(An exqusite description of Sabine, sitting in state as a queen, is given in the opening of song v. of Drayton’s Polyolbion, and the tale of her metamorphosis is recorded at length in song vi. Milton in Comus, and Fletcher in The Faithful Shepherdess, refer to the transformation of Sabrina into a river.
Sabrina (Aunt). “Grim old maid in rusty bombazine gown and cap,” whose strongest passion is family pride in the old homestead and farm which “her grandfather, a revolted cobbler from Rhode Island, had cleared and paid for at ten cents an acre.”—Harold Frederic, Seth’s Brother’s Wife (1886).
Sabrinian Sea or Severn Sea, i.e. the Bristol Channel. Both terms occur not unfrequently in Drayton’s Polyolbion.
Sacchini (Antonio Maria Gaspare), called “The Racine of Music,” contemporary with Glück and Piccini (1735-1786).
Sacharissa. So Waller calls the Lady Dorothea Sidney, eldest daughter of the earl of Leicester, to whose hand he aspired. Sacharissa married the earl of Sunderland. (Greek, sakchar, “sugar.”)
Sackbut, the landlord of a tavern, in Mrs. Centlivre’s comedy, A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1717).
Sackingen (The Trumpeter of). Werner, a trumpeter, discourses such divine music upon his instrument as gains him access to a baronial castle, the good-will of the baron and the love of Margaret, the baron’s daughter.—Victor Hugo, The Trumpeter of Sackingen.
Sacred Nine (The), the Muses, nine in number.
Fair daughters of the Sun, the Sacred Nine,
Here wake to ecstasy their harps divine.
Falconer, The Shipwreck, iii. 3 (1756).
Sacred War (The), a war undertaken by the Amphictyonic League for the defence of Delphi, against the Cirrhæans (B.C. 595-587).