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 work, like the continuation of 1724, has been wrongly attributed to Defoe. Rozelli advertised in the
157
We learn from Ben Jonson, that Scoggan, or Skogan, was M.A., and lived in the time of Henry IV. "He made disguises for the King's sons, writ in ballad-royal daintily well, and was regarded and rewarded." Jonson calls him the moral Skogan; and introduces him with Skelton, the poet laureate of Henry VIII., into his Masque, entitled "The Fortunate Isles," where he keeps them in character, and makes them rhyme in their own manner.
158
7 Anne, cap. 5, was an "Act for naturalising Foreign Protestants." After the preamble, "Whereas many strangers of the Protestant or reformed religion would be induced to transport themselves and their estates into this kingdom, if they might be made partakers of the advantages and privileges which the natural-born subjects thereof do enjoy," it was enacted that all persons taking the oaths, and making and subscribing the declaration appointed by 6 Anne, cap. 23, should be deemed natural-born subjects; but no person was to have the benefit of this Act unless he received the sacrament. The Act was repealed by 10 Anne, c. 5, because "divers mischiefs and inconveniences have been found by experience to follow from the same, to the discouragement of the natural-born subjects of this kingdom, and to the detriment of the trade and wealth thereof."
159
It has been alleged that there is here an allusion to the Duke of Ormond, whose servants enriched themselves at their master's expense (see
160
The tucker, an edging round the top of a low dress, began to be discontinued about 1713, as appears from complaints in the
161
"William Noye, of St. Burian in Cornwall, gentleman, was made Attorney-General in 1631; his will is dated June 3, 1634, about a month or six weeks before his death. The expedient did not operate an alteration in his son so altogether favourable; for within two years Edward was slain in a duel by one Captain Byron, who was pardoned for it" (Wood's "Athen. Oxon." 1691, i. 506). Noye's character is drawn in the first book of Clarendon's "History of the Civil War."
162
"Mr. Bickerstaff has received the epistles of Mrs. Rebecca Wagstaff, Timothy Pikestaff and Wagstaff, which he will acknowledge farther as occasion shall serve" (folio).
163
The word "Miss" was still confined, in Steele's day, to very young girls or to young women of giddy or doubtful character. Thus Pastorella in No. 9 is called "Miss," and similarly we find "Miss Gruel" in No. 33. In the "Original Letters to the
164
Perhaps there is here an illusion to Mrs. Anne Oldfield (died 1730), and
