24. to hunt me. The View Hallo was a favourite and doubtless a very amusing pastime of the Mohocks. The person elected to share in the game was run down and surrounded by a circle of sportsmen, who kept him rotating like a top by pricking him with their swords. Cf. Spectator 332.
26. in King Charles the Second's time the marauders were known as Muns and Tityre-Tus.
Page 123.
8. about four o'clock. For the time of the play, v. note on p. 8, 1. 5.
14. the battle of Steenkirk, 1692, in which the French defeated the allies under William III.
16. oaken plants. Cudgels.
22. the pit was the resort of the critics and people of fashion.
30. Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, was one of the warriors who entered Troy in the wooden horse. He killed Priam, and was given Andromache, the widow of Hector, as his share of the spoil. The play goes on to depict how Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen, was forced by her parents to marry him, and how in consequence her lover Orestes raised the Delphians and killed him.
31. the King of France, whom Sir Roger regards as the leader of fashion.
32. a better strut. By reference to an advertisement of the play in the Spectator for March 17, we learn that the happy possessor of this strut was a certain Mr. Booth.