THE BEGGAR’S OPERA
[373]. ‘Vanity, chaotic Vanity.’ Hazlitt may have had in mind the lines in Romeo and Juliet (Act I. Sc. 1), ‘O heavy lightness! serious vanity! misshapen chaos!’ [374]. ‘Waste her sweetness,’ etc. Cf. Gray’s Elegy, 56. Splenetic ‘[splenitive] and rash.’ Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1. Blanchard. William Blanchard (1769–1835), for long a member of the Covent Garden Company. ‘And when the date,’ etc. Butler, Hudibras, Part I. Canto 1. 285–6. De Vere. By Robert Plumer Ward (1765–1846), published in 1827. It was supposed by some, though denied by the author, that De Vere was intended to represent Canning. ‘We have heard,’ etc. 2 Henry IV., Act III. Sc. 2. [375]. Sir John Sylvester. Sir John Silvester (1745–1822), Recorder of London. ‘The thief,’ etc. Leviathan, Part I. Chap. 3. A Race for Dinner. By G. H. B. Rodwell (1800–1852). ‘And Birnam wood,’ etc. Macbeth, Acts IV. and V. The Poor Gentleman. By George Colman the Younger (1801).