Roman Catholics say it means Anti-christ.
Protestants think it refers to the pope.
The Fifth-Monarchy men applied it to Cromwell.
Man of the Hill, a tedious “hermit of the vale,” introduced by Fielding in his novel of Tom Jones (1749).
Man of the Mountain (Old). (See Koppenburg.)
Man of the People, Charles James Fox (1749-1806).
Man of the Sea (The Old), the man who got upon the shoulders of Sindbad, the sailor, and would not get off again, but clung there with obstinate pertinacity till Sindbad made him drunk, when he was easily shaken off. Sindbad then crushed him to death with a large stone.
“You had fallen,” said they, “into the hands of the Old Man of the Sea, and you are the first whom he has not strangled.”—Arabian Nights (“Sindbad,” fifth voyage).
Man of the World (The), Sir Pertinax McSycophant, who acquires a fortune by “booing” and fawning on the great and rich. He wants his son Egerton to marry the daughter of Lord Lumbercourt, but Egerton, to the disgust of his father, marries Constantia, the protégée of Lady McSycophant. Sir Pertinax had promised his lordship a good round sum of money if the marriage was effected; and when this contretemps occurs, his lordship laments the loss of money, “which will prove his ruin.” Sir Pertinax tells Lord Lumbercourt that his younger son Sandy will prove more pliable, and it is agreed that the bargain[bargain] shall stand good if Sandy will marry the young lady.—C. Macklin, The Man of the World (1764).
⁂ This comedy is based on Voltaire’s Nanine (1749).