Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
  ("The Knight’s Tale,” 1388).

EMERALDER, an Irishman, one of the Emerald Isle.

EMERITA (St.), who, when her brother abdicated the British crown, accompanied him to Switzerland, and shared with him there a martyr’s death.

  Emerita the next, King Lucius’ sister dear,
  Who in Helvetia with her martyr brother died.

  Drayton, Polyolbion, xxiv. (1622).

EMILE (2 syl.), the chief character of a philosophical romance on education by Jean Jacques Rousseau (1762).  Emile is the author’s ideal of a young man perfectly educated, every bias but that of nature having been carefully withheld.

N.B.—­Emile is the French form of Emilius.

His body is inured to fatigue, as Rousseau advises in his Emilius.—­Continuation of The Arabian Nights, iv. 69.

EMILIA, wife of Iago, the ancient of Othello in the Venetian army.  She is induced by Iago to purloin a certain handkerchief given by Othello to Desdemona.  Iago then prevails on Othello to ask his wife to show him the handkerchief, but she cannot find it, and Iago tells the Moor she has given it to Cassio as a love-token.  At the death of Desdemona, Emilia (who till then never suspected the real state of the case) reveals the truth of the matter, and Iago rushes on her and kills her.—­Shakespeare, Othello (1611).

The virtue of Emilia is such as we often find, worn loosely, but not cast off; easy to commit small crimes, but quickened and alarmed at atrocious villainies.—­Dr. Johnson.

Emilia, the lady who attended on Queen Hermione in prison.—­Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale (1604).

Emilia, the lady-love of Peregrine Pickle, in Smollett’s novel called The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751).

Emilia Galotti.  Beautiful daughter of Odoardo, an Italian noble.  She is affianced to Count Appiani, and beloved by the Prince Guastalla, who causes her lover’s death on their wedding-day.  To save her from the prince, Odoardo stabs Emilia.—­G.E.  Lessing, Emilia Galotti.

EMILY, the fiancee of Colonel Tamper.  Duty called away the colonel to Havana, and on his return he pretended to have lost one eye and one leg in the war, in order to see if Emily would love him still.  Emily was greatly shocked, and Mr. Prattle the medical practitioner was sent for.  Amongst other gossip, Mr. Prattle told his patient he had seen the colonel who looked remarkably well, and most certainly was maimed neither in his legs nor in his eyes.  Emily now saw through the trick, and resolved to turn the tables on the colonel.  For this end she induced Mdlle.  Florival to appear en militaire, under the assumed name of Captain Johnson, and to make desperate love to her.  When the colonel had been thoroughly roasted and was about to quit the house forever, his friend Major Belford entered and recognized Mdlle. as his fiancee; the trick was discovered, and all ended happily.—­G.  Colman, sen., The Deuce is in Him (1762).