Hol´opherne (Thubal), the great sophister, who, in the course of five years and three months, taught Gargantua to say his ABC backwards.—Rabelais, Gargantua, i. 14 (1533).
Holopher´nes (4 syl.). a pedantic schoolmaster, who speaks like a dictionary. The character is meant for John Florio, a teacher of Italian in London, who published, in 1598, a dictionary called A World of Words. He provoked the retort by condemning wholesale the English dramas, which, he said, were “neither right comedies nor right tragedies, but perverted histories without decorum.” The following sentence is a specimen of the style in which Shakespeare caricatured his style:
The deer was...in sanguis (blood), ripe as a pomewater who now hangeth like a jewel in the ear of cœlo (the sky, the welkin, the heaven); and anon falleth like a crab on the face of terra (the soil, the land, the earth).—Shakespeare, Love’s Labor’s Lost, act iv. sc. 2 (1594).
⁂ Holophernes is an imperfect anagram of “Joh´nes Florio,” the first and last letters being omitted, F=ph.
Holt (Felix). A collarless radical who sets a neighborhood by the ears, and stultifies himself by wooing a gentlewoman.—George Eliot, Felix Holt (Radical).
Holy Bottle (The Oracle of the), the object of Pantag´ruel’s search. He visited various lands with his friend Panurge (2 syl.), the last place being the island of Lantern-land, where the “bottle” was kept in an alabaster fount in a magnificent temple. When the party arrived at the sacred spot, the priestess threw something into the fount; whereupon the water began to bubble, and the word “Drink” issued from the “bottle.” So the whole party set to drinking Falernian wine, and, being inspired with drunkenness, raved with prophetic madness; and so the romance ends.—Rabelais, Pantagruel (1545).
Like Pantagruel and his companions in quest of the “Oracle of the Bottle.”—Sterne.
Holy Brotherhood (The), in Spain called Santa Hermandad, was an association for the suppression of highway robbery.
The thieves,...believing the Holy Brotherhood was coming...got up in a hurry, and alarmed their companions.—Lesage, Gil Blas, i. 6 (1715).
Holy Maid of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, who incited the Roman Catholics to resist the progress of the Reformation, and pretended to act under divine inspiration. She was executed in 1534 for “predicting” that the king (Henry VIII.) would die a sudden death if he divorced Queen Katharine and married Anne Boleyn. At one time she was thought to be inspired with a prophetic gift, and even the lord chancellor, Sir Thomas More, was inclined to think so.