Matthias de Monçada, a merchant. He is the father of Mrs. Witherington, wife of General Witherington.—Sir W. Scott, The Surgeon’s Daughter (time, George II.).
Matthias de Silva (Don), a Spanish beau. This exquisite one day received a challenge for defamation, soon after he had retired to bed, and said to his valet, “I would not get up before noon to make one in the best party of pleasure that was ever projected. Judge, then, if I shall rise at six o’clock in the morning to get my throat cut.”—Lesage, Gil Blas, iii. 8 (1715).
(This reply was borrowed from the romance of Espinel, entitled Vida del Escudero Marços de Obregon, 1618).
Mattie, maid servant of Bailie Nicol Jarvie, and afterwards his wife.—Sir W. Scott, Rob Roy (time, George I.).
Maud Muller, pretty, shy haymaker, of whom the judge, passing by, craves a cup of water. He falls in love with the rustic maiden, but dare not wed her. She, too, recollects him with tenderness, dreaming vainly of what might have been her different lot.
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’”
J. G. Whittier, Maud Muller.
Bret Harte has written a clever parody upon Maud Muller,—“Mrs. Judge Jenkins.”
“There are no sadder words of tongue or pen,
Than ‘It is, but it hadn’t orter been!’”
Maude, (1 syl.), wife of Peter Pratefast, “who loved cleanliness.”
She kepe her dishes from all foulenes;
And when she lacked clowtes withouten fayle,
She wyped her dishes with her dogges tayll.
Stephen Hawes, The Pastyme of Pleasure, xxix. (1515).