(Scaliger, father (1484-1558), son (1540-1609), critics and humanists).
Groom (Squire), “a downright, English, Newmarket, stable-bred gentleman-jockey, who, having ruined his finances by dogs, grooms, cocks, and horses ... thinks to retrieve his affairs by a matrimonial alliance with a City fortune.” (canto i. 1). He is one of the suitors of Charlotte Goodchild; but, supposing the report to be true that she has lost her money, he says to her guardian:
“Hark ye! Sir Theodore; I always make my match according to the weight my thing can carry. When I offered to take her into my stable, she was sound and in good case; but I hear her wind is touched. If so, I would not back her for a shilling. Matrimony is a long course, ... and it won’t do.”[do.”]—C. Macklin, Love â la Mode ii. 1 (1779).
This was Lee Lewes’s great part [1740-1803]. One morning at rehearsal, Lewes said something not in the play. “Hoy, hoy!” cried Macklin; “what’s that? what’s that?” “Oh,” replied Lewes, “’tis only a bit of my nonsense.” “But,” said Macklin, gravely, “I like my nonsense, Mr. Lewes, better than yours.”—J. O’Keefe.
Grotto of Eph´esus. Near Ephesus was a grotto containing a statue of Diana, to which was attached a pipe of reeds. If a young woman, charged with dishonor, entered this grotto, and the reed gave forth musical sounds, she was declared to be a pure virgin; but if it gave forth hideous noises, she was denounced and never seen more. Corinna put the grotto to the test, at the desire of Glaucon of Lesbos, and was never seen again by the eye of man.—E. Bulwer Lytton, Tales of Milētus, iii. (See Chastity, for other tests.)
Groveby (Old), of Gloomstock Hall, aged 65. He is the uncle of Sir Harry Groveby. Brusque, hasty, self-willed, but kind-hearted.
Sir Harry Groveby, nephew of old Groveby, engaged to Maria “the maid of the Oaks.”—J. Burgoyne, The Maid of the Oaks.
Groves (Jem), landlord of the Valiant Soldier, to which was attached “a good dry skittle-ground.”—C. Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, xxix. (1840).
Grub (Jonathan), a stock broker, weighted with the three plagues of life—a wife, a handsome marriageable daughter, and £100,000 in the Funds, “any one of which is enough to drive a man mad; but all three to be attended to at once is too much.”
Mrs. Grub, a wealthy city woman, who has moved from the east to the fashionable west quarter of London, and has abandoned merchants and tradespeople for the gentry.