P. [20]: 2. Channel-row. The scene of this canto is Arthur Prior's Rhenish house in Channel-row near Whitehall.
P. [20]: 19. A. as 'tis first in th' Alphabet. In view of his exalted station, wealth, and Whiggish company, it is probably safe to identify "A" with Charles Sackville, Sixth Earl of Dorset, who is known as a habitué of Prior's wineshop through the stories of his encouragement of the owner's nephew Matthew. However, most details would apply equally well—in his own mind at least—to another prominent patron of the day, John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave. In this connection, it is interesting to note that Mulgrave's account at Child's bank records a payment of £20/—/—made on 14 May 1683 to a Thomas Wood. The name was, naturally, a common one.
P. [21]: 28. And wounds it too with its own Sting. Presumably a reference to Dorset's "On Mr. Edward Howard upon his British Princes" or Mulgrave's "An Essay upon Satyr." Both poems may be found in the first volume of the Yale Poems on Affairs of State series (ed. George deForrest Lord [New Haven, 1963]).
P. [22]: 3. Next unto A. B. took his place. Sir George Etherege. The opening lines anticipate Dean Lockier's comment recorded by Spence that "he was exactly his own Sir Fopling Flutter" which may on the other hand be derived from it. See Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, ed. James M. Osborn (Oxford, 1966), p. 281.
P. [22]: 17. For you must know he's kept by a Miss. Frederick Bracher has pointed out in a letter that Etherege was closely connected at this time with the circle of the Duchesse de Mazarin. See James Thorpe's note on "A Song on Basset," The Poems of Sir George Etherege (Princeton, 1963), pp. 85-87.
P. [22]: 25. Heroick C. Elkanah Settle.
P. [23]: 7. Cadem——. William Cademan, Settle's principal publisher.
P. [23]: 23. But if you speak one word of's Chumb. Probably William Buller Fyfe, an Oxford friend who had assisted Settle with his first play, Cambyses. Fyfe was dead by the time the play reached the stage and Settle was criticized for bringing it out under his own name only.
P. [23]: 26. D. the brisk lack-latine Poet. Thomas Shadwell. The accusation that he knew no Latin was repeated by Dryden in The Vindication of the Duke of Guise (1683) and is denied with characteristic stridency by Shadwell in The Tenth Satyr of Juvenal (1687). The accusation that his plays were partly written by others is made by Dryden in Mac Flecknoe ("But let no alien Sedley interpose") and is present by implication in Rochester's reference in "Timon" to "Shadwell's unassisted former Scenes...." Shadwell began his career as the collaborator of the aged Duke of Newcastle and acknowledges Sedley's help in his best comedy, A True Widow (1678). He was on good terms with Rochester, Dorset, and Buckingham and addressed dedications to the two last. The references to Horace and Lucretius allude to the preface to The Humorists and the opening scene of The Virtuoso, respectively.