FOOTNOTES
[1] Properly Centrones, from a Greek word signifying patchwork.
[2] In which the various kinds of fish are introduced in mock heroic verse. It dates from the fifth century B.C.
[3] About this time Addison and Bishop Attenbury first called attention to the beauties of Milton.
[4] Ale-houses at Oxford.
[5] A game at cards.
[6] Haynes writes, "I have known a gentleman of another turn of humour, who despises the name of author, never printed his works, but contracted his talent, and by the help of a very fine diamond which he wore on his little finger, was a considerable poet on glass." He had a very good epigrammatic wit; and there was not a parlour or tavern window where he visited or dined for some years, which did not receive some sketches or memorials of it. It was his misfortune at last to lose his genius and his ring to a sharper at play, and he has not attempted to make a verse since.
[7] This seems taken from a Spanish story.
[8] Supposed to be Mrs. Manley, against whom Steele had a grudge.
[9] He was buried in Portugal Street graveyard, but was removed in 1853 on the erection of the new buildings of King's College Hospital.
[10] Smollett, of whom we shall speak in the next chapter, published before Sterne, though a younger man.
[11] Dodsley was never averse from having a hit at the church, as in the epigram:
"Cries Sylvia to a reverend dean
What reason can be given,
Since marriage is a holy thing,
That there are none in heaven?
"'There are no women,' he replied,
She quick returns the jest,
'Women there are, but I'm afraid
They cannot find a priest.'"
[12] There was a considerable amount of humour in it. Among the articles offered for sale in the toy-shop is, "the least box that ever was seen in England," in which nevertheless, "a courtier may deposit his sincerity, a lawyer may screw up his honesty, and a poet may hoard up his money."
[13] This introduction to popularity reminds us of the poet Lover, who would never have been so well known had not Madame Vestris, when in want of a comic song, selected "Rory O'More," which afterwards became so famous. The celebrated enigma on the letter H was also produced by a suggestion accidentally made overnight, and developed before morning by Miss Fanshawe into beautiful lines formerly ascribed to Byron.
[14] A girl, who had been unfortunate in love.
[15] Byron showed his love of humour even in some of these early effusions, speaking of his college he says:
"Our choir would scarcely be excused,
Even as a band of raw beginners:
All mercy, now, must be refused
To such a set of croaking sinners.
If David, when his toils were ended
Had heard these blockheads sing before him,
To us his psalms had ne'er descended;
In furious mood, he would have tore 'em."
[16] The saying "He that fights and runs away, shall live to fight another day," is as old as the days of Menander.
[17] Beattie was unfortunate in selecting Molière for his comparison, for his humour is especially that of situation and can be tolerably well understood by a foreigner.
[18] Thus we speak of "fried ice" or "ice with the chill off."
[19] It may be observed that as men's perceptions of humour are different, so in the expression of them there is a character about laughter in accordance with its subject, and with the person from whom it comes.
[20] This term seems the nearest, though not quite accurate.
[21] Ruskin observes that the smile on the lips of the Apollo Belvedere is inconsistent with divinity.
[22] The false generalisations of childhood are well represented by Dickens when, in "Great Expectations," he makes Pip discover a singular affinity between seeds and corduroys. "Mr. Pumblechook wore corduroys, and so did his shopman, and somehow there was a general air and flavour about the corduroys so much in the nature of seeds, and such a general air and flavour about the seeds in the nature of corduroys that I hardly knew which was which."
[23] Critias was one of the thirty tyrants who condemned him.
[24] That the present style of men's dress is unbecoming strikes us forcibly when we see it reproduced in statues, where we are not used to it.
[25] Cicero uses two corresponding words cavillatio and dicacitas, the former signifying continuous, the latter aphoristic humour.
END.
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