II. The Club
Motto. "But other six and more call out with one voice."—Juvenal, Satires, vii, 167.
[51]: 2. Sir Roger de Coverley. "The still popular dance-tune from which Addison borrowed the name of Sir Roger de Coverley in The Spectator, is contained in Playford's Division Violin, 1685; in The Dancing Master of 1696, and all subsequent editions."—Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time.
Steele says it was Swift who made the happy suggestion of calling the old knight by the name of the popular dance.
51: 4. Country-dance. This seems to be the original form of which contre-dance and contra-dance are perversions, naturally arising from the fact that in such dances the men and women stand in lines facing each other.
51: 14. Soho Square. Since the time of Charles II this had been a fashionable quarter of London, but fell into comparative disfavour as a place of residence before the close of the eighteenth century.
We do not hear again of this town residence of Sir Roger; he is considered as a country gentleman, who only makes short visits to London, and then lodges in Norfolk buildings off the Strand.
[52]: 1. My Lord Rochester and Sir George Etherege. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680), and Sir George Etherege (1634-1694) enjoyed some little reputation as poets and more notoriety as rakes during the reign of Charles II. Etherege had considerable dramatic ability; but both men covered with a veneer of fine manners essentially vulgar lives, and both died drunkards.
[53]: 2. Bully Dawson. "A swaggering sharper of Whitefriars."—Morley.
53: 2. Inner Temple. The Inns of Court are legal societies in London which have the exclusive right of admitting candidates to the bar, and provide instruction and examinations for that purpose. There are four of these Inns of Court,—Lincoln's Inn, Gray's Inn, the Middle Temple, and the Inner Temple. The last two derive their names from the fact that they occupy buildings and gardens on the site formerly belonging to the military order of Knights Templar, which was dissolved in the fourteenth century. The famous Temple Church is the only one of the buildings of the great Knights Templar establishment that now remains. We hear but little of the Templar in the following papers; Steele did not find the character as interesting as it might have been expected he would.
53: 8. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the greatest of Greek philosophers in his influence upon later thought, was also perhaps the greatest, as he was the first, of literary critics. The Templar probably cared quite as much for Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics as for his philosophical works.
53: 9. Longinus (210-273) was the author of a treatise On the Sublime, more admired two centuries ago than it is to-day.
53: 9. Littleton. Sir Thomas Littleton (1402-1481), a noted English jurist, author of a famous work in French on Tenures.
53: 10. Coke. The Institutes of Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), a reprint and translation of Littleton's book, with copious comment,—hence popularly known as Coke on Littleton,—are a great authority upon the law of real property.
53: 17. Tully. Marcus Tullius Cicero.
53: 29. Exactly at five. In the Queen Anne days the play began at six, or often as early as five. The Templar is going to the Drury Lane Theatre. He passes New Inn, which was one of the buildings of the Middle Temple, crosses the Strand, and through Russell Court reaches Will's Coffee-house, where he looks in for coffee and the news, and he has his shoes rubbed and his wig powdered at the barber's by the Rose Tavern, which stood just beside the theatre.
[54]: 6. Sir Andrew Freeport. Steele's Whig sympathies may be seen in this picture of the intelligent and enterprising merchant. The trading classes of England belonged then almost entirely to the Whig party; the landed aristocracy, on the other hand, country squire and country parson, were almost always Tories. See note on p. 242.
54: 22. A penny got. This would seem to be the source of Franklin's Poor Richard's maxim, "A penny saved is a penny earned."
[57]: 6. Hoods. The hood was an important article of woman's attire at this time. See Addison's delightful paper, Spectator, No. 265.
57: 12. The Duke of Monmouth. The natural son of Charles II, who, during the reign of James II, in 1685, invaded England and attempted to seize the crown; but was defeated in the battle of Sedgemoor,—the last battle fought on English soil,—taken prisoner, and executed on Tower Hill. He was a young man of little ability; but his personal beauty and engaging manners won him many friends. See the portrait of him as Absalom in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, 29, 30:
"His motions all accompanied with grace,
And Paradise was opened in his face."
[58]: 23. R. One of Steele's signatures. See note, p. 219.