Brass, Sally, and Sampson.—Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens. Brother and sister, well mated, he a shystering lawyer and she getting ahead of him in villainy. Sampson was dishonest, sentimental, and affected in manner, and both are interesting characters to read about.
Brentford (brent´fōrd), The Two Kings of.—The Rehearsal, Villiers. Much question has been raised as to who was to be ridiculed under these characters. The royal brothers, Charles II. and James II., have been suggested; others say the fighting kings of Granada. In the farce the two kings are represented as walking hand in hand, as dancing together and singing in concert.
Briana (brī-ā´nä).—Spenser’s Faërie Queene. The lady of a castle who demanded for toll the locks of every lady and the beard of every knight that passed. This toll was established because Sir Crudor, with whom she was in love, refused to marry her till she had provided him with human hair sufficient to purfle a mantle with. Sir Crudor, having been overthrown in knightly combat by Sir Calidore, who refused to give the passage pay, is made to release Briana from the condition imposed on her, and Briana swears to discontinue the discourteous toll.
Brick, Jefferson.—In Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit. A very weak, pale young man, the war correspondent of the New York Rowdy Journal, of which Colonel Diver was editor.
Bride of Abydos, The.—A Turkish tale, told in octosyllabic verse by Lord Byron, and published in 1813. It is in two cantos, and opens with the well-known song imitated from Goethe, beginning: “Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle.” The name of the “bride” is Zuleika, and that of her lover, Selim.
Bride of Lammermoor, The.—A romance of Sir Walter Scott, published in 1819, and characterized as a tragedy of the highest order, uniting excellence of plot with Scott’s usual merits of character and description.
Brook Farm.—The full name was “Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education,” a stock company of nearly seventy members, located on a farm of two hundred acres at West Roxbury, Mass. Among the members were George Ripley, Charles A. Dana, George William Curtis, Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Among their frequent visitors were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, Bronson Alcott. This idyllic life lasted about five years, from 1841 to 1846. Brook Farm was a financial failure but it was important in intellectual results. Hawthorne has written the story of the experiment in Blithedale Romance.
Brown, Tom.—Tom Brown’s School Days and Tom Brown at Oxford, Thomas Hughes. The hero of these stories of school days, a typical English schoolboy and undergraduate.
Brunhild (brön´hild).—Nibelungenlied. The story of Brunhild holds large place in ancient German romance. She was, herself, a warrior, proud and skillful, and she promised to be the bride of the man who could conquer her in three trials, in hurling the lance, in throwing the stone, and in leaping after the stone when thrown. By the arts and bravery of Siegfried, she was deluded into marrying Gunther, king of Burgundy; but, discovering the trick, she planned and accomplished the destruction of Siegfried, and the humiliation of Chriemhild, his wife.
Bumble, Mr.—Oliver Twist, Dickens. A pompous, disagreeable beadle, who figures largely in the beginning of the story. The name Bumble has since attached itself to the office.