Vulgar words in The Nuttall Encyclopædia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge (Page 1)
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APULE'IUS, a student of Plato, of N. African birth, lived in the 2nd century; having captivated a rich widow, was charged at one time with sorcery; his most celebrated work was the "Golden Ass," which contains, among other stories, the exquisite apologue or romance of PSYCHE and CUPID (q. v.).
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AUGUSTUS II., Elector of Saxony and King of Poland; forced himself on Poland; had twice to retire, but was reinstated; is known to history as "The Strong"; "attained the maximum," says Carlyle, "in several things,--of physical strength, could break horse-shoes, nay, half-crowns with finger and thumb; of sumptuosity, no man of his means so regardless of expense; and of bastards, three hundred and fifty-four of them (Marshal Saxe one of the lot); baked the biggest bannock on record, a cake with 5000 eggs and a tun of butter."
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BJÖRNSEN, a Norwegian author, born at Kvikne; composed tales, dramas, and lyrics, all of distinguished merit and imbued with a patriotic spirit; his best play "Sigurd the Bastard"; an active and zealous promoter of liberalism, sometimes extreme, both in religion and politics; his writings are numerous, and they rank high; his songs being highly appreciated by his countrymen; _b_.
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BONER, ULRICH, a German fabulist and Dominican monk of the 14th century, author of "Der Edelstein" (The Jewel), a book of fables.
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BURIDAN, JEAN, a scholastic doctor of the 14th century, born in Artois, and famous as the reputed author, though there is no evidence of it in his works, of the puzzle of the hungry and thirsty ass, called after him Buridan's Ass, between a bottle of hay and a pail of water, a favourite illustration of his in discussing the freedom of the will.
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CUPID AND PSYCHE, an allegorical representation of the trials of the soul on its way to the perfection of bliss, being an episode in the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius.
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DEVIL, THE, IS AN ASS, a farce by Ben Jonson, full of vigour, but very coarse.
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DUNOIS, JEAN, a French patriot, called the Bastard of Orleans, born in Paris, natural son of Louis of Orleans, brother of Charles VI.
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His son, Alphonso II., is remembered for his cruel treatment of Tasso, placing him in prison for seven years as a madman who dared to make love to one of the princesses.
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GALATEA, a nymph whom Polyphemus made love to, but who preferred Acis to him, whom therefore he made away with by crushing him under a rock, in consequence of which the nymph threw herself into the sea.
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GEN'SERIC, king of the Vandals, son of Godigiselus, founder of the Vandal kingdom in Spain, and bastard brother of Gunderic, whom he succeeded in A.D. 429; from Spain he crossed to Africa, and in conjunction with the Moors added to his kingdom the land lying W. of Carthage, ultimately gaining possession of Carthage itself; he next set himself to organise a naval force, with which he systematically from year to year pillaged Spain, Italy, Greece, and the opposite lands of Asia Minor, sacking Rome in 455; until his death in 477 he continued master of the seas, despite strenuous efforts of the Roman emperors to crush his power.
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GOLDEN ASS, a romance of APULEIUS (q. v.).
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MIDAS, a king of Phrygia who, in his lust of riches, begged of Bacchus and obtained the power of turning everything he touched into gold, a gift which he prayed him to revoke when he found it affected his very meat and drink, which the god consented to do, only he must bathe in the waters of the Pactolus, the sands of which ever after were found mixed with gold; appointed umpire at a musical contest between Pan and Apollo, he preferred the pipes of the former to the lyre of the latter, who thereupon awarded him a pair of ass-ears, the which he concealed with a cap, but could not hide them from his barber, who could not retain the secret, but whispered it into a hole in the ground, around which sprang up a forest of reeds, which as the wind passed through them told the tale into the general ear, to the owner's discomfiture.
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MOHAMMEDANISM, the religion of MOHAMMED, or ISLAM, (q. v.), is essentially much the same as the religion of the Jews with some elements borrowed from the Christian religion, and is defined by Carlyle as a bastard Christianity; originating in Arabia it spread rapidly over the W. of Asia, the N. of Africa, and threatened at one time to overrun Europe itself; it is the religion to-day of two hundred millions of the human race, and the profession of it extends over a wide area in western and southern Asia as also in northern Africa, though its limits in Europe do not extend beyond the bounds of Turkey.
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MUGGLETON, founder of the Muggletonians, a tailor who, along with one Reeve, at the time of the Commonwealth, pretended to be the two witnesses of the Revelation and the last of God's prophets, invested with power to save and to damn; individuals of the sect founded by him existed so recently as the beginning of this century.
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RICHTER, JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH, usually called Jean Paul simply, the greatest of German humourists, born at Wunsiedel, near Baireuth, in Bavaria, the son of a poor German pastor; had a scanty education, but his fine faculties and unwearied diligence supplied every defect; was an insatiable and universal reader; meant for the Church, took to poetry and philosophy, became an author, putting forth the strangest books with the strangest titles; considered for a time a strange, crack-brained mixture of enthusiast and buffoon; was recognised at last as a man of infinite humour, sensibility, force, and penetration; his writings procured him friends and fame, and at length a wife and a settled pension; settled in Baireuth, where he lived thenceforth diligent and celebrated in many departments of literature, and where he died, loved as well as admired by all his countrymen, and more by those who had known him most intimately ... his works are numerous, and the chief are novels, "'Hesperus' and 'Titan' being the longest and the best, the former of which first (in 1795) introduced him into decisive and universal estimation with his countrymen, and the latter of which he himself, as well as the most judicious of his critics, regarded as his masterpiece" (1763-1825).
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Dates and salt are the chief products; the giraffe, wild ass, lion, ostrich, python, &c., are found; it is chiefly inhabited by nomadic and often warlike Moors, Arabs, Berbers, and various negro races.
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SILENUS, a satyr who attended Dionysus, being his foster-father and teacher; assisted in the war of the giants, and slew Enceladus; had the gift of vaticination; is represented as mounted on an ass and supported by other satyrs.