Aminte (ä-mant´).—Les Précieuses Ridicules, Molière. A contradictory character in this comedy. She dismisses her admirers for proposing to marry her, scolds her uncle for not carrying himself as a gentleman, and marries a valet whom she believes to be a nobleman.
Amlet (am´let).—The name of a gamester in Vanbrugh’s Confederacy.
Amoret (am´ō-ret).—(1) The name of a lady married to Sir Scudamore, in Spenser’s Faërie Queene. She is the type of a devoted, loving wife. (2) The heroine of Fletcher’s pastoral drama, The Faithful Shepherdess.
Amys and Amylion.—Two faithful friends. The Pylades and Orestes of the feudal ages. Their adventures are the subjects of ancient romances.
Ancient Man.—In Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, means Merlin, the old magician, King Arthur’s protector and teacher.
Ancient Mariner, The.—A poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The hero, an ancient mariner “with a long gray beard and glittering eye,” suffers terrible evils, and likewise inflicts them on his companions, from having shot an albatross, a bird of good omen. All his comrades perish of hunger, but, as he repents, he is permitted to regain the land. At intervals his agony returns, and he is driven from place to place to ease his soul by confessing his crime and sufferings to his fellows, and enforcing upon them a lesson of love for “all things, both great and small.”
“The Ancient Mariner,” says Swinburne, “is perhaps the most wonderful of all poems. In reading it we seem rapt into that paradise revealed by Swedenborg, where music and color and perfume were one, where you could see the hues and hear the harmonies of heaven. For absolute melody and splendor it were hardly rash to call it the first poem in the language.”
Andrews, Joseph.—The hero in Fielding’s novel by the same name, written to ridicule Richardson’s Pamela. Fielding presents Joseph Andrews as a brother to the modest and prudish Pamela, and pictures him as a model young man.
Angelica (an-jel´i-kä).—(1) In Bojardo’s Orlando Innamorato, is daughter of Galaphron, king of Cathay. She goes to Paris, and Orlando falls in love with her, forgetful of wife, sovereign, country and glory. Angelica, on the other hand, disregards Orlando, but passionately loves Rinaldo, who positively dislikes her. Angelica and Rinaldo drink of certain fountains, when opposite effects are produced in their hearts, for then Rinaldo loves Angelica, while Angelica loses all love for Rinaldo. (2) The heroine of Congreve’s comedy of Love for Love; in love with Valentine, but the ward of Sir Sampson Legend, who seeks to marry her. She jilts the old man, however, and marries the younger lover. Angelica is supposed to represent Mrs. Bracegirdle; Valentine the author himself who was enamoured of the actress, and was the rival of the dramatist, Rowe, in her affections. (3) The heroine of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. She was beloved by Orlando, but married Medoro. Also the name of the heroine of Farquhar’s plays of the Constant Couple, and Sir Harry Wildair.