AL’ADINE, the sagacious but cruel king of Jerusalem, slain by Raymond.—­Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered (1575).

Al’adine (3 syl.), son of Aldus, “a lusty knight.”—­Spenser, Faery Queen, vi. 3 (1596).

ALAFF, ANLAF, or OLAF, son of Sihtric, Danish king of Northumberland (died 927).  When Aethelstan [Athelstan] took possession of Northumberland, Alaff fled to Ireland, and his brother Guthfrith or Godfrey to Scotland.

  Our English Athelstan,
  In the Northumbrian fields, with most victorious might,
  Put Alaff and his powers to more inglorious flight.

Drayton, Potyolbion, xii. (1612).

ALAIN, cousin of Eos, the artist’s wife, in Desert Sands, by Harriet
Prescott Spofford (1863).

ALAR’CON, king of Barca, who joined the armament of Egypt against the crusaders, but his men were only half armed.—­Tasso, Jerusalem Delivered (1575).

ALARIC COTTIN.  Frederick the Great of Prussia was so called by Voltaire.  “Alaric” because, like Alaric, he was a great warrior, and “Cottin” because, like Cottin, satirized by Boileau, he was a very indifferent poet.

ALAS’CO, alias DR. DEMETRIUS DOBOOBIE, an old astrologer, consulted by the earl of Leicester.—­Sir W. Scott, Kenilworth (time, Elizabeth).

ALAS’NAM (Prince Zeyn) possessed eight statues, each a single diamond on a gold pedestal, but had to go in search of a ninth, more valuable than them all.  This ninth was a lady, the most beautiful and virtuous of women, “more precious than rubies,” who became his wife.

One pure and perfect [woman] is ... like Alasnam’s lady, worth them all.—­Sir Walter Scott.

Alasnam’s Mirror.  When Alasnam was in search of his ninth statue, the king of the Genii gave him a test mirror, in which he was to look when he saw a beautiful girl; “if the glass remained pure and unsullied, the damsel would be the same, but if not, the damsel would not be wholly pure in body and in mind.”  This mirror was called “the touchstone of virtue.”—­Arabian Nights ("Prince Zeyn Alasnam").

ALAS’TOR, a surname of Zeus as “the Avenger.”  Or, in general, any deity or demon who avenges wrong done by man.  Shelley wrote a poem, Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude.

Cicero says he meditated killing himself that he might become the Alastor of Augustus, whom he hated.—­Plutarch, Cicero, etc. ("Parallel Lives.”)

God Almighty mustered up an army of mice against the archbishop [Hatto], and sent them to persecute him as his furious Alastors.—­Coryat, Crudities, 571.

AL’BAN (St.) of Ver’ulam, hid his confessor, St. Am’phibal, and changing clothes with him, suffered death in his stead.  This was during the frightful persecution of Maximia’nus Hercu’lius, general of Diocle’tian’s army in Britain, when 1000 Christians fell at Lichfield.