*** This name occurs three times in the Morte d’Arthur—once as “Nimue,” once as “Nineve,” and once as “Ninive.” Probably “[Nimue]” (q.v.) is a clerical error.
Ninon de Lenclos, a beautiful Parisian, rich, spirituelle, and an atheist, who abandoned herself to epicurean indulgence, and preserved her charms to a very advanced age. Ninon de Lenclos renounced marriage, and had numberless lovers. Her house was the rendezvous of all the most illustrious persons of the period, as Molière, St. Evremont, Fontenelle, Voltaire, and so on (1615-1705).
Niobe [Ne´.oby], the beau-ideal of grief. After losing her twelve children, she was changed into a stone, which wept continually.
*** The group of “Niobe and her Children” in Florence, discovered at Rome in 1583, is now arranged in the Uffizii Gallery.
She followed my poor father’s body,
Like Niobê, all tears.
Shakespeare, Hamlet, act i. sc. 2 (1596).
Niobe of Nations (The). Rome is so called by Byron.—Childe Harold, iv. 79 (1817).
Nipper (Susan), generally called “Spitfire,” from her snappish disposition. She was the nurse of Florence Dombey, to whom she was much attached. Susan Nipper married Mr. Toots (after he had got over his infatuation for Florence).
Nippotate (4 syl.), “a live lion stuffed with straw,” exhibited in a raree-show. This proved to be the body of a tame hedgehog exhibited by Old Harry, a notorious character in London at the beginning of the eighteenth century (died 1710).
Of monsters stranger than can be expressed,
There’s Nippotatê lies amongst the rest.
Sutton Nicholls.
Niquee [Ne´.kay], the sister of Anasterax, with whom she lived in incest. The fairy Zorphee was her godmother, and enchanted her, in order to break off this connection.—Vasco de Lobeira, Amadis de Gaul (thirteenth century).