Like Ponce de Léon, he wants to go off to the Antipodês in search of that Fontaine de Jouvence which was fabled to give a man back his youth.—Véra, 130.
Pongo, a cross between “a land-tiger and a sea-shark.” This terrible monster devastated Sicily, but was slain by the three sons of St. George.—R. Johnson, The Seven Champions, etc. (1617).
Ponoc´rates (4 syl.), the tutor of Gargantua.—Rabelais, Gargantua (1533).
Pontius Pilate’s Body-Guard, the 1st Foot Regiment. In Picardy the French officers wanted to make out that they were the seniors, and, to carry their point, vaunted that they were on duty on the night of the Crucifixion. The colonel of the 1st Foot replied, “If we had been on guard we should not have slept at our posts” (see Matt. xxviii. 13).
Pontoys (Stephen), a veteran in Sir Hugo de Lacy’s troop.—Sir W. Scott, The Betrothed (time, Henry II.).
Pony (Mr. Garland’s), Whisker (q.v.).
Poole (1 syl.), in Dorsetshire; once “a young and lusty sea-born lass,” courted by Great Albion, who had by her three children, Brunksey, Fursey and [St.] Hellen. Thetis was indignant that one of her virgin train should be guilty of such indiscretion; and, to protect his children from her fury, Albion placed them in the bosom of Poole, and then threw his arms around them.—M. Drayton, Polyolbion, ii. (1612).
Poor (Father of the), Bernard Gilpin. (1517-1583).
Poor Gentleman (The), a comedy by George Colman, the younger (1802). “The poor gentleman” is Lieutenant Worthington, discharged from the army on half-pay because his arm had been crushed by a shell in storming Gibraltar. On his half-pay he had to support himself, his daughter Emily, an old corporal and a maiden sister-in-law. Having put his name to a bill for £500, his friend died without effecting an insurance, and the lieutenant was called upon for payment. Imprisonment would have followed if Sir Robert Bramble had not most generously paid the money. With this piece of good fortune came another—the marriage of his daughter Emily to Frederick Bramble, nephew and heir of the rich baronet.
Poor Richard, the pseudonym of Benjamin Franklin, under which he issued a series of almanacs, which he made the medium of teaching thrift, temperance, order, cleanliness, chastity, forgiveness, and so on. The maxims or precepts of these almanacs generally end with the words, “as poor Richard says” (begun in 1732).