Meredith (Mr.), one of the conspirators with Redgauntlet.—Sir W. Scott, Redgauntlet (time, George III.).
Meredith (Mr. Michael), “the man of mirth,” in the managing committee of the Spa hotel.—Sir. W. Scott, St. Ronan’s Well. (time, George III.).
Meredith (Sir), a Welsh knight.—Sir W. Scott, Castle Dangerous (time, Henry I.).
Meredith (Owen), pseudonym of the Hon. Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton (Lord Lytton), author of The Wanderer (1859), etc. This son of Lord Bulwer Lytton, poet and novelist, succeeded to the peerage in 1873.
Me´rida (Marchioness), betrothed to Count Valantia.—Mrs. Inchbald, Child of Nature.
Meridarpax, the pride of mice.
Now nobly towering o’er the rest, appears
A gallant prince that far transcends his years;
Pride of his sire, and glory of his house,
And more a Mars in combat than a mouse;
His action bold, robust his ample frame,
And Meridarpax his resounding name.
Parnell, The Battle of the Frogs and Mice, iii. (about 1712).
Merid´ies or “Noonday Sun,” one of the four brothers who kept the passages of Castle Perilous. So Tennyson has named him; but in the History of Prince Arthur, he is called “Sir Permōnês, the Red Knight.”—Tennyson, Idylls (“Gareth and Lynette”); Sir T. Malory, History of Prince Arthur, i. 129 (1470).
Merion (James), New York lawyer, who plays the lover to three women, honestly believing himself enamoured of each.—Ellen Olney Kirke, A Daughter of Eve (1889).
Merle (Madame), a plausible woman with an ambition to be thought the incarnation of propriety, who carries with her the knowledge that she is the mistress of a man who has a wife, and that Madame Merle’s illegitimate daughter is brought up by the step-mother, who knows nothing of the shameful story.—Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (1881).