Edinburgh.—Sir W. Scott, Guy Mannering (time, George II.).
Driver of Europe. The duc de Choiseul, minister of Louis XV., was so called by the empress of Russia, because he had spies all over Europe, and ruled by them all the political cabals.
Dro'gio, probably Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. A Venetian voyager named Antonio Zeno (fourteenth century) so called a country which he discovered. It was said to lie south-west of Estotiland (Labrador), but neither Estotiland nor Drogio are recognized by modern geographers, and both are supposed to be wholly, or in a great measure, hypothetical.
Dro'mio (The Brothers), two brothers, twins, so much alike that even their nearest friends and masters knew not one from the other. They were the servants of two masters, also twins and the exact facsimiles of each other. The masters were Antiph'olus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse.—Shakespeare, Comedy of Errors (1593).
(The Comedy of Errors is borrowed from the Menoechmi of Plautus).
Dronsdaughter (Tronda), the old serving-woman of the Yellowleys.—Sir W. Scott, The Pirate (time, William III.).
Drop Serene (Gutta Serena). It was once thought that this sort of blindness was an incurable extinction of vision by a transparent watery humor distilling on the optic nerve. It caused total blindness, but made no visible change in the eye. It is now known that this sort of blindness arises from obstruction in the capillary nerve-vessels, and in some cases at least 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,