22, 35, 85, and the
115
These lines are part of a song by Lord Cutts, under whom Steele had served as secretary when in the army. The verses will be found in Nichols' "Select Collection" (1780), ii. 327.
116
Passion Week.
117
First published as "By a Person of Quality." "The gentleman I here intended was Dr. Swift, this kind of man I thought him at that time. We have not met of late, but I hope he deserves this character still." (Steele's "Apology," 1714.) This pamphlet is closely in accord with the
118
Forster suggests that it was Addison.
119
See No. 1.
120
This phrase, as well as Unnion's forgetting his wound, is criticised in a little book called, "Annotations on the
121
"Bell. Catal.," c. 53.
122
"A man of a particular turn of mind" (Johnson).
123
In 1705, after the battle of Blenheim, Marlborough was made Prince of Mildenheim by the Emperor. Lewis XIV. succeeded to the French throne in 1643; Marlborough was born in 1650.
124
It has been suggested, with little or no reason, that Sappho is meant for Mrs. Manley (Author of the "New Atalantis"), or Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas (known as "Corinna"), or Mrs. Elizabeth Heywood. See No. 40.
125
"Paradise Lost," viii. 283.
126
Dryden's "State of Innocence and Fall of Man: an Opera," act iii. sc. i. In the
127
Addison, on reading here this remark upon Virgil, which he himself had communicated to Steele, discovered that his friend was the author of the
128
"Æneid," iv. 124.
129
"The Rehearsal," act i. sc. 2. This play of the Duke of Buckingham's was produced in 1671, and the poet Bayes, as finally drawn after revision, was a satire on Dryden.
130
John Morphew was the publisher of the
131
See No. 4.
132
Stockjobbers, who contract for a sale of stock which they do not possess, are called sellers of bearskins; and universally whoever sells what he does not possess was said to sell the bear's skin, while the bear runs in the woods. "You never heard such bellowing about the town of the state of the nation, especially among the sharpers, sellers of bearskins—
133
Dr. Richard Bentley, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, took a leading part in the controversy regarding the genuineness of the Epistles of Phalaris. In 1709 he published critical notes on the Tusculan Disputations.
134
There are several sneers at the members of the Royal Society in the
135
See No. 1.
136
See No. 4.
137
William Bullock was a comic actor whose abilities are praised by Gildon and others. He was the original Sir Tunbelly Clumsy in Vanbrugh's "Relapse." Later on in this number (p. 70), Steele says that Bullock had a peculiar talent of looking like a fool, and in No. 188 he compares Bullock and Pinkethman in a satirical vein.
138
Perhaps Colonel Hunter, afterwards Governor of New York; or Colonel Brett, one of the managers of Drury Lane Theatre.
139
See No. 34.
140
The pun is, of course, on the word "unmarred."
141
By Thomas Shadwell, 1676.
142
See note on p. 67, above.
143
A very coarse play by Edward Ravenscroft, produced in 1682, and often acted on Lord Mayors' days and other holidays.
144
Charles Le Brun, who was born in 1619, and died in 1690, was the son of a sculptor, of Scotch extraction. Under Colbert's patronage he founded the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, at Paris, and he received many honours from Louis XIV. Le Brun's painting of the Defeat of Porus is 16 feet high and 39 feet 5 inches long.
145
Porus was an Indian king who was defeated and put to death by Alexander the Great. See Q. Curtius, viii. 12, 14.
146
"Bell. Catil." cap. 61.
147
Steele seems to have forgotten that he was Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., and had only an old maid-servant. (Nichols.)
148
Prince George of Denmark, the consort of Queen Anne, died on October 21, 1708, after a few days' illness. This dream gives a picture of the state of England from his death until the conclusion of the negotiations at the Hague in 1709.
149
The mourning of Queen Anne was so long that the manufacturers remonstrated, and secured a limit to the duration of public mournings.
150
About this time the D[uke]. of M[arlborough]. returned from Holland with the preliminaries of a peace.—(Steele.)
151
"Mr. Bickerstaff thanks Mr. Quarterstaff for his kind and instructive letter dated the 26th instant" (folio).
152
Congreve's first play, produced in 1693. See also No. 193. This piece is attacked in Jeremy Collier's "Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage," 1698.
153
Swift.
154
A Scotch physician in the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II. An advertisement of his "famous Scots Pills" requested the public to beware of counterfeits, especially an ignorant pretender, one Muffen, who kept a china-shop.
155
"Henley would fain have me to go with Steele and Rowe, &c., to an invitation at Sir William Read's. Surely you have heard of him. He has been a mountebank, and is the Queen's oculist; he makes admirable punch, and treats you in gold vessels. But I am engaged, and won't go; neither indeed am I fond of the jaunt" (Swift's "Journal," April 11, 1711). Read was knighted in 1705, for services done in curing soldiers and sailors of blindness gratis. Beginning life as a tailor, he became Queen Anne's oculist in ordinary, and died in 1715. See
156
Rozelli, the inventor of a specific for the gout, died at the Hague. In No. 33 was an advertisement of the "Memoirs of the Life and Adventures of Signior Rozelli, at the Hague, giving a particular account of his birth, education, slavery, monastic state, imprisonment in the Inquisition at Rome, and the different figures he has since made, as well in Italy, as in France and Holland.... Done into English from the second edition of the French." This