MICKLE, WILLIAM JULIUS, translator of the “Lusiad” (q. v.), born at Langholm, in Dumfriesshire, author of “There’s nae Luck aboot the Hoose” (1734-1788).

MICROBE, a minute organism found in the blood of animals, especially when suffering from disease.  See BACTERIA.

MICROCOSM, name given by the Middle Age philosophers to man as representing the macrocosm or universe in miniature.

MICROPHONE, an instrument invented in 1878 by Professor Hughes, and consisting of charcoal tempered in mercury, which intensifies and renders audible the faintest possible sound.

MICROZYME, a minute organism which acts as a ferment when it enters the blood and produces zymotic diseases.

MIDAS, a king of Phrygia who, in his lust of riches, begged of Bacchus and obtained the power of turning everything he touched into gold, a gift which he prayed him to revoke when he found it affected his very meat and drink, which the god consented to do, only he must bathe in the waters of the Pactolus, the sands of which ever after were found mixed with gold; appointed umpire at a musical contest between Pan and Apollo, he preferred the pipes of the former to the lyre of the latter, who thereupon awarded him a pair of ass-ears, the which he concealed with a cap, but could not hide them from his barber, who could not retain the secret, but whispered it into a hole in the ground, around which sprang up a forest of reeds, which as the wind passed through them told the tale into the general ear, to the owner’s discomfiture.

MIDDLE AGES, is a term used in connection with European history to denote the period beginning with the fall of the Roman Empire in 476, and closing with the invention of printing, the discovery of America, and the revival of learning in the 15th century.

MIDDLE ENGLISH, the English in use for two centuries and a half from 1200 to 1460.

MIDDLE PASSAGE, in the slave-trade the part of the Atlantic stretching between Africa and the West Indies.

MIDDLESBROUGH (99), iron manufacturing and shipping town at the mouth of the Tees, in the N. of Yorkshire, 45 m.  N. of York; has also shipbuilding yards and chemical works, and exports coal.  It owes its growth to the discovery of one of the largest iron-fields in the country in the Cleveland hills, near at hand, in 1850.

MIDDLESEX (560), a small county on the N. of the Thames, adjacent to and W. of London; has no hills and no rivers, only undulating pasture land and small streams.  In 1888 the populous part next the metropolis was detached for the new county of London, leaving no big town but many suburban villages, Brentford, reckoned the county town, Harrow with its school, Highgate, and Hornsey.  Hampton Court, Hampstead Heath, and Enfield Chase are in the county.  There are many market gardens.

MIDDLETON, CONYERS, a liberal theologian, Fellow of Cambridge; was engaged a good deal in controversy, particularly with Bentley; wrote an able Life of Cicero; is distinguished among English authors for his “absolutely plain style” of writing (1683-1750).