lawrence Eusden. 1718-1730; 

 Colley Cibber. 1730-1757; William Whitehead, 1757- 

 1785; Thomas Warton, 1785-1790; Henry James Pye. 

 1790^-1813; Robert Southey, 1813-1843; William 

 Wordsworth. 1843-1850; Alfred Tennyson. 1850-1892, 



A La^Deo.* Tpoem by Whittier. 

 the passing of the constitutional amendment abolishing 

 slavery; suggested to the poet as he sat in the Friends, 



to the 



meeting-house in Amesbury, and listened 

 proclaiming the fact. 



Lavinia and Pale'mon. Lavima was the daughter 

 of Acasto, patron of Palemon. Through Acasto Pale- 

 mon gained a fortune and wandered away from his 

 friend. Acasto lost his property, and dying, left a 

 widow and daughter in poverty. Palemon often sought 

 them, but could never find them. One day, a lovely 

 modest maiden came to glean in Palemon's fields. Ihe 

 young squire was greatly struck with her exceeding 



Hero leapt-d into the Hellespont also. 



Lear. A fabulous or legendary King of Britain, and 

 the hero of Shakespere's tragedy of the same name. He 

 had three daughters, and when four score years old, 

 wishing to retire from the active duties of sovereignty, 

 resolved to divide his kingdom between them. By 

 elaborate but false professions of love and duty on the 

 part of two daughters (Goneril and Regan), King Lear 

 was persuaded to disinherit the third (Cordelia), who 

 had before been deservedly more dear to him, and to 

 divide his kingdom between her sisters. The tragedy 

 is wrought out in the ungrateful conduct of the older 

 sisters and the suffering of Lear. The beauty of the 

 play in the exquisite character Cordelia, who is in every 

 respect a "perfect woman." 



Leather-Stocking Tales. Five stones or romances 

 written by James Fenimore Cooper. The same hero, 

 Leather-Stocking, or Natty Bumpo, figures in all in his 

 life among the Indians. Natty had learned wood-lore 

 sun, A ouv,-x OJ ~., as the young Indian learned it. He knew the calls of the 

 wild animals far across the wilderness. He could follow 

 Called forth by the deer and bear to their haunts. He could trace the 

 path of the wolf by the broken cobwebs glistening in 

 the sunlight; and the cry of the panther, was a speech as 

 bells i familiar as his own tongue. When he was thirsty he 

 nade a cup of leaves, and drank in the Indian fashion, 

 le lay down to rest with that sense of security that 

 omes only to the forester. These tales take Leather- 

 tocking from young manhood to old age following the 

 ortunes of the American Indian tribes. The order in 

 vhich his story is told in these volumes is the "The 

 )eerslayer," "The Last of the Mohicans, llhe Path- 

 nder " "The Pioneers" and "The Prairie." He is also 

 nown by the name of Hawkeye in one part of his story. 



beauty and modesty, but she was known as a pauper 

 and he dared not give her more than passing glance. 

 Upon inquiry, he found that the beautiful gleaner was 

 the daughter of Acasto; he proposed marriage, and 

 JLavinia was restored to her rightful place. 



Lavaine. Son of the Lord of As'tolat, who accom- 

 panied Sir Lancelot when he went to tilt for the ninth 

 diamond. I>avaine is described as young, brave, and a 

 true knight. He was brother to Elaine. 



Lawyer's Alcove. Name given to a volume of 

 poems selected from the best poems by lawyers, for 

 lawyers and about lawyers. Included in this volume 

 are Shakespere's "Sonnet CXXXIV"; Blackstone's 

 "\ Lawyer's Farewell to his Muse"; Justice, by 

 John Quincy Adams; Landor's "At the Buckingham 

 Sessions"; "The Judicial Court of Venus," by Jonathan 

 Swift; Saxe's "Briefless Barrister" and his ' The Law- 

 yer's Valentine"; "General Average," by William 

 Allen Butler; "The Festival of Injustice" by Carlton, 

 and Riley's "Lawyer and Child." 



Lay of the Last Minstrel. Ladye Margaret [Scottl 

 of Branksome Hall, the "flower of Teyiot ." was beloved 

 by Baron Henry of Cranstown, but a deadly feud existed 

 between the two families. A goblin lured Ladye Marga- 

 ret's brother into a wood, where he fell into the hands 

 of the Southerners. At the same time an army of 3,000 

 English marched to Branksome Hall to take it, but 

 hearing that Douglas, was on the march against them, 

 the two chiefs agreed to decide the contest by single 

 combat. Victory fell to the Scotch, when it was dis- 

 covered that "Sir William Deloraine," the Scotch 

 champion, was in reality Lord Cranstown, who then 

 claimed and received the hand of Ladye Margaret as his 

 reward. This united the two houses. 



Lazarre. This hero's relation to history is so 

 shadowy as to be no burden, and yet sufficiently well 

 defined to serve as a lure to the imagination. He is the 

 supposed Dauphin of France, the son of Louis XVI. and 

 Marie Antoinette, who, according to the full chronicles 

 of his time, died in prison, but whose removal to America 

 is hinted in certain footnotes to history. However this 

 may have been, one Eleazar Williams, the reputed son 

 of a half-breed Indian who lived in northern New York 

 in the early years of the last century, was not withou 

 reason for believing himself the lost Dauphin. Mrs 

 Catherwopd has written a romance under this nam 

 taking this character as her hero. 



Lazy Lawrence. One of the dwellers in Lubberland 

 in the story of which he is pictured. It tells of his birtt 

 .and breeding, how he served the school-master, his wife 

 the squire's cook, and the farmer, which, by the law 

 of Lubberland, was accounted high treason; his arraign 



'he best writers on the American Indian are thus 

 luoted in our literatures: James F. Cooper, the roman- 

 er of the Indian; Henry W. Longfellow, the poet of 

 he Indian; Francis Parkman, the historian of the 

 ndian- Helen Hunt Jackson, the novelist of the Indian. 

 Legend. Anciently, a kind of rubric containing 

 he prayers appointed to be read in Roman Catholic 

 churches. In later times, the word was employed to 

 denote a chronicle or register of the lives of saints, because 

 hey were to be read on the festivals of the saints. Ihe 

 way in which a credulous love of the wonderful, exag- 

 geration of fancy, and ecclesiastical enthusiasm, at times 

 even pious fraud, mixed themselves up in these narratives 

 with true history, caused stories of a religious or eccle- 

 lastical nature generally to be designated as legends, 

 to distinguish them from real history. Ihe word has 

 jeen much used in connection with the wild tales of 

 ancient times, especially those known among the peas- 

 antry of Europe. Among the mediaeval collections of 

 egends, that drawn up by the Genoese archbishop, 

 Jacobus de Voragine, in the second half of the Thirteenth 

 Century, under the title of "Legenda Aurea (the 

 Golden Legends), or "Historia Lombardica, is the 

 most celebrated. . . 



Legion of Hon'or, The. An order conferred in 

 i recognition of military and civil merit, instituted by 

 Napoleon I., while First Consul, May 19, 1802. It con- 

 sists of different grades, as grand-crosses (of whom there 

 are eighty), grand-officers (500) officers (4,000). and 

 legionaries (whose number is not limited). The highest 

 functionary is the "chancellor." The splendid edihce 

 erected in Paris during the first empire, and known as 

 the "Palace of the Legion of Honor," after haying been 

 partially destroyed during the Communist outbreak has 

 been rebuilt. 



Le'onine Verses. These fancies were common in 

 the Twelfth Century, and were so called from Leoninus, 

 a canon of the Church of St. Victor, in Pans, the 

 inventor. In English 'verse, any meter which ryhmes 

 middle and end is called a Leonine verse. 



Le'the. A personification of oblivion often referred to 

 in literature. The tradition is that the soul, at the 

 death of the body, drank of the River Lethe that il 

 might carry into the world of shadows no remembrance 

 of earth and its concerns. . , 



Letterpress. Printed matter. The word is often 

 used to distinguish printed words from engraving. 



Lexicon. A vocabulary, or book containing an 

 alphabetical arrangement of the words of a language, 

 with an explanation of the meaning or sense of each. 

 The term is chiefly used with reference to dictionaries 

 or word-books of the Greek and Hebrew languages. 



