EGYPTIAN THIEF (The), Thyamis, a native of Memphis.  Knowing he must die, he tried to kill Chariclea, the woman he loved.

  Why should I not, had I the heart to do it,
  Like to th’ Egyptian thief at point of death,
  Kill what I love? 
  Shakespeare, Twelth Night, act v. sc. 1 (1614).

EIGHTH WONDER (The).  When Gil Blas reached Pennaflor, a parasite entered his room in the inn, hugged him with great energy, and called him the “eighth wonder.”  When Gil Blas replied that he did not know his name had spread so far, the parasite exclaimed, “How! we keep a register of all the celebrated names within twenty leagues, and have no doubt Spain will one day be as proud of you as Greece was of the seven sages.”  After this, Gil Blas could do no less than ask the man to sup with him.  Omelet after omelet was despatched, trout was called for, bottle followed bottle, and when the parasite was gorged to satiety, he rose and said, “Signor Gil Blas, don’t believe yourself to be the eighth wonder of the world because a hungry man would feast by flattering your vanity.”  So saying, he stalked away with a laugh.—­Lesage, Gil Blas, i. 2 (1715).

(This incident is copied from Aleman’s romance of Guzman d’ Alfarache, q.v.)

EIKON BASIL’IKE (4 syl.), the portraiture of a king (i.e. Charles I.), once attributed to King Charles himself; but now admitted to be the production of Dr. John Gauden, who (after the restoration) was first created Bishop of Exeter, and then of Worcester (1605-1662).

In the Eikon Basilike a strain of majestic melancholy is kept up, but the personated sovereign is rather too theatrical for real nature, the language is too rhetorical and amplified, the periods too artificially elaborated.—­Hallam, Literature of Europe, iii. 662.

(Milton wrote his Eikonoclasets in answer to Dr. Gauden’s Eikon Baslike.)

EINER’IAR, the hall of Odin, and asylum of warriors slain in battle.  It had 540 gates, each sufficiently wide to admit eight men abreast to pass through.—­Scandinavian Mythology.

EINION (Father), Chaplain to Gwenwyn Prince of Powys-land.—­Sir W. Scott, The Betrothed (time, Henry II.).

EIROS.  Imaginary personage, who in the other world holds converse with “Charmion” upon the tragedy that has wrecked the world.  The cause of the ruin was “the extraction of the nitrogen from the atmosphere.”

“The whole incumbent mass of ether in which we existed burst at once into a species of intense flame for whose surpassing brilliancy and all fervid heat even the angels in the high Heaven of pure knowledge have no name.  Thus ended all.”—­Edgar Allen Poe, Conversation of Eiros and Charmion (1849).

ELVIR, a Danish maid, who assumes boy’s clothing, and waits on Harold “the Dauntless,” as his page!  Subsequently her sex is discovered, and Harold marries her.—­Sir.  W. Scott, Harold the Dauntless (1817).