13. "Pretty creature!" Mrs. Thrale says: "The picture I found of her at Lichfield was very pretty, and her daughter said it was like. Mr. Johnson has told me that her hair was enimently beautiful, quite blonde like that of a baby."-Piozzi's Anecdotes, p. 148. In Johnson's private memoranda of his tour in France, fourteen years after his wife's death, is the following: "The sight of palaces, and other great buildings, leaves no very distinct images unless to those who talk of them. As I entered, my wife was in my mind; she would have been pleased. Having now nobody to please, I am little pleased."

24. David Garrick (1716-1779) was the greatest of all English actors. He did more than any one else to restore Shakespeare's plays to the English stage. As an actor, he was equally at home in the highest poetry of tragedy and the lowest jests of farce. Read Goldsmith's poem Retaliation for a capital sketch of his character. In it occurs these often quoted lines,

"On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting,
'Twas only that, when he was off, he was acting."

Garrick was the source of all the ridicule heaped upon Mrs. Johnson. Percy says, "As Johnson kept Garrick much in awe when present, David, when his back was turned, repaid his restraint with ridicule of him and his Dulcinea, which should be read with much abatement."

P. 11, 1. 6. Irene. The story of the play deals with the love of Mahomet the Great, the Turkish conqueror of Constantinople, for a beautiful Greek captive. Read The Prince of India, by Lew Wallace, for this tale.

18. Secretary of state. See Appendix, p. 126 and p. 157.

P. 12, 1. 8. Thomson, James (1700-1748). The first English poet to take nature for his subject. Besides the Seasons,

his best-known works are the Castle of Indolence and the song Rule Brittania.

9. Fielding, Henry (1707-1754). The greatest English novelist of the eighteenth century; also a playwright of no mean ability. Two of his novels, Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews, although disfigured by the coarseness common to his age, are among the masterpieces of English fiction.

10. The Beggar's Opera, by John Gay (1685-1732), was the most successful dramatic piece produced in England during the first half of the eighteenth century. The characters are all taken from low life, and the hero is a highwayman; but it is a scathing satire on the fashionable society of the day. It appeared in 1726, and is still occasionally represented. The best part is the songs. From one of these come the often quoted lines,

"How happy could I be with either,
Were t'other dear charmer away.'

20. Porter's knot.

"A kind of double shoulder-pad, with a loop passing round the forehead; the whole roughly resembling a horse-collar, used by London market porters for carrying their burdens." - Cassell's Encyclopedic Dictionary. "Perhaps originally a rope tied or knotted into a loop."— Murray's Dictionary.

P. 13, 1. 12. Drury Lane. A street in the heart of London. In the seventeenth century it had been a fashionable residence district; but in Johnson's time it was ceasing to be respectable.

25. Subterranean ordinaries. Cheap eating-houses situated in cellars. Alamode beef was "scraps and remainders of beef boiled down into a thick soup or stew."- Murray's Dictionary.

The ancient hare and the rancid meat pie are single instances which Macaulay magnifies into habitual occurrences by the use of the word "whenever." There are many authentic anecdotes, reported by Boswell and others, to show that Johnson, though a voracious eater, fully appreciated good cooking. Boswell, who dined with him, found the meal excellent though plain; and Hawkins speaks of "his not inelegant dinners."

P. 14, 1. 8. Rude even to ferocity. "Once Johnson is said to have taken up a chair at the theatre, upon which a man had seated himself during his temporary absence, and to have tossed it and its occupant bodily into the pit."-Leslie Stephen's Life of Johnson.

ness.

12. Societies where he was treated with courtesy and kind"To obviate all the reflections which have gone round the world to Johnson's prejudice, by applying to him the epithet of a bear, let me impress upon my readers a just and happy saying of my friend Goldsmith, who knew him well, ‘Johnson, to be sure, has a roughness in his manner; but no man alive has a more tender heart. He has nothing of the bear but his skin.' " - Boswell's Life of Johnson. "Reynolds said: 'Johnson had one virtue which I hold one of the most difficult to practise. After the heat of contest was over, if he had been informed that his antagonist resented his rudeness; he was the first to seek after a reconciliation.' Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor in 1756: 'When I am musing alone, I feel a pang for every moment that any human being has by my peevishness or obstinacy spent in uneasiness."-Hill's Boswell, Vol. II., p. 256, note.

15. Osborne. "It has been confidently related, with many embellishments, that Johnson one day knocked Osborne down in his shop, with a folio, and put his foot upon his neck. The

simple truth I had from Johnson himself. 'Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat him. But it was not in his shop: it was in my own chamber.'"i

· Boswell.

"There is nothing to tell, dearest lady, but that he was insolent and I beat him, and that he was a blockhead and told of it, which I should never have done. I have beat many a fellow, but the rest had the wit to hold their tongues." Mrs. ̧ Piozzi's Anecdotes of Johnson, p. 233.

...

19. Harleian Library. The famous library collected by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, which had been purchased by Osborne. Johnson wrote the introduction to the catalogue, and the Latin accounts of the books.

24. The Gentleman's Magazine, originated by Edward Cave in January, 1731, is still in existence. Cave used the nom de plume"Sylvanus Urban" as editor; and the title is the first application of the word "magazine" to a periodical. Johnson had a high opinion of Cave, whose life he afterward wrote. The story is told, that, at some of the dinners Cave gave his contributors, a plate was passed to Johnson, who was seated behind a screen, as his clothes were too ragged to permit his appearing at table.

P. 15, 1. 8. Senate of Lilliput. Every one should read Gulliver's Voyages to Lilliput and Brobdingnag, by Swift. The stories are so well told that they remain deeply interesting to this day though the objects of Swift's merciless satire are well-nigh forgotten. "Blefuscu," "Mildendo," "sprugs," and "Nardac " are terms taken from the Voyages. Johnson wrote the debates from November, 1740, to February, 1743. He told Boswell that "as soon as he found they were thought genuine he determined he would write no more of them, for he would not be accessory

to the propagation of a falsehood."" It is likely that this tenderness of conscience cost Cave a good deal. Hawkins writes that, while Johnson composed the Debates, the sale of the Magazine increased from ten to fifteen thousand copies a month.

11. Lord Hardwicke. Philip Yorke (1690-1764) was one of the strongest supporters of Sir Robert Walpole, who made him Lord Chancellor in 1733. See Green's History of the English People, Ch. IX., Sec. X. Hickrad is a caricature of Lord Hardwicke's name.

12. William Pulteney, Earl of Bath (1684-1764), was for some time the chief opponent of Sir Robert Walpole. He was the leader of a faction that called itself "The Patriots." The Speaker of the House of Commons described him as having the most popular parts for public speaking of any great man he ever knew." A contemporary epigram says of him, —

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22. Capulets and Montagues were the two families whose feud forms the background of Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet.

In

23. The Blues of the Roman circus against the Greens. the later days of the Roman Empire, the chariot races in the hippodrome at Constantinople were the chief amusement of the degenerate populace, which divided into factions named from the colors worn by the drivers. The animosities of these factions sometimes led to serious riots, and even to incendiarism and massacre. An interesting account is in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Ch. XL., Sec. II.

P. 16, 1. 2.

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Sacheverell was a “ High Church,” Tory clergy

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