Macready (Pate), a pedlar, the friend of Andrew Fairservice, gardener at Osbaldistone Hall.—Sir W. Scott, Rob Roy (time, George I.).
Mac´reons, the British. Great Britain is the “Ireland of the Macreons.” The word is a Greek compound, meaning “long-lived,” “because no one is put to death there for his religious opinions.” Rabelais says the island “is full of antique ruins and relics of popery and ancient superstitions.”—Rabelais, Pantag´ruel (1545).
⁂ Rabelais describes the persecutions which the Reformers met with as a storm at sea, in which Pantagruel and his fleet were tempest-tossed.
Macro´bii (“the long-lived”), an Ethiopian race, said to live to 120 years and upwards. They are the handsomest and tallest of all men, as well as the longest-lived.
Macroth´umus. long-suffering personified. (Greek, makrothumia=long suffering). Fully described in The Purple Island, (canto x.).—Phineas Fletcher (1633).
MacSarcasm (Sir Archy), in Love à-la-mode, by C. Macklin (1779). Boaden says: “To Covent Garden, G. F. Cooke [1746-1812] was a great acquisition, as he was a ‘Shylock,’ an ‘Iago,’ a ‘Kitely,’ a ‘Sir Archy,’ and a ‘Sir Pertinax’ [McSycophant].” Leigh Hunt says that G. F. Cooke was a new kind of Macklin, and, like him, excelled in “Shylock” and “Sir Archy M’Sarcasm.”
⁂ “Shylock” in the Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare); “Iago” in Othello (Shakespeare); “Kitely” in Every Man in His Humor (B. Jonson); “Sir Archy,” that is, “M’Sarcasm”; “Sir Pertinax McSycophant” in The Man of the World (Macklin).
MacSillergrip, a Scotch pawnbroker, in search of Robin Scrawkey, his runaway apprentice, whom he pursues upstairs and assails with blows.
Mrs. M’Sillergrip, the pawnbroker’s wife, always in terror lest the manager should pay her indecorous attentions.—Charles Mathews (At home, in Multiple).
The skill with which Mathews [1775-1835] carried on a conversation between these three persons produced a most astonishing effect.—Contemporary Paper.