Rebecca.—Ivanhoe, Scott. Daughter of Isaac the Jew, in love with Ivanhoe.
Red-cross Knight.—The Red-cross Knight is St. George, the patron saint of England, and, in the obvious and general interpretation, typifies holiness, or the perfection of the spiritual man in religion. In Spenser’s Faërie Queene the task of slaying a dragon was assigned to him as the champion of Una.
Redgauntlet (red-gänt´let).—One of the principal characters in Sir Walter Scott’s novel of the same name, a political enthusiast and Jacobite, who scruples at no means of upholding the cause of the Pretender and finally accompanies him into exile. His race bore a fatal mark resembling a horseshoe which appeared on the face of Red-gauntlet as he frowned when angry.
Red-Riding-Hood.—This nursery tale is, with slight variations, common to Sweden, Germany, and France. In Charles Perrault’s Contes des Fées it is called Le Petit Chaperon Rouge.
Religio Medici (rē-lij´i-ō med´i-sī).—A prose work by Sir Thomas Browne. “The Religio Medici,” says the elder Lytton, “is one of the most beautiful prose poems in the language; its power of diction, its subtlety and largeness of thought, its exquisite conceits and images, have no parallel out of the writers of that brilliant age when Poetry and Prose had not yet divided their domain, and the Lyceum of Philosophy was watered by the mixing of the wine!”
Representative Men.—A work by Emerson which more nearly than any of his other works, gives expression to his system as a whole. The topics are: (1) Plato, the Philosopher; (2) Swedenborg, the Mystic; (3) Montaigne, the Skeptic; (4) Shakespeare, the Poet; (5) Napoleon, the Man of the World; (6) Goethe, the Writer. The mental portraits sketched under these six heads give us Emerson himself, so far as he is capable of being formulated at all.
Republic, The.—A work composed by Plato four hundred years before Christ. The Republic is not, as the title would suggest, a political work, like the Politics of Aristotle. The principles and government of an ideal moral organism, of which the rulers shall be types of fully developed and perfectly educated men, are the real subject. In the Republic we find the necessity of virtue to the very idea of social life proved in the first book; then the whole process of a complete moral and scientific education is set forth. It has been said that the most complete record of the beliefs or opinions of Plato are found in this work.
Reveries of a Bachelor.—By D. G. Mitchell. The Reveries is a collection of sketches of life and character, painted in such a dreamlike, delicate manner as to make the reader lose for the time being the full consciousness of his surroundings. It has called forth a number of imitators more or less successful, no one of whom, however, is comparable to the original.
Reynard (rā´närd, or ren´ärd) the Fox.—A beast-epic, so called. This prose poem is a satire on the state of Germany in the middle ages. Reynard represents the Church; Isengrin the wolf (his uncle) typifies the baronial element; and Nodel the lion stands for the regal power. The plot turns on the struggle for supremacy between Reynard and Isengrin. Reynard uses all his endeavors to victimize everyone, especially his uncle Isengrin, and generally succeeds.
Richelieu (rēsh-y-lōō´), or The Conspiracy.—A drama in five acts, by Edward, Lord Lytton; produced in 1839, the part of the hero being played by Macready. For some of the incidents the author confesses himself indebted to the authors of Cinq Mars and Picciola. Among the characters are Baradas, the favorite; De Mauprat, in love with Julie; Julie de Mortemar herself; Marion de Lorme, mistress of Orleans; Orleans himself; Louis XIII., and others.