Pembroke (The earl of), uncle to Sir Aymer de Valence.—Sir W. Scott, Castle Dangerous (time, Henry I.).
Pembroke (the Rev. Mr.), chaplain at Waverley Honor.—Sir W. Scott, Waverley (time, George II.).
Pen, Philemon Holland, translator-general of the classics. Of him was the epigram written:
Holland, with his translations doth so fill us,
He will not let Suetonius be Tranquillus.
(The point of which is, of course, that the name of the Roman historian was C. Suetonius Tranquillus.)
Many of these translations were written from beginning to end with one pen, and hence he himself wrote:
With one sole pen I writ this book,
Made of a grey goose-quill;
A pen it was when it I took,
And a pen I leave it still.
Pendennis (Arthur), pseudonym of W. M. Thackeray in The Newcomes (1854).
Pendennis, a novel by Thackeray (1849), in which much of his own history and experience is recorded with a novelist’s license. Pendennis stands in relation to Thackeray as David Copperfield to Charles Dickens.
Arthur Pendennis, a young man of ardent feelings and lively intellect, but conceited and selfish. He has a keen sense of honor, and a capacity for loving, but altogether he is not an attractive character.