[115]: 5. Great vulgar. The phrase is from the second line of Cowley's translation of the Odi profanum of Horace, above mentioned:
"Hence, ye profane! I hate ye all,
Both the great vulgar and the small."
But Steele's sentence is certainly obscure.
[116]: 11. If e'er ambition did my fancy cheat, etc. These lines are Cowley's own, and are inserted in the essay on Greatness.
XIV. Labour and Exercise
Motto. "That there may be a sound mind in a sound body."—Juvenal, Satires, x. 356.
[117]: 21. Ferments the humours. It was an old medical notion that in the body there are four humours or fluids,—blood, phlegm, choler, and bile,—and that health depended upon the due proportion and mixture of these humours. This conception influenced popular language, after it was in great part discarded by more accurate medical knowledge. It will be noticed throughout this paper that Addison's hygiene is better than his physiology.
117: 28. Refining those spirits. The name animal spirits was given to a subtle fluid which, according to ancient medical notions, permeated the body and served in some way as the medium of sensation and volition. In its looser and more recent use the phrase means little more than nervous energy or sometimes physical vivacity.