Chapter 13

33 _vacant_: i.e. open, unclouded.

_addresses to his place_: i.e. to his office. Falkland was Secretary of State to Charles I.

40 _Phalaris_: a Sicilian tyrant of the sixth century B.C., famous for his cruelties. The Greek poet Stesichorus was a contemporary of his.

42 Samuel Pepys, from whose diary this extract (slightly abridged) is taken, wrote solely for his own private amusement, troubling himself very little about style or grammar. He held a post in the Navy Office, and his work did not often allow him to take a day in the country, such as he here describes.

46 Defoe's _Captain Singleton_ is an imaginary account of the adventures of certain pirates in different parts of the world. In the extract here given they are lying in Chinese waters. 'William,' one of their crew, has gone ashore to trade with some Chinese merchants.

47 _thieves' pennyworths_: 'things sold at a robber's price,' i.e. below their real value.

55 _composures_=compositions.

56 _the Great Mogul_: the Emperor of Hindostan.

_Muscovy_=Russia, of which Moscow was formerly the capital.

57 _the old philosopher_: Socrates; see Hooker's reference to the anecdote on page 17 of this book.

_degree_: i.e. of latitude and longitude.

62 _whereas the ladies now walk, etc_.; this was written in 1711, when ladies wore very large 'hoops,' or crinolines.

65 Tom Jones, the hero of Fielding's novel of that name, takes some friends to see Hamlet, acted by Garrick. Partridge, is a timorous ex-schoolmaster, without experience of the theatre.

77 _redans_: projecting fortifications.

_the talus of the glacis_: the pitch of the outer slope of an earthwork.

_banquettes_: the raised way running along the inside of a rampart.

78 _chamade_: a signal given by drum, announcing surrender.

79 _a new reign_: George II died on October 25, 1760.

80 _a rag of quality_: Horace Walpole was a younger son of Sir Robert Walpole (Earl of Orford).

81 _the Duke of Cumberland_: second son of George II.

_a dark brown adonis_: a kind of wig.

_the Duke of Newcastle_: the Prime Minister.

83 Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_ consists of a series of letters on European manners and customs, purporting to be written by a Chinaman who has never before visited England.

86 _whatever accidentally becomes indisposed, etc_.; i.e. whoever falls out with the authorities.

87 _There never was a period, etc_.: this was written in 1777, during the American War of Independence.

90 'Puss' was Cowper's tame hare.

92 The initials at the foot of the letter are those of William Cowper and Mary Unwin, a friend of the poet's.

99 _David Garrick_: the celebrated actor (1717-1779).

100 Frank Osbaldistone, the hero of Scott's novel _Rob Roy_, goes to Yorkshire on a visit to his uncle, Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone, whom he has never seen. As he approaches his destination he falls in with a young lady on horseback, who turns out to be Diana Vernon, a niece of Sir Hildebrand's. The period of the story is early in the eighteenth century.

106 _The 'Festin de pierre'_: Moliere's play, in which the hero, Don Juan, rashly invites the statue of a man he has murdered to dine with him. The invitation is unexpectedly accepted.

107 Coleridge, the poet, was an old friend and school-fellow of Charles Lamb's.

109 An imaginary dialogue between the two philosophers. Plato, born 427 B.C., was some years the older of the two.

111 Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, with whom Plato had lived for a time, was overthrown and expelled by his subjects, and driven to support himself as a schoolmaster at Corinth.

_The Demiurgos_: the Creator.

113 Mrs Elton, in Jane Austen's novel _Emma_, is the somewhat meddlesome wife of the village parson. Mr Knightley is a gentleman living at Donwell, in the neighbourhood. The rest of the people named are other neighbours and friends, one of them, Mr Woodhouse, being an old gentleman of valetudinarian habits.

118 Coleridge, as a young man (he was born in 1772), was for a time in the habit of preaching in Unitarian chapels.

122 This is an extract from a letter of Keats to a friend, written in 1818.

124 _The Flight to Varennes_: by the middle of 1791 the French Revolution had gone so far that the king and queen were practically prisoners in the palace of the Tuileries at Paris. They at last determined to try to escape, and the arrangements for their flight were carried out, in all possible secrecy, by Choiseul, an officer of the French army, and Fersen, a young Swedish count. Carlyle's vivid account tells how the start was made; but the royal party were stopped at Varennes, not far from the frontier, and brought back to Paris.

_the Carrousel_, or 'tilting-ground,' was an open space in front of the Tuileries.

130 _Trial of the Seven Bishops_: James II, in 1687, issued a 'declaration of indulgence,' promising to suspend certain laws against Roman Catholics. His command that this declaration should be read in all parish churches was resisted by seven bishops, who were accordingly brought to trial for sedition. The declaration was very unpopular in the country, so that the result of the trial was anxiously awaited.

135 _Cimon_ was one of the Athenian commanders in the Persian war. He died in 449 B.C.

140 The scene of Hawthorne's novel, _The House of the Seven Gables_, is laid in a small town in New England.

148 Mr Weston was in the plot with the highwayman to rob Dr Barnard. He had himself tampered with his own pistols (in the stable at Maidstone) so that they should miss fire. Hence his peevishness with Denis Duval, for so unexpectedly routing the thief.

153 Jane Eyre is governess to Mr Rochester's daughter, Adèle. She describes how he cross-questioned her with regard to her accomplishments.

157 Thoreau lived for two years in a small hut which he built for himself in a wood near Concord, in New England. This extract is from the account he wrote of his life there.

171 Stevenson came of a family of engineers, and he himself was supposed to be preparing for the same profession. But he already wished to be a writer, and his interest in the harbour-works at Wick, in Caithness, which he had been sent to study, was romantic rather than practical.

End of Project Gutenberg's A Book of English Prose, by Percy Lubbock