Agnes, The Eve of St.—(1) A poem by John Keats. It is characterized by Leigh Hunt as “the most delightful and complete specimen of his genius; ... exquisitely loving; ... young but full-grown poetry of the rarest description; graceful as the beardless Apollo; glowing and gorgeous with the colors of romance.” St. Agnes [783] was a Roman virgin who suffered martyrdom in the reign of Diocletian. (2) A poem by Tennyson, published in 1842.
Agapida (ä-gä-pē´thä), Fray Antonio.—The fictitious writer to whom Washington Irving originally attributed the authorship of the Conquest of Granada.
Agib (ā´gib).—(1) The third Calendar in the story of “The Three Calendars” in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. (2) In the story of Noureddin Ali and Bedredden Hassan in The Arabian Nights, a son of Bedredden Hassan and the Queen of Beauty.
Agramant (ä´grä-mänt).—In Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, the young king of Africa.
Ague-Cheek (ā´gū-chēk), Sir Andrew. A character in Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, a timid, silly but amusing country squire, to whom life consists only of eating and drinking. He is stupid even to silliness, but so devoid of self-love or self-conceit that he is delightful in his simplicity.
Ahasuerus (a-haz-ū-ē´rus).—Chief character in Sue’s A Wandering Jew, the cobbler who pushed away Jesus when, on the way to execution, He rested a moment or two at his door. “Get off! Away with you!” cried the cobbler. “Truly, I go away,” returned Jesus, “and that quickly; but tarry thou till I come.” And from that time Ahasuerus became the “wandering Jew,” who still roams the earth, and will continue so to do till the “second coming of the Lord.”
Ahmed (äh´med), or Achmet (äch´met).—In the Arabian Nights, noted for a magic tent he possessed which would cover a whole army but might be carried in the pocket. He also possessed a magic apple which would cure all diseases.
Aladdin (a-lad´in).—In the story of “Aladdin or the Wonderful Lamp,” in the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, the son of a poor widow in China, who becomes possessed of a magic lamp and ring which command the services of two terrific jinns. Learning the magic power of the lamp, by accidentally rubbing it, Aladdin becomes rich and marries the Princess of Cathay through the agency of the “slave of the lamp” who also builds in a night a palace for her reception. One window of this palace was left unfinished, and no one could complete it to match the others. Aladdin therefore directs the jinns to finish it, which is done in the twinkling of an eye (hence the phrase “to finish Aladdin’s window”; that is, to attempt to finish something begun by a greater man). After many years the original owner of the lamp, a magician, in order to recover it, goes through the city offering new lamps for old. The wife of Aladdin, tempted by this idea, exchanges the old rusty magic lamp for a brand new useless one (hence the phrase “to exchange old lamps for new”), and the magician transports both palace and princess to Africa, but the ring helps Aladdin to find them. He kills the magician, and, possessing himself of the lamp, transports the palace to Cathay, and at the sultan’s death succeeds to the throne.
Al Araf (äl ä rȧf).—The Mohammedan limbo, between paradise and jehennam, for those who die without sufficient merit to deserve the former, and without sufficient demerit to deserve the latter. Here lunatics, idiots, and infants go at death, according to the Koran. The subject of an uncompleted poem by Edgar A. Poe.
Alasnam (a-las´nam).—The hero of a story in the Arabian Nights entitled “The History of Prince Zeyn Alasnam and the Sultan of the Genii,” Alasnam has eight diamond statues, but had to go in quest of a ninth more precious still, to fill the vacant pedestal. The prize was found in the lady who became his wife, at once the most beautiful and the most perfect of her race.