216. 56. Act of Toleration. Passed in 1689, abolishing the old penalties for nonconformity. 217. 72. A Dutch government. was Prince of Orange. William III III. The Huguenots in France. The French Protestants had been persecuted more viciously than English Nonconformists; in 1685 they were expelled from the country. 143. A sordid impostor. Cromwell. 218. 213. Rye House Plot. A conspiracy, discovered in 1683, to murder Charles II and his brother James. Although certain men were executed for their complicity in the plot, many persons felt that there was little besides party jealousy at the bottom of the exposé. 232. The late king. James II. 219. 291. The common enemy. France. 351. The act "De heretico comburendo." For burning heretics. 374. Delenda est Carthago. must be destroyed. Carthage 220. 432. The Counter. A prison in London. 433. A Conventicle. Meeting of Nonconformists for worship. 221. 502. Religious houses. Monasteries and convents. THE APPARITION OF MRS. VEAL This narrative had always been considered an admirable example of Defoe's ability to write pure fiction so that it would seem simple truth, until Mr. George Aitken published in The Nineteenth Century, Jan., 1895, an article showing that Defoe in all probability was telling a story in which, as Aitken puts it, "nearly all the details are true, . the charac ters are real persons," and in which "Defoe invented nothing, or next to nothing, but . . . told, very skilfully, a ghost story which was attracting notice at the time." 224. 324. Escutcheons. Hatchments; funeral tablets bearing the arms of the deceased person. SWIFT THE TALE OF A TUB 226. The Tale of a Tub was published anonymously in 1704; Swift had written it some time before, during the closing years of the seventeenth century. It consisted of eleven sections, and was introduced by four satirical prefaces. Of the eleven sections constituting the body of the work, five (II, IV, VI, VIII, XI) contain the story of the three brothers, in the course of which Swift pictures the development of Christian faith to the end of the seventeenth century. The other sections are more general in their import, and, like Gulliver's Travels, expose the vanity and absurdity of human nature in the large. 226. 35. Hobbes's Leviathan. The Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), which appeared in 1651, was an inquiry into the nature of the State, and the theory of government. 227. 25. My will. The New Testament. 52. Duchess D'Argent, etc. Duchess of Money, My Lady of Great Titles, and the Countess of Pride. 63. Locket's, Will's. The first was a London inn; the second, the coffee house which Dryden and the wits of the age frequented. 70. Sub dio. In the open air. 228. 96. A sort of idol. The tailor, god of the fashionable world. 112. Primum mobile. In the Ptolemaic 117. Water-tabby. Tabby was a material, 229. 200. Tertio modo. By a third method. 226. In the passage omitted Swift tells how as the fashions changed, and shoulder knots gave place to gold lace, and gold lace to satin linings, the brothers juggled with their father's will, and in each case gratified their desires. 232. A certain lord. This was Constantine the Great, from whom the popes pretended a donation of St. Peter's patrimony, which they have never been able to produce. (Swift's note.) Section IV tells how Peter, representing the church of Rome, got the upper hand of his brothers after driving the legal heirs out and getting the "certain lord's house for himself. His pride increased with his success; he claimed to be his father's sole heir, and assumed the titles of Father Peter, My Lord Peter, and finally Emperor Peter. When the two other brothers finally protested, Peter drove them from the house. The story is resumed in section VI. 230. 66, 68. Martin. Martin Luther; Jack. John Calvin. Martin stands for the moderate reform in the Church of England; Jack, for the more violent reform of the Dissenters. armed attempts to recover the crown of England, and intrigued with the Spaniards for assistance. JOURNAL TO STELLA 236. "The brightest part of Swift's story, the pure star in that dark and tempestuous life of Swift's, is his love for Hester Johnson. It has been my business, professionally of course, to go through a deal of sentimental reading in my time, and to acquaint myself with love making as it has been described in various languages and at various ages of the world; and I know of nothing more manly, more tender, more exquisitely touching, than some of these brief notes, written in what Swift calls his little language' in his journal to Stella." (Thackeray: Swift, in English Humorists.) In the "little language " MD stands for my dears, Stella and her companion, Mrs. Dingley; or sometimes for Stella alone; Presto is Swift; so is Pdfr. 2. Premunire. A legal term frequently used for a penalty incurred. 20. Harley. Robert Harley, Chancellor of the Exchequer, afterwards Lord Treasurer and Earl of Oxford. 30. Lord Halifax. Statesman and writer, one of the leaders of the Whigs. 71. Will Penn the Quaker. The founder of Pennsylvania. 81. St. John. One of the ablest of the Tory ministry, created Viscount Bolingbroke in 1714. 86. Bring me over. I. e., to the Tory party. 98. Fatal. Fated. 237. 102. Tooke. A London bookseller, who 134. Steele. Steele had lost his office of A young fellow whom Swift befriended and established as editor of a new series of Tatlers, after the failure of Steele's Tatler. 155. Mr. Harley ... yesterday. Harley had sent Swift a bank note for fifty pounds; this action Swift regarded as an insult. 186. Patrick. Swift's servant, whom he at length was obliged to discharge for drunkenness. 238. 251. Most of the "little language" be comes intelligible on the substitution of certain consonants in place of the ones used; Swift commonly, as in this letter, writes for r, and r for !. Richar = little. FW is farewell"; ME is Madame Elderly, Mrs. Dingley; and Lele apparently means" there." 238. 256. The Duke of Hamilton had fought with Lord Mohun. The reader of Henry Esmond will recall the use Thackeray makes of this incident. 305. Ben-box sent to Lord-Treasurer. A band-box containing a pair of loaded pistols had been sent to Lord Oxford; the Tories saw in the affair a Whig plot to assassinate him. ADDISON THE CAMPAIGN 239. Addison's poem was published in 1704, celebrating the victory of Marlborough at Blenheim. ADDISON AND STEELE THE TATLER: PROSPECTUS 240. 55. White's Chocolate-house. During Queen Anne's reign the chocolate and coffee-houses served as resorts for men of letters and of fashion much as the taverns had done in the time of Elizabeth. The distinguishing characteristics of the group that frequented the various houses are indicated in Steele's paragraph. 241. 67. Plain Spanish. Perhaps wine; perhaps a syrup made of licorice and wine, which was a favorite throat remedy. 70. Kidney. One of the waiters. 81. A figure. A horoscope. The remaining portion of the essay, which is not here reprinted, consists of letters from the three coffee-houses and from Steele's" own apartment." DUELLING The section here reprinted is the first third of the essay. 10. From hence. From White's Coffeehouse. 242. 88. Ingenuity. Ingenuousness. NED SOFTLY 8. Mr. Bickerstaff. Steele chose this as his pseudonym in writing The Tatler. 243. 36. Little Gothic ornaments. Addison uses the term contemptuously, as equivalent to rude, barbaric. FROZEN WORDS 244. 8. Sir John Mandeville. The name assumed by the author of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, written c. 1360. The Travels are famous for their exaggerations and wonders. 12. Ferdinand Mendez Pinto. Portuguese adventurer (1509-1583), navigator, and missionary to Japan. His account of his travels, the Peregrination, was published in 1614. 262. 129. The Mantuan Muse. Virgil; the Maro of 1. 130. 138. The Stagirite. Aristotle. 263. 16. The Pierian spring. The sacred well of the Muses in Thessaly. 89. Conceit. Fantastic expression. 264. 137. Numbers. Metrical correctness. 174. Timotheus' varied lays. The reference is to Dryden's Alexander's Feast. THE RAPE OF THE LOCK: CANTO I The poem is founded on an actual occurrence. Lord Petre, the baron of the poem, clipped a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair. John Caryll, a friend of both persons, suggested to Pope that a humorous poem on the subject might relieve the unpleasantness which the theft of the lock occasioned. Miss Fermor appears in the poem as Belinda. In form, the poem is a mock epic, or heroicomical poem," retaining many of the external characteristics of the epic, but enlivened throughout by Pope's mildly satirical view of the society he was representing. 265. 18. The pressed watch. A " repeater," or watch that would strike the nearest hour. 32. The silver token. Fairies were supposed to put silver coins in the slippers of good house-maids. 44. The Ring. A circular drive in Hyde Park. 265. 56. Ombre. A fashionable game of cards. 266. 127. The inferior priestess. The waiting maid, Betty (l. 148). CANTO II 267. 3. The rival of his beams. Belinda. CANTO III 269. 3. A structure of majestic frame. The royal palace of Hampton Court. 27. At ombre. The description of this game, which occupies ll. 30-100, may well be passed over in reading. Much of the terminology, perfectly familiar to Pope's audience, is to-day unintelligible unless accompanied by elaborate illustration and explanation. 270. 106. The berries crackle, and the mill turns round. Coffee berries were ground on the table. 271. 165. Atalantis. The New Atalantis, a romance of the day, by Mrs. Manley. 274. 5, 6. The Trojan... Anna . . . Dido. Eneas was commanded by Jupiter to leave Carthage, where he had fallen in love with Queen Dido. Anna was Dido's sister. (Eneid, iv. 416). 275. 53. Umbriel on a sconce's height. Minerva, in like manner, during the battle of Ulysses with the suitors, perches on a beam of the roof to behold it." (Pope.) 276. 125. Rome's great founder. Romulus. 129. Not Berenice's locks. Berenice was an Egyptian queen whose hair was transformed into a constellation. 136. Rosamonda's lake. In St. James's Park, as was the Mall (1. 133). 137. Partridge. "John Partridge was a ridiculous star-gazer, who in his almanacks every year never failed to predict the downfall of the Pope and the King of France, then at war with the English." (Pope.) THE CITIZEN OF THE WORLD 287. The essays in this collection appeared first in John Newberry's Public Ledger, between January 24, 1760, and August 14, 1761. They were published as "Letters from a Chinese Philosopher, Residing in London, to his Friends in the East"; whence the generally used name, "The Chinese Letters." Beau Tibbs at Home is supposed to be "From Lien Chi Altangi, to Fum Hoam, first President of the Ceremonial Academy at Pekin, in China "; the second of the two here reprinted bears the same superscription. The first collected edition appeared May 1, 1762. DRYDEN 297. 48. Tuned the numbers. Made the metre regular. 67. Every language. With the ideas in this and the two following paragraphs, should be compared Wordsworth's views, expressed in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, p. 389. ADDISON 298. 30. Arbiter elegantiarum. Petronius, according to Tacitus, was "arbiter elegantiæ" at the court of Nero. GRAY 300. 24. O Diva, etc. O goddess, thou who rulest Antium pleasing in thy sight. The first line of Ode xxxv in Bk. I of Horace's Odes. 32. Wonderful Wonder of Wonders. A stock phrase, taken from the showmen's bills, etc., of the time. 33. The Two Sister Odes. The Progress of Poesy and The Bard. 76. We are affected only as we believe. It would be difficult to find a single sentence more characteristic of the exaltation of reason above the imagination, for which Johnson and his contemporaries are notable, than this. |