Velasquez painted a Spanish admiral so true to life that King Philip IV., entering the studio, thought the painting was the admiral, and spoke to it as such, reproving the supposed officer for being in the studio wasting his time, when he ought to have been with the fleet.
Zillah, beloved by Hamuel, a brutish sot. Zillah rejected his suit, and Hamuel vowed vengeance. Accordingly, he gave out that Zillah had intercourse with the devil, and she was condemned to be burnt alive. God averted the flames, which consumed Hamuel, but Zillah stood unharmed, and the stake to which she was bound threw forth white roses, “the first ever seen on earth since paradise was lost.”--Southey. (See Rose.)
Zimmerman (Adam), the old burgher of Soleure, one of the Swiss deputies to Charles “the Bold” of Burgundy.--Sir W. Scott, Anne of Geierstein (time, Edward IV.).
Zim´ri, one of the six Wise Men of the East led by the guiding star to Jesus.
Zimri taught the people, but they treated him with contempt; yet, when dying, he prevailed on one of them, and then expired.--Klopstock, The Messiah, v. (1771).
Zimri, in Dryden’s satire of Absalom and Achitophel, is the second duke of Buckingham. As Zimri conspired against Asa, king of Judah, 1 Kings, xvi. 9, so the duke of Buckingham “formed parties and joined factions.”
Some of the chiefs were princes in the land:
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand--
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitomê;