FARRAR, FREDERICK WILLIAM, a celebrated divine and educationalist, born at Bombay; graduated with distinction at King’s College, London, and at Cambridge; was ordained in 1854, and became head-master of Marlborough College; was for some years a select preacher to Cambridge University, and held successively the offices of honorary chaplain and chaplain-in-ordinary to the Queen; became canon of Westminster, rector of St. Margaret’s, archdeacon, chaplain to the House of Commons, and dean of Canterbury; his many works include the widely-read school-tales, “Eric” and “St. Winifred’s,” philological essays, and his vastly popular Lives of Christ and St. Paul, besides the “Early Days of Christianity,” “Eternal Hope,” and several volumes of sermons; in recent years have appeared “Darkness and Dawn” (1892) and “Gathering Clouds” (1895); b. 1831.

FASCES, a bundle of rods bound round the helve of an axe, and borne by the lictors before the Roman magistrates in symbol of their authority at once to scourge and decapitate.

FASCINATION, the power, originally ascribed to serpents, of spell-binding by the eye.

FASTI, the name given to days among the Romans on which it was lawful to transact business before the praetor; also the name of books among the Romans containing calendars of times, seasons, and events.

FASTOLF, SIR JOHN, a distinguished soldier of Henry V.’s reign, who with Sir John Oldcastle shares the doubtful honour of being the prototype of Shakespeare’s Falstaff, but unlike the dramatist’s creation was a courageous soldier, and won distinction at Agincourt and at the “Battle of the Herrings”; after engaging with less success in the struggle against Joan of Arc, he returned to England and spent his closing years in honoured retirement at Norfolk, his birthplace; he figures in the “Paston Letters” (1378-1459).

FATA MORGANA, a mirage occasionally observed in the Strait of Messina, in which, from refraction in the atmosphere, images of objects, such as men, houses, trees, etc., are seen from the coast under or over the surface of the water.

FATALISM, the doctrine that all which takes place in life and history is subject to fate, that is is to say, takes place by inevitable necessity, that things being as they are, events cannot fall out otherwise than they do.

FATES, THE, in the Greek mythology the three goddesses who presided over the destinies of individuals—­CLOTHO, LACHESIS, and ATROPOS (Q.  V.).  See PARCAE.

FATHER OF COMEDY, ARISTOPHANES (q. v.).

FATHER OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, EUSEBIUS (q. v.).

FATHER OF FRENCH HISTORY, DUCHESNE (q. v.).

FATHER OF GERMAN LITERATURE, LESSING (q. v.).

FATHER OF HISTORY, HERODOTUS (q. v.).

FATHER OF TRAGEDY, ESCHYLUS (q. v.).

FATHER PAUL, PAUL SARPI (q. v.).