Peace

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mother of Jesus Christ, used especially when she is represented in a painting or sculpture, usually as a woman of serene and saintly beauty.

lap to demonstrate that peace gives rise to prosperity and opulence. The Romans represented her with the horn of plenty and carrying an olive branch in her hand.

Perseverance

This theme is closely linked with Difficulty, but here the emphasis is on a refusal to give up a course of action rather than the effort needed to accomplish a task. • See also Patience, Problems.

Ancient Mariner The Ancient Mariner is the narrator of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' (1798). Stopping a wedding guest at the door of the church where a wedding is about to take place, he insists on recounting his tale to the guest. He relates how he shot an albatross at sea, and the misfortune and suffering that subsequently befell the crew. The term 'Ancient Mariner' can describe someone who bores a reluctant listener or can denote a compulsive speaker, irresistible to his or her audience, as illustrated by Coleridge's lines:

'He holds him with his glittering eye— The Wedding-Guest stood still,

And listens like a three years' child: The Mariner hath his will.'

Suddenly I remembered that Trimingham or no Trimingham he was much younger than I was and I could claim an older person's freedom of speech. At the same time I was aware of an Ancient Mariner in me who might be trying his patience.

L. p. HARTLEY The Co-Between, 1953

Like the Ancient Mariner, they cannot resist buttonholing strangers in order to inform them of the facts.

LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES Captain Corelli's Mandolin, 1994

Little Engine That Could The Little Engine that Could is the title of a children's picture-book by Watty Piper (1945), illustrated by Lois Lenski. It tells

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the story of a small railway engine that pants encouragingly as it struggles up a slope: 'I think I can—I think I can—I think I can.'

The plane rolled away from the terminal and taxied out onto the runway. There was a pause, and then the plane began to surge forward, picking up speed with much earnest intent. We rumbled and bumbled like the little engine that could. The plane lifted off into the night sky, the lighted buildings below becoming rapidly smaller until only a hapless grid of lights remained.

SUE CRAFTON L Is for Lawless, 1995

Old Man of the Sea The Old Man of the Sea is a character in 'Sinbad the Sailor', one of the tales in the Arabian Nights. He persuades Sinbad to carry him on his shoulders, whereupon he twines his legs round him so that Sinbad cannot dislodge him. Sinbad is forced to carry him on his shoulders for many days and nights, until he manages to shake him off. The term can be used to refer to irritating persistence.

He is the bore of the age, the old man whom we Sinbads cannot shake off.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE Barchester Towers, 1857

Robert the Bruce Robert I (1274-1329), known as Robert the Bruce, was a Scottish king who led the campaigns against Edward I and Edward II, culminating in the Scottish victory at Bannockburn in 1314. According to tradition, Robert spent some time hiding in a cave after suffering a defeat at the hands of the English. After watching a spider fail many times in its attempt to spin a web but persevere until it finally succeeded, he was inspired to fight on against the English.

Tortoise Aesop's fable 'The Hare and the Tortoise' relates how a hare, jeering at the slow pace of a tortoise, challenged the latter to a race. On the day of the race the hare, confident of his greater speed, lay down to rest and fell asleep. The tortoise plodded on and won the race, leading to the moral that 'slow and steady wins the race'. The tortoise can be alluded to as an example of patient perseverance.

Pessimism

The tendency to expect things to turn out badly is covered here. Loss or

absence of hope are covered at Despair. • See also Optimism, Prophecy.

Samuel Beckett The plays of Irish writer and playwright Samuel Beckett (1906-89), such as Waiting for Godot, Krapp's Last Tape, and Play, express th author's bleak view of the vanity and futility of human endeavour in the face

of man's inevitable death and oblivion.

It is a joy sufficiently muted to accord with prevailing moods that range from

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Chekhovian-autumnal to Beckettian-wintry.

New York Review of Books, 1997

Eeyore Eeyore is the gloomy old grey donkey in A. A. Milne's books about Winnie the Pooh.

Eeyore of the Year was, as usual, a toss-up between Peter Owen ('If anything, it is getting worse') and Tom Rosenthal ('Among those books which sold less badly').

The Bookseller, 1995

Everyone had warned me rather gloomily about interviewing Clenda Jackson. I was told by journalists who knew her that she was 'very prickly' and 'hates talking about her acting career! One of these Eeyores added: 'The problem is to stop her banging on about Labour transport policy and get her to talk about Hollywood!

The Independent on Sunday, 1997

HeraclitllS Heraclitus (c.500 BC) was an early Greek philosopher who maintained that all things in the universe are in a state of constant change and that the mind derives a false idea of permanence of the external world from the passing impressions of experience. His gloomy view of the fleeting character of life led to him being called 'the weeping philosopher'.

He laments, like Heraclitus the Maudlin Philosopher, at other Men's Mirth.

SAMUEL BUTLER Remains, 1759

Jeremiah Jeremiah was an Old Testament prophet whose prophecies are contained in the Book of Jeremiah. These concern the unhappy fate that awaits the Israelites because they have rebelled against God. The Book of Lamentations, foretelling the destruction of Jerusalem, is traditionally attributed to him. Jeremiah's name can be applied to someone who predicts doom or disaster.

Since we have so far emerged comparatively unscathed from all these predicted plagues and catastrophes, it is hard to take too seriously the latest Jeremiah-like pronouncements of Lacey and his colleagues about beef.

The Observer, 1996

'Yes, it's nice to have it back,' he said, running his hands over the familiar steering wheel in an arch gesture. 'The start of something good, eh?' said Salt. 'I doubt it,' said Kavanagh. 'Jeremiah,' she said. 'That's what I like about you, Frank: even when your glass is three-quarters full, it's half-empty!'

DAVID ARMSTRONG Thought for the Day, 1997

Marvin Marvin, referred to as 'the Paranoid Android', is a gloomy and depressed robot in Douglas Adams's book The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels. He takes a universally pessimistic view about everything and is prone to complain that he has a pain down all the diodes on his left side.

Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German philosopher whose pessimistic philosophy, embodied in his chief work The World as Will and Idea (1819), argued that attempts to understand the world rationally are doomed to failure.

So we should not go around moping, looking as miserable as Schopenhauer when the toast has landed marmalade-down in the Wilton.

The Guardian, 1998