Lady Easy, wife of Sir Charles, who dearly loves him, and knows all his “naughty ways,” but never shows the slightest indication of ill-temper or jealousy.  At last she wholly reclaims him.—­Colley Cibber, The Careless Husband (1704).

EATON THEOPHILUS (Governor).  In his eulogy upon Governor Eaton, Dr. Cotton Mather lays stress upon the distinction drawn by that eminent Christian man between stoicism and resignation.

“There is a difference between a sullen silence or a stupid senselessness under the hand of GOD, and a childlike submission thereunto.”

“In his daily life”, we are told, “he was affable, courteous, and generally pleasant, but grave perpetually, and so courteous and circumspect in his discourses, and so modest in his expressions, that it became a proverb for incontestable truth,”—­“Governor Eaton said it.”—­Cotton Mather, Magnolia Christi Americana (1702).

EBERSON (Ear), the young son of William de la Marck, “The Wild Boar of Ardennes.”—­Sir W. Scott, Quentin Durward (time, Edward IV.).

EBLIS, monarch of the spirits of evil.  Once an angel of light, but, refusing to worship Adam, he lost his high estate.  Before his fall he was called Aza’zel.  The Koran says:  “When We [God] said unto the angels, ‘Worship Adam,’ they all worshipped except Eblis, who refused ... and became of the number of unbelievers” (ch. ii.).

EBON SPEAR (Knight of the), Britomart, daughter of King Ryence of Wales.—­Spenser, Faery Queen, iii. (1590).

EBRAUC, son of Mempric (son of Guendolen and Madden) mythical king of England.  He built Kaer-brauc [York], about the time that David reigned in Judea.—­Geoffrey, British History, ii. 7 (1142).

  By Ebrauk’s powerful hand
  York lifts her towers aloft.

  Drayton, Polyolbion, viii. (1612).

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY (The Father of), Eusebius of Caesarea (264-340).

[Illustration] His Historia Fcclesiastica, in ten books, begins with the birth of Christ and concludes with the defeat of Licinius by Constantine, A.D. 324.

ECHEPH’RON, an old soldier, who rebuked the advisers of King Picrochole (3 syl.), by relating to them the fable of The Man and his Ha’p’orth of Milk.  The fable is as follows:—­

A shoemaker brought a ha’poth of milk:  with this he was going to make butter; the butter was to buy a cow; the cow was to have a calf; the calf was to be changed for a colt; and the man was to become a nabob; only he cracked his jug, spilt his milk, and went supperless to bed.—­Rabelais, Pantagruel, i. 33 (1533.)

This fable is told in the Arabian Nights ("The Barber’s Fifth Brother, Alnas-char.”) Lafontaine has put it into verse, Perrette et le Pot au Lait.  Dodsley has the same, The Milk-maid and her Pail of Milk.