Moore (Thomas) could never make a speech.
(Dickens and Prince Albert always spoke well and fluently.)
Speed, an inveterate punster, and the clownish servant of Valentine, one of the two “gentlemen of Verona.”--Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594).
Speed the Plough, a comedy by Thomas Morton (1798). Farmer Ashfield brings up a boy named Henry, greatly beloved by every one. This Henry is in reality the son of “Morrington,” younger brother of Sir Philip Blandford. The two brothers fixed their love on the same lady, but the younger married her, whereupon Sir Philip stabbed him to the heart, and fully thought him to be dead, but after twenty years, the wounded man reappeared, and claimed his son. Henry marries his cousin, Emma Blandford; and the farmer’s daughter, Susan, marries Robert, only son of Sir Abel Handy.
Spenlow (Mr.), father of Dora (q.v.). He was a proctor, to whom David Copperfield was articled. Mr. Spenlow was killed in a carriage accident.
Misses Lavinia and Clarissa Spenlow, two spinster aunts of Dora Spenlow, with whom she lived at the death of her father.
They were not unlike birds altogether, having a sharp, brisk, sudden manner, and a little, short, spruce way of adjusting themselves, like canaries.--C. Dickens, David Copperfield, xli. (1849).
Spens (Sir Patrick), a Scotch hero, sent, in the winter-time, on a mission to Norway. His ship, in its home passage, was wrecked off the coast of Aberdeen, and every one on board was lost. The incident has furnished the subject of a spirited Scotch ballad by Lady Lindsay.
Spenser. The Spenser of English Prose Writers, Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667).
Spenser. From Spenser to Flecknoe, that is, from the top to the bottom of all poetry; from the sublime to the ridiculous.--Dryden, Comment on Spenser, etc.