29. doublet. A coat reaching just below the waist, introduced from France in the fourteenth century.
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9. justice of the Quorum. County justice, magistrate. Quorum was a prominent word in their commission of appointment.
10. quarter-session. The quarterly meeting of magistrates, at which cases sent up from petty sessions are tried. The word is now always used in the plural form, sessions, as in Spectator 126.
12. the game-act originated in the Game Laws of William the Conqueror. The first Game Act was passed in 1496, and the one in force at the time of Addison's writing in the reign of Anne. By these enactments a man was qualified to take out a licence to kill game by his birth or estate. The usual qualification was the possession of land to the value of 100 pounds per annum.
14. the Inner-Temple was originally the property of the Knights Templars. It was converted into Inns of Court in 1311, after the suppression of the military knighthoods.
17. humoursome. Whimsical, capricious. Cf. Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV., IV. iv. 34, 'As humorous as winter.'
20. the house. The fraternity of lawyers.
Aristotle and Longinus. Aristotle's Poetics and the essay 'On the Sublime' of Longinus are the basis of all classical criticism. Longinus was a critic of the third century. Addison probably knew him in Boileau's famous translation of 1674.
21. Littleton. Author of a famous book on Tenures. He died in 1481.