Midlo´thian (The Heart of), a tale of the Porteous riot, in which the incidents of Effie and Jeanie Deans are of absorbing interest. Effie was seduced by Geordie Robertson (alias George Staunton), while in the service of Mrs. Saddletree. She murdered her infant, and was condemned to death; but her half-sister, Jeanie, went to London, pleaded her cause before the queen, and obtained her pardon. Jeanie, on her return to Scotland, married Reuben Butler; and Geordie Robertson (then Sir George Staunton) married Effie. Sir George being shot by a gypsy boy, Effie (i.e. Lady Staunton), retired to a convent on the Continent.—Sir W. Scott, Heart of Midlothian (time, George II.).
Midshipman Easy. (See Easy.)
Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare says there was a law in Athens, that if a daughter refused to marry the husband selected for her by her father, she might be put to death. Egēus (3 syl.), an Athenian, promised to give his daughter, Hermia, in marriage to Demētrius; but, as the lady loved Lysander, she refused to marry the man selected by her father, and fled from Athens with her lover. Demetrius went in pursuit of her, followed by Helĕna, who doted on him. All four came to a forest, and fell asleep. In their dreams a vision of fairies passed before them, and on awaking, Demetrius resolved to forego Hermia, who disliked him, and to take to wife Helena, who sincerely loved him. When Egeus was informed thereof, he readily agreed to give his daughter to Lysander, and the force of the law was not called into action (1592).
*** Several of the incidents of this comedy are borrowed from the Diana of Montemayor, a Spaniard (sixteenth century).
Midwinter (Ozias), the alias of another Allan Armadale. His father has murdered the father of the real Allan, and the son of the homicide resolves to keep his own identity a secret, while trying to atone to Allan for the wrong done him. He loves and marries the perfidious governess of Allan’s betrothed.—Wilkie Collins, Armadale.
Miggs (Miss), the handmaiden and “comforter” of Mrs. Varden. A tall, gaunt young woman, addicted to pattens; slender and shrewish, of a sharp and acid visage. She held the male sex in utter contempt, but had a secret exception in favor of Sim Tappertit, who irreverently called her “scraggy.” Miss Miggs always sided with madam against master, and made out that she was a suffering martyr, and he an inhuman Nero. She called ma’am “mim;” said her sister lived at “twenty-sivin;” Simon she called “Simmun.” She said Mrs. Varden was “the mildest, amiablest, forgivingest-sperited, longest-sufferingest female in existence.” Baffled in all her matrimonial hopes, she was at last appointed female turnkey to a county Bridewell, which office she held for thirty years, when she died.
Miss Miggs, baffled in all her schemes ... and cast upon a thankless, undeserving world, turned very sharp and sour ... but the justices of the peace for Middlesex ... selected her from 124 competitors to the office of turnkey for a county Bridewell, which she held till her decease, more than thirty years afterwards, remaining single all that time.—C. Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1841).
Mign´on, a beautiful, dwarfish, fairy-like Italian girl, in love with Wilhelm, her protector. She glides before us in the mazy dance, or whirls her tambourine like an Ariel. Full of fervor, full of love, full of rapture, she is overwhelmed with the torrent of despair at finding her love is not returned, becomes insane, and dies.—Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1794-6).
Sir W. Scott drew his “Fenella,” in Peveril of the Peak, from this character; and Victor Hugo has reproduced her in his Notre Dame, under the name of “Esmeralda.”
Mignonette: