[164] Quin could not resist the chance of making a sharp speech. When desired by the manager of Covent Garden to go to the front to apologize for Madame Rollau, a celebrated dancer, who could not appear, he said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Madame Rollau cannot dance to-night, having dislocated her ancle—I wish it had been her neck.”
[165] At this date abroad, Mr. Baretti pointed out, it was not the custom to put knives on the dinner-table, so that even ladies carried them in their pockets for general use.
[166] The boot was the usual punning allusion to Lord Bute in the caricatures of the day; and the petticoat no doubt referred to his undue influence over the Princess of Wales, mother of the reigning sovereign, George III. See ante, p. 238.
[167] Cant names of the period for drinks.
[168] Walpole’s Letters to Sir Horace Mann.
[169] Wild at last had the audacity to occupy a house in the Old Bailey, opposite the present Sessions House.
[170] There were sometimes as many as sixty or seventy pirates awaiting trial at a time in Newgate, about this period.
[171] By Lord Orford and the Board of Admiralty.
[172] Luttrell.
[173] See ante, chap. vi. p. 279.