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Gray, Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Gray, Thomas, 1716–71, English poet. He was educated at Eton and Peterhouse, Cambridge. In 1739 he began a grand tour of the Continent with Horace Walpole. They quarreled in Italy, and Gray returned...

Saxons

(Encyclopedia)Saxons, Germanic people, first mentioned in the 2d cent. by Ptolemy as inhabiting the southern part of the Cimbric Peninsula (S Jutland). Holding the area at the mouth of the Elbe River and some of th...

Addison, Joseph

(Encyclopedia)Addison, Joseph, 1672–1719, English essayist, poet, and statesman. He was educated at Charterhouse, where he was a classmate of Richard Steele, and at Oxford, where he became a distinguished classic...

Walpole, Horace, 4th earl of Orford

(Encyclopedia)Walpole, Horace or Horatio, 4th earl of Orford, 1717–97, English author; youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he toured the Continent with his friend Thomas Gray from ...

Sterne, Laurence

(Encyclopedia)Sterne, Laurence stûrn [key], 1713–68, English author, b. Ireland. Educated at Cambridge, he entered the Anglican church and was given the living of Sutton-in-the-Forest, Yorkshire, in 1738, where ...

Kent, kingdom of

(Encyclopedia)Kent, kingdom of, one of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England. It was settled in the mid-5th cent. by aggressive bands of people called Jutes (see Anglo-Saxons). Historians are in dispute over the auth...

Montrose, James Graham, 5th earl and 1st marquess of

(Encyclopedia)Montrose, James Graham, 5th earl and 1st marquess of mŏntrōzˈ [key], 1612–50, Scottish nobleman and soldier. He succeeded to the earldom in 1626 and, feeling slighted by Charles I, joined the Cov...

Mobile, city, United States

(Encyclopedia)Mobile mōbēlˈ, mōˈbēlˌ [key], city (1990 pop. 196,278), seat of Mobile co., SW Ala., at the head of Mobile Bay and at the mouth of the Mobile River; inc. 1814. Lying on one of the continent's g...

Mackenzie

(Encyclopedia)Mackenzie, river, c.1,120 mi (1,800 km) long, issuing from Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada, and flowing generally NW to the Arctic Ocean through a great delta. Between Great Slave Lake...

Louis XVIII, king of France

(Encyclopedia)Louis XVIII, 1755–1824, king of France (1814–24), brother of King Louis XVI. Known as the comte de Provence, he fled (1791) to Koblenz from the French Revolution and intrigued to bring about forei...