Alceste, the hero of Moliere’s comedy Le Misanthrope.  He has a pure and noble mind that has been soured and disgusted by intercourse with the world.  Courtesy he holds to be the vice of fops, and the manners of society mere hypocrisy.  He courts Celmene, a coquette and her treatment of his love confirms his bad opinion of mankind.

AL’CHEMIST (The), the last of the three great comedies of Ben Jonson (1610).  The other two are Vol’pone (2 syl.), (1605), and The Silent Woman (1609).  The object of The Alchemist is to ridicule the belief in the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life.  The alchemist is “Subtle,” a mere quack; and “sir Epicure Mammon” is the chief dupe, who supplies money, etc., for the “transmutation of metal.”  “Abel Drugger” a tobacconist, and “Dapper” a lawyer’s clerk, are two other dupes.  “Captain Face,” alias “Jeremy,” the house-servant of “Lovewit,” and “Dol Common” are his allies.  The whole thing is blown up by the unexpected return of “Lovewit.”

ALCIB’ADES (5 syl.), the Athenian general.  Being banished by the senate, he marches against the city, and the senate, being unable to offer resistance, open the gates to him (B.C. 450-404).  This incident is introduced by Shakespeare in Timon of Athens.

ALCIBI’ADES’ TABLES represented a god or goddess outwardly, and a Sile’nus, or deformed piper, within.  Erasmus has a “curious dissertation on these tables” (Adage, 667, edit.  R. Stephens); hence emblematic of falsehood and dissimulation.

  Whose wants virtue is compared to these
  False tables wrought by Alcibiades;
  Which noted well of all were found t’ve bin
  Most fair without, but most deformed within.

Wm. Browne, Britannia’s Pastorals, i. (1613).

ALCI’DES, a name sometimes given to Hercules as the descendent of the hero Alcoeus through his son Amphitryon (q. v.) The name is applied to any valiant hero.

  The Tuscan poet [Ariosto] doth advance
  The frantic paladin of France [Orlando Furioso];
  And those more ancient do enhance
  Alcides in his fury.

M. Drayton, Nymphidia (1563-1631).

  Where is the great Alcides of the field,
  Valiant lord Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury?

Shakespeare, 1 Henry VI. act. iv. sc. 7 (1589).

ALCI’NA, Carnal Pleasure personified.  In Bojardo’s Orlando Innamorato she is a fairy, who carries off Astolfo.  In Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso she is a kind of Circe, whose garden is a scene of enchantment.  Alcina enjoys her lovers for a season, and then converts them into trees, stones, wild beasts, and so on, as her fancy dictates.

AL’CIPHRON, or The Minute Philosopher, the title of a work by bishop Berkeley, so called from the name of the chief speaker, a freethinker.  The object of this work is to expose the weakness of infidelity.