SPECTATOR 335.
Page 122.
9. the Committee was a play by Sir Robert Howard, 1662, the motive of which is ridicule of the Puritans.
12. Distressed Mother, an adaptation by Ambrose Philips of Racine's Andromaque, had been produced on March 17.
15. at the end of the dictionary, where biographical notices of famous persons used to be inserted.
18. the Mohocks. Ever since the Restoration the streets of London had been infested at night with bands of dissolute young men who assaulted and injured men and women by wounding and beating them. No sort of mischief came amiss to them; they effected endless damage by the breaking of windows, and so forth, and a favourite diversion consisted in binding a woman in a barrel, and rolling it down Snow Hill or Ludgate Hill. Their name was derived from the Mohawks, a tribe of North American Indians, and was used to denote savages in general. An especially flagrant outbreak of this Hooliganism was in progress at this time (v, Spectator 324, 332), and on March 17 a royal proclamation against the Mohocks had been issued.
20. black, v. note on p. 1, 1. 9.
21. Fleet Street ran beside the river Fleet, which is now covered over.
22. put on. Hastened.
24. to hunt me. The View Hallo was a favourite and doubtless a very amusing pastime of the Mohocks. The person elected to share in the game was run down and surrounded by a circle of sportsmen, who kept him rotating like a top by pricking him with their swords. Cf. Spectator 332.
26. in King Charles the Second's time the marauders were known as Muns and Tityre-Tus.
Page 123.
8. about four o'clock. For the time of the play, v. note on p. 8, 1. 5.
14. the battle of Steenkirk, 1692, in which the French defeated the allies under William III.
16. oaken plants. Cudgels.
22. the pit was the resort of the critics and people of fashion.
30. Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, was one of the warriors who entered Troy in the wooden horse. He killed Priam, and was given Andromache, the widow of Hector, as his share of the spoil. The play goes on to depict how Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen, was forced by her parents to marry him, and how in consequence her lover Orestes raised the Delphians and killed him.
31. the King of France, whom Sir Roger regards as the leader of fashion.
32. a better strut. By reference to an advertisement of the play in the Spectator for March 17, we learn that the happy possessor of this strut was a certain Mr. Booth.
Page 124.
9. Pyrrhus his. This form of the possessive was in frequent use, especially after proper names ending in s.
21. begun. Obsolete in prose; now began.
25. the widow. Andromache.
27. Astyanax, the son of Hector and Andromache.
35. a very remarkable silence. For an account of the talking and disturbance that usually went on, v. Spectator 45 and 240.
Page 125.
6. Pylades, the close friend of Orestes.
9. the old fellow in whiskers. Phoenix, counsellor to Pyrrhus, a minor character.
12. smoke, make a butt of, amuse themselves with. Cf. modern schoolboy slang, roast.
26. justling. Hustling, jostling. Cf. Shakespeare, Tempest, III. ii. 29, 'I am in case to justle a constable.'