Flores or Isle of Flowers, one of the Azores (2 syl.). It was discovered in 1439 by Vanderburg, and is especially celebrated because it was near this isle that Sir Richard Grenville, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, fought his famous sea-fight. He had only one ship with a hundred men, and was opposed by the Spanish fleet of fifty-three men-of-war. For some hours victory was doubtful, and when Sir Richard was severely wounded, he wanted to sink the ship; but the Spaniards boarded it, complimented him on his heroic conduct, and he died. As the ship (The Revenge) was on its way to Spain, it was wrecked, and went to the bottom, so it never reached Spain after all. Tennyson has a poem on the subject (1878).
Flo´res (2 syl.), the lover of Blanchefleur.—Boccaccio, Il Filocopo (1340)
⁂ Boccaccio has repeated the tale in his Decameron, x. 5 (1352), in which Flores is called “Ansaldo,” and Blanchefleur “Diano´ra.” Flores and Blanchefleur, before Boccaccio’s time, were noted lovers, and are mentioned as early as 1288 by Matfre Ermengaud de Beziers, in his Breviaire d’Amour.
Chaucer has taken the same story as the basis of the Frankeleine’s Tale, and Bojardo has introduced it as an episode in his Orlando Innamorato, where the lover is “Prasildo” and the lady “Tisbina.” (See Prasildo.)
The chroniclers of Charlemagne,
Of Merlin, and the Mort d’Arthure,
Mingled together in his brain,
With tale of Flores and Blanchefleur.
Longfellow.
Flores´ki (Count), a Pole, in love with Princess Lodois´ka (4 syl.). At the opening of the play he is travelling with his servant Verbel to discover where the princess has been placed by her father during the war. He falls in with the Tartar chief Kera Khan, whom he overpowers in fight, but spares his life, and thus makes him his friend. Floreski finds the princess in the castle of Baron Lovinski, who keeps her a virtual prisoner, but the castle being stormed by the Tartars the baron is slain, and the princess marries the count.—J.P. Kemble, Lodoiska.