The Coverley Papers, From 'The Spectator'
Chapter 2
the vapours, some the hysterics.'
29 et seq. The argument runs: nature has adapted the body to exercise, therefore exercise is necessary to our well-being. This is sound only on the assumptions that everything which nature performs is based on necessity, and that the body has been made in such a way as to secure our well-being.
30. _proper_. Fit. Cf. Shakespeare, _Hamlet_, II. i. 114:
It is as proper to our age To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions.
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8. _laboured_. Worked, tilled. The verb is no longer used transitively.
14. _condition_. State of prosperity, material circumstances. Cf. Shakespeare, 2 _Henry VI_, v. i. 64, 'One so rude and of so mean condition.'
22. _chace_. The substantive was distinguished from the verb by its spelling. Cf. modern _practice_, _practise_.
34. _patched_. Perhaps with reference to the black patches worn on the face to enhance its beauty; perhaps merely covered here and there, studded.
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1. _distinction sake_. The _'s_ of the possessive is omitted before the initial _s_ of _sake_.
6. _The perverse widow_, v. _Spectator_ 113.
8. _amours_. Used of a single love-affair.
12. _sits_. Couches in her form or seat.
18. _Doctor Sydenham_, the celebrated physician, who died in 1689.
22. _Medicina Gymnastica_, by Francis Fuller, was printed in 1705.
24. _dumb bell_. An apparatus resembling that used for ringing a church bell, but wanting the bell itself. The use of the modern form of dumb-bell was introduced into England in Elizabeth's reign. It is described in the next paragraph under the name of _skiomachia_.
33. _a Latin treatise_. Artis Gymnastica apud Antiquos, by Hieronymus Mercurialis, 1569.
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2. _loaden_. The verb has now become weak; loaded.
9. _uneasy_. Troublesome.
SPECTATOR 116.
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25. _the Bastile_. The State prison in Paris, which was destroyed by the mob in 1789 (v. Coleridge's poem on this subject, and the stirring description in Dickens' _Tale of Two Cities_, II. xxi.).
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20. Budgell has somewhat defaced the character of Sir Roger by this touch, and by the inhuman humanity of p. 52, 1. 18.
24. _managed_. Broken in. Cf. Shakespeare, _Richard II_., III.