After this it will be by no means difficult to understand why Apicius despaired of being able to make two ends meet, when he had reduced his enormous fortune to £80,000, and therefore hanged himself.
*** After the winter of 1327 was over, the elder Spenser had left of the stores laid in by him the preceding November and salted down, “80 salted beeves, 500 bacons, and 600 muttons.”
Ralph, son of Fairfield, the miller. An outlandish, ignorant booby, jealous of his sister, Patty, because she “could paint picturs and strum on the harpsicols.” He was in love with Fanny, the gypsy, for which “feyther” was angry with him; but, “what argufies feyther’s anger?” However, he treated Fanny like a brute, and she said of him, “He has a heart as hard as a parish officer. I don’t doubt but he would stand by and see me whipped.” When his sister married Lord Aimworth, Ralph said:
Captain Ralph my lord will dub me,
Soon I’ll mount a huge cockade;
Mounseer shall powder, queue, and club me,—
’Gad! I’ll be a roaring blade.
If Fan should offer then to snub me,
When in scarlet I’m arrayed;
Or my feyther ’temp to drub me—
Let him frown, but who’s afraid?
Bickerstaff, The Maid of the Mill (1647).
Ralph or Ralpho, the squire of Hudibras. Fully described in bk. i. 457-644.—S. Butler, Hudibras (1663-78).
The prototype of “Ralph” was Isaac Robinson, a zealous butcher, in Morefields. Ralph represents the independent party, and Hudibras the Presbyterian.
*** In regard to the pronunciation of this name, which, in 1878, was the subject of a long controversy in Notes and Queries, Butler says:
A squire he had whose name was Ralph,
That in th’ adventure went his half: ...
And when we can, with metre safe,
We’ll call him Ralpho, or plain Ra’ph.
Bk. l. 456.
Ralph (Rough), the helper of Lance Outram, park-keeper at Sir Geoffrey Peveril’s of the Peak.—Sir W. Scott, Peveril of the Peak (time, Charles II.).
Ralph (James), an American, who came to London and published a poem entitled Night (1725).