ADONAIS, title of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s elegy upon John Keats, written in 1821.

A’DONBEC EL HAKIM, the physician, a disguise assumed by Saladin, who visits sir Kenneth’s sick squire, and cures him of a fever.—­Sir W. Scott, The Talisman (time, Richard I.).

ADO’NIS, a beautiful youth, beloved by Venus and Proser’pina, who quarrelled about the possession of him.  Jupiter, to settle the dispute, decided that the boy should spend six months with Venus in the upper world and six with Proserpina in the lower.  Adonis was gored to death by a wild boar in a hunt.

Shakespeare has a poem called Venus and Adonis.  Shelley calls his elegy on the poet Keats Adona’is, under the idea that the untimely death of Keats resembled that of Adonis.

(Adonis is an allegory of the sun, which is six months north of the horizon, and six months south.  Thammuz is the same as Adonis, and so is Osiris).

ADONIRAM PENN, the obstinate and well-to-do farmer in Mary E. Wilkins’s Revolt of “Mother”.  He persists in building a new barn which the cattle do not need instead of the much-needed dwelling for his family.  In his absence, “Mother,” who was wont to “stand before her husband in the humble fashion of a Scripture woman,” moves household and furniture into the commodious barn.

“Adoniram was like a fortress whose walls had no active resistance, and went down the instant the right besieging tools were used” (1890).

AD’ORAM, a seraph, who had charge of James the son of
Alphe’us.—­Klopstock, The Messiah, iii. (1748).

ADOSINDA, daughter of the Gothic governor of Auria, in Spain.  The Moors having slaughtered her parents, husband, and child, preserved her alive for the captain of Alcahman’s regiment.  She went to his tent without the least resistance, but implored the captain to give her one night to mourn the death of those so near and dear to her.  To this he complied, but during sleep she murdered him with his own scymitar.  Roderick, disguised as a monk, helped her to bury the dead bodies of her house, and then she vowed to live for only one object, vengeance.  In the great battle, when the Moors were overthrown, she it was who gave the word of attack, “Victory and Vengeance!”—­Southey, Roderick, etc., iii. (1814).

ADRAM’ELECH (ch=k), one of the fallen angels.  Milton makes him overthrown by U’riel and Raphael (Paradise Lost, vi. 365).  According to Scripture, he was one of the idols of Sepharvaim, and Shalmane’ser introduced his worship into Samaria. [The word means “the mighty magnificent king.”]

The Sepharvites burnt their children in the fire to Adramelech.—­2 Kings xvii. 31.

Klopstock introduces him into The Messiah, and represents him as surpassing Satan in malice and guile, ambition and mischief.  He is made to hate every one, even Satan, of whose rank he is jealous, and whom he hoped to overthrow, that by putting an end to his servitude he might become the supreme god of all the created worlds.  At the crucifixion he and Satan are both driven back to hell by Obad’don, the angel of death.