Biron (bē-rôn´).—Love’s Labor’s Lost, Shakespeare. A merry madcap young lord, in attendance on Ferdinand, king of Navarre.
Black-Eyed Susan.—Ballad, John Gay. The heroine of the popular sea song.
Black Knight of the Black Lands.—Sir Peread. Called by Tennyson Night or Nox. He was one of the four brothers who kept the passages of Castle Dangerous, and was overthrown by Sir Gareth. Idylls (Gareth and Lynette).
Blatant Beast.—Faërie Queene, Spenser. A bellowing monster typical of slander; or, an impersonation of what we now call Vox Populi, or the Voice of the People.
Bleak House.—A novel by Charles Dickens, the title of which was suggested, it is said, by the situation of a certain tall brick house at Broadstairs, which stands high above and far away from the remainder of the town, and in which the author resided for several seasons.
Blimber (blim´er), Miss Cornelia.—Dombey and Son, Dickens. The daughter of Dr. Blimber, the head of a first-class educational establishment conducted on the forcing, or cramming, principle. She is a very learned, grave, and precise young lady, “no light nonsense about her,” who has become “dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages.”
Blithedale (blīth´dāl) Romance, The.—A story by [786] Nathaniel Hawthorne, founded on the author’s experience as a member of the Brook Farm community. “Its predominant idea,” says R. H. Hutton, “is to delineate the deranging effect of an absorbing philanthropic idea on a powerful mind; the unscrupulous sacrifices of personal claims which it induces, and the misery in which it ends. There is scarcely one incident in the tale properly so called except the catastrophe.”
Blowzelinda (blou-ze-lin´dä), or Blowsalinda (blou-za-lin´dä).—Shepherd’s Week, John Gay. The country girl, heroine of this pastoral poem, written more than one hundred and fifty years ago, but quoted as a picture of the poverty and rudeness of rural life at that time.
Bobadil (bob´a-dil), Captain.—Every Man in His Humor, Jonson. A boasting coward, who passes himself off with young and simple people for a Hector.
Bœuf, Front de (beuf, fron du).—Ivanhoe, Scott. One of King John’s followers. A ferocious scoundrel.