France. This is the monumental sword that conquered France.' mentioned by Dryden: it is 7 feet long and weighs 18 lbs." (Hare, Walks in London, ii. 335): pommel, the nob at the end of the hilt, but here used for the hilt itself.

1. 12. touched for the evil, here again, the evil, like the sickness," above, for the well-known evil, 'the king's evil,' as it was otherwise called, the scrofula. The belief in the sovereign's power to cure this disease dates backward from the days of Edward the Confessor and continued even to the time of Johnson, who in 1712 was taken to be touched' by Queen Anne. Cp. Macb. iv. 3. 140-156, where the process is described.

11. 13, 4. there was ..... reign, there was matter of much interest in the exciting occurrences of that reign.

11. 16, 7. one of our... head. This is Henry the Fifth. "Upon it" [his tomb], says Hare, Walks in London, ii. 328, "lay his effigy stretched out, cut from the solid heart of an English oak, plated with silver-gilt, with a head of solid silver.

The whole of the silver was carried off by some robbers who had 'broken in the night-season into the Church of Westminster,' at the time of the Dissolution [of the monasteries]."

1. 18. beaten silver, hammered silver, solid silver fashioned by the hammer into the shape of a head.

1. 23. of shining, of showing to advantage the industry and intelligence with which he had studied his Chronicle. 11. 25, 6. in him, in his Chronicle.

1. 36. Norfolk-buildings, in Norfolk Street, Strand.

SIR ROGER AT THE THEATRE. No. 335.

P. 106, 1. 9. the new tragedy, The Distrest Mother, a version of Racine's Andromaque by Ambrose Philips (1671-1749), to the reading of which the Spectator had been taken by Will Honeycomb as related in No. 290.

1. 10. these twenty years, for twenty years or more; used indefinitely.

"The

1. 11. The Committee, by Sir Robert Howard, brother-in-law of Dryden, printed in 1665. The play was a caricature of the later Commonwealth period, and ridiculed the Puritans; whence Sir Roger calls it "a good Church of England comedy." plot turns," says Ward, Eng. Dram. Lit., ii. 532, on the rascalities perpetrated by Members of Committees of Sequestration in keeping or turning rightful owners out of their property for political disaffection.

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1. 18. at the end of the dictionary, where in former days biographical notices of famous personages were given.

1. 20. the Mohocks, bands of riotous youths who infested the streets at night, plundering men and insulting_women. They took their name from a tribe of North-American Indians.

1. 22. lusty, vigorous, stalwart.

1. 23. Fleet Street, so called from the river Fleet which in former days ran through London openly, but now is covered over and discharges itself through the sewers.

1. 24. mended their pace, increased their speed: put on, made an effort by walking faster.

1. 30-P. 107, 1. 1. I might have design, I might have given them as much trouble to catch me as a clever fox gives the huntsmen, if that was what they intended.

1. 6. threw them out, baffled them in their efforts to catch me; hounds when they lose the scent of the game are said to be "thrown out."

1. 7. doubled the corner, eluded them by getting round the corner, as a fox or hare turns and twists to escape the hounds.

11. 9, 10. Captain Sentry, see p. 8, 1. 17, etc. : make one of us, be of our party, accompany us.

1. 18. battle of Steenkirk, fought in 1692 between the French and William the Third, Prince of Orange.

1. 20. good oaken plants, stout oak cudgels.

1. 23. convoyed, escorted, conducted in safety, as a man-of-war convoys a fleet of merchant vessels in time of war.

1. 26. the pit, then a fashionable part of the theatre, and answering to the modern "stalls."

1. 34. tragic audience, audience that had come to witness a tragedy.

1. 35. Pyrrhus, or Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, one of the heroes in the Trojan war who was concealed in the wooden horse filled with armed men, introduced within the walls of Troy. At the taking of the city he killed Priam, and when the Trojan captives were distributed among the victors, Andromache, widow of Hector, was assigned to him.

1. 36. a better strut, a more dignified manner of walking; the word strut is generally used of a pompous gait.

P. 108, 1. 5. One while, at one moment.

1. 6. concerned, troubled, anxious.

1. 7. Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen. She had been promised in marriage to Orestes before the Trojan war; but Menelaus after his return home married her to Pyrrhus. On Orestes claiming her and being refused, he stirred up the Delphians against Pyrrhus who was slain in the tumult. Hermione afterwards married Orestes.

1. 13. to have to do with, here in the sense of wooing her; with an allusion to his own wooing, see Essay No. 2.

1. 14. Pyrrhus his, "His was sometimes used, by mistake, for 's, the sign of the possessive case, particularly after a proper name, and with especial frequency when the name ends in s (Abbott, § 217).

...

11. 15, 6. do if you can, hinting that Pyrrhus would find it very difficult to give up the widow.

11. 22, 3. Should your people... understood? intimating his idea that in so lofty a production as a tragedy the actors were not expected always to use language that could be understood by ordinary people, but to indulge in flights of bombast above the intelligence of their audience a hit, as Salmon says, at the dramas of the Restoration period.

1. 25. very luckily, because otherwise he would have gone on talking in a way that would have provoked the amusement and ridicule of those in his neighbourhood: begun, though frequent in former days as a past tense, has now given way to began.'

1. 28. Hector's ghost, referring, says Salmon, to the mention of "my Hector's awful shade," at the end of the third act.

1. 29. fell a praising, took to praising, began and continued to praise; here a is a corruption of the preposition on.

1. 31. Astyanax, son of Hector and Andromache; his proper name was Scamandrius, but he was called Astyanax, or 'lord of the city,' by the Trojans on account of the services of his father. 1. 36. going off, leaving the stage.

P. 109, 1. 2. a notable young baggage, a regular young hussy, on account of her treatment of Pyrrhus.

1. 8. Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and avenger of the murder of the former by the latter: struck in with them, joined in their conversation.

1. 9. Pylades, nephew of Agamemnon, whose murder he helped Orestes to avenge. The friendship between Orestes and Pylades has become proverbial from its warmth and sincerity.

11. 12, 3. the old fellow in whiskers, "one of the minor characters-Phoenix, counsellor to Pyrrhus" (Salmon).

11. 15, 6. smoke the knight, make fun of the knight.

11. 16-8. whispered... act, and so prevented him from continuing his conversation with the wags.

1. 25. as if he saw something, sc. a spectre.

1. 29. justling, we now say 'jostling.'

WILL HONEYCOMB'S AMOURS. No. 359.

P. 110, 1. 7. minding, paying heed to.

1. 9. jogged, nudged; called attention by a slight push.

1. 16. brown study, deep reverie, gloomy abstraction; originally from brown in the sense of gloomy, now often of an idle or purposeless reverie.

11. 16, 7. that once

right, though confessing that Sir Andrew has hit the mark, Sir Roger will not let slip the opportunity for a friendly thrust at his old antagonist by intimating that Sir Andrew's sagacity is very rarely so fortunate.

1. 23. she'll have, will take as a husband.

11. 26, 7. as his particular province, as a matter peculiarly his own from the wide experience he has had in it.

1. 27. jaunty, airy and affected.

11. 29, 30. to pin ... woman, to feel that your happiness depends entirely upon such a weak creature as a woman.

P. III, 1. 3. amours, love affairs.

1. 13. conclusion, i.e. a satisfactory conclusion, by the lady accepting him.

1. 14. boarded with a surgeon, which circumstance looked as if I had not been a very healthy person: the old put, the wretched old creature; a Devonshire provincialism for a stinking fellow."

1. 18. so briskly, with so much energy.

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1. 19. waited upon her, paid her a visit; but expressing the deference shown by a man to a woman.

1. 20. jointure, estate settled on a woman in marriage in case of her husband's death, and here the estate she had acquired by her first husband's death.

1. 22. Lion's inn, one of the Inns of Court of former days. It stood between Wych Street and Holywell Street, but was destroyed in 1863. Among the lawyers by whom it was once tenanted was Sir Edward Coke, whose lectures there attracted to him a crowd of clients.

1. 24. this overture, this proposition of hers that I should estate her with a further jointure.

1. 29. soft things, tender things, compliments and assurances of admiration.

11. 29, 30. made... heart, felt sure of winning her love.

11. 33, 4. to break... him, to disclose to him with all modesty what my hopes were; his fortune not being equal to the lady's, he was obliged to approach the father on the subject cautiously and with modesty.

P. 112, 1. 2. to miss her, to fail to win her.

11. 3, 4. Her maid ..... me, sc. which in a measure accounts for her rejecting me.

1. 5. spindle... legs, pair of legs resembling in their extreme thinness the stick upon which a thread is spun; spindle-shanks is a not uncommon term of contempt for a man of unusually thin legs.

1. 8. dog, used with a complacent recollection of his youthful wildness.

11. 11, 2. get the old ... side, win the parents' approval.

1. 16. with flying colours, in the most triumphant manner. 1. 19. carried off, killed; with a play upon the words in reference to his endeavour to "bear her away" in marriage.

1. 20. transitions, sc. from one point of a subject to another, and from one person to another.

11. 22, 3. had considered last Saturday, had discussed in my paper of last Saturday, i.e. No. 337 of the Spectator. The "book" was the tenth book of Paradise Lost, and the lines quoted are 888-908.

1. 32. as angels, as in the case of angels who are (in Paradise Lost) all masculine.

1. 37. straight conjunction, close union.

P. 113, 11. 1, 2. but such... mistake, the construction is "but such as some misfortune or mistake brings him.”

1. 5. withheld, i.e. shall see her withheld.

1. 7. link'd, agreeing with his choice (i.e. her whom he had chosen) in the line above: wedlock, though it should be hyphened with bound, belongs equally to link'd.

1. 8. fell, hateful: his hate, or shame, whom (sc. the woman who should have been his wife) he either hates or regards with shame. 1. 10. confound, throw into utter confusion, destroy.

VISIT TO SPRING GARDENS. No. 383.

P. 113, 1. 20. irregular bounces, random knocks, not the deliberate rat-tat-tat that would be given by a town-bred visitor. 1. 26. on the water, by the Thames, then much more of a thoroughfare to various localities than since the introduction of cabs and omnibuses: Spring-Garden, here what was originally known as the New Spring Gardens at Fox Hall, to distinguish them from the Old Spring (Fountain) Garden of Whitehall Palace. The name Fox Hall (afterwards altered to Vauxhall) "dates from the marriage of Isabella de Fortibus, Countess of