⁂ This story is imitated from “The Host’s Tale,” in Orlando Furioso, xxviii.
Squires (Milton), servant in the Fairchild family, boorish, vindictive hind who murders one brother and tries to fasten the deed upon another.--Harold Frederic, Seth’s Brother’s Wife (1886).
Squirt, the apothecary’s boy in Garth’s Dispensary; hence any apprentice lad or errand boy.
Here sauntering ’prentices o’er Otway weep.
O’er Congreve smile, or over D’Urfey sleep,
Pleased sempstresses the Lock’s famed Rape unfold,
And Squirts read Garth till Apozems grow cold.
J. Gay, Trivia (1712).
(Pope wrote The Rape of the Lock, 1712.)
Squod (Phil), a grotesque little fellow, faithfully attached to Mr. George, the son of Mrs. Rouncewell (housekeeper at Chesney Wold). George had rescued the little street arab from the gutter, and the boy lived at George’s “Shooting Gallery” in Leicester Square (London). Phil was remarkable for limping along sideways, as if “tacking.”--C. Dickens, Bleak House (1852).