Travels ... in Remote Nations, by “Lemuel Gulliver.” He is first shipwrecked and cast on the coast of Lilliput, a country of pygmies. Subsequently he is thrown among the people of Brobdingnag, giants of tremendous size. In his third expedition he is driven to Lapūta, an empire of quack pretenders to science and knavish projectors. And in his fourth voyage he visits the Houyhnhnms [Whin´.n´me], where horses were the dominant powers.--Dean Swift (1726).
Travers, a retainer of the earl of Northumberland.--Shakespeare, Henry IV. (1598).
Travers (Sir Edmund), an old bachelor[bachelor], the guardian and uncle of Lady Davenant. He is a tedious gossip, fond of meddling, prosy, and wise in his own conceit. “It is surprising,” he says, “how unwilling people are to hear my stories. When in parliament I make a speech, there is nothing but coughing, hemming, and shuffling of feet--no desire of information.” By his instigation, the match was broken off between his niece and Captain Dormer, and she was given in marriage to Lord Davenant, but it turned out that his lordship was already married, and his wife living.--Cumberland, The Mysterious Husband (1783).
Travia´ta, an opera, representing the progress of a courtezan. Music by Verdi, and libretto from La Dame aux Came´lias, a novel by Alexandre Dumas fils (1856).
Treachery of the Long-Knives (The). Hengist invited the chief British nobles to a conference at Ambresbury, but arranged that a Saxon should be seated beside each Briton. At the given signal, each Saxon was to slay his neighbor with his long knife, and as many as 460 British nobles fell. Eidiol, earl of Gloucester escaped, after killing seventy (some say 660) of the Saxons.--Welsh Triads.
Stonehenge was erected by Merlin, at the command of Ambrosius, in memory of the plot of the “Long-Knives.”... He built it on the site of a former circle. It deviates from older bardic circles, as may be seen by comparing it with Avebury, Stanton-Drew, Keswick, etc.--Cambrian Biography, art. “Merddin.”
Trecentisti, the Italian writers of the “Trecento” (thirteenth century). They were Dantê (1265-1321); Petrarch (1304-1374); Boccaccio (1313-1375), who wrote the Decameron. Among the famous artists were Giotto, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Andre Orcagna. (See Cinquecento, Seicento.)
In Italy he’d ape the Trecentisti.
Byron, Don Juan, iii. 86 (1820).
Tree (The Bleeding). One of the superstitous tales told of the marquis of Argyll, so hated by the royalists for the part he took in the execution of Montrose, was this: “That a tree on which thirty-six of his enemies were hanged was immediately blasted, and when hewn down, a copious stream of blood ran from it, saturating the earth, and that blood for several years flowed out from the roots.”--Laing, History of Scotland, ii. 11 (1800); State Trials, ii. 422.