They reached at length the hall [Argenk] of great extent, and covered with a lofty dome.... A funereal gloom prevailed over it. Here, upon two beds of incorruptible cedar, lay recumbent the fleshless forms of the pre-Adamite kings, who had once been monarchs of the whole earth.... At their feet were inscribed the events of their several reigns, their power, their pride, and their crimes. [This was the pre-Adamite throne, the ambition of the Caliph Vathek.]—W. Beckford, Vathek (1784).
Preacher (The) Solomon, the son of David, author of The Preacher (i. e. Ecclesiastes).
Thus saith the Preacher, “Nought beneath the sun
Is new;” yet still from change to change we run.
Byron.
Preacher (The Glorious), St. Chrys´ostom (347-407). The name means “Golden mouth.”
Preacher (The Little), Samuel de Marets, Protestant controversialist (1599-1663).
Preacher (The Unfair). Dr. Isaac Barrow was so called by Charles II., because his sermons were so exhaustive that they left nothing more to be said on the subject, which was “unfair” to those that came after him.
Preachers (The King of), Louis Bourdaloue (1632-1704).
Précieuses Ridicules (Les), a comedy by Molière, in ridicule of the “precieuses,” as they were styled, forming the coterie of the Hotel de Rambouillet in the seventeenth century. The soirées held in this hotel were a great improvement on the licentious assemblies of the period; but many imitators made the thing ridiculous, because they wanted the same presiding talent and good taste.
The two girls of Molière’s comedy are Madelon and Cathos, the daughter and niece of Gorgibus, a bourgeois. They change their names to Polixène and Aminte, which they think more genteel, and look on the affectations of two flunkies as far more distingué than the simple, gentlemanly manners of their masters. However, they are cured of their folly, and no harm comes of it (1659).