Bian’ca, a courtesan, the “almost” wife of Cassio.  Iago, speaking of the lieutenant, says: 

  And what was he? 
  Forsooth a great arithmetician. 
  One Michael Cassio, a Florentine,
  A fellow almost damn’d in a fair wife.

  Shakespeare, Othello, act i. sc.  I (1611).

Bian’ca, wife of Fazio.  When her husband wantons with the marchioness Aldabella, Bianca, out of jealousy, accuses him to the duke of Florence of being privy to the death of Bartol’do, an old miser.  Fazio being condemned to death, Bianca repents of her rashness, and tries to save her husband, but not succeeding, goes mad and dies.—­Dean Milman, Fazio (1815).

BIBBET (Master), secretary to major-general Harrison, one of the parliamentary commissioners.—­Sir W. Scott, Woodstock (time, Commonwealth).

BIBBIE’NA (Il), cardinal Bernardo, who resided at Bibbiena, in Tuscany.  He was the author of Calandra, a comedy (1470-1520).

“BIBLE” BUTLER, alias Stephen Butler, grandfather of Reuben Butler, the presbyterian minister (married to Jeanie Deans).—­Sir W. Scott, Heart of Midlothian (time, George II.).

BIB’LIS, a woman who fell in love with her brother Caunus, and was changed into a fountain near Mile’tus.—­Ovid, Met. ix. 662.

  Not that [fountain] where Biblis dropt, too fondly light,
  Her tears and self may dare compare with this.

  Phin.  Fletcher, The Purple Island, v. (1633).

BIB’ULUS, a colleague of Julius Caesar, but a mere cipher in office; hence his name became a household word for a nonentity.

BIC’KERSTAFF (Isaac), a pseudonym of dean Swift, assumed in the paper-war with Partridge, the almanac-maker, and subsequently adopted by Steele in The Tatler, which was announced as edited by “Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., astrologer.”

BICKERTON (Mrs.), landlady of the Seven Stars inn of York, where Jeanie Deans stops on her way to London, whither she is going to plead for her sister’s pardon.—­Sir W. Scott, Heart of Midlothian (time, George II.).

BID’DENDEN MAIDS (The), two sisters named Mary and Elizabeth Chulkhurst, born at Biddenden in 1100.  They were joined together by the shoulders and hips, and lived to the age of thirty-four.  Some say that it was Mary and Elizabeth Chulkhurst who left twenty acres of land to the poor of Biddenden.  This tenement called “Bread and Cheese Land,” because the rent derived from it is distributed on Easter Sunday in doles of bread and cheese.  Halstead says, in his History of Kent, that it was the gift of two maidens named Preston, and not of the Biddenden Maids.

BIDDY, servant to Wopsle’s great-aunt, who kept an “educational institution.”  A good, honest girl who falls in love with Pip, is loved by Dolge Orlick, but marries Joe Grargery.—­C.  Dickens, Great Expectations (1860).