[118]: 3. The spleen was supposed to be the seat of melancholy or fretfulness, hence was often used for the melancholy itself.
118: 5. Vapours. The blues, especially used of women.
[120]: 8. Dr. Sydenham. Thomas Sydenham (1624-1689), the most noted physician of his time, surnamed "the English Hippocrates."
120: 12. Medicina Gymnastica, or a Treatise concerning the Power of Exercise, by Francis Fuller, published in 1704.
120: 14. Exercise myself an hour every morning. It may be doubted whether Mr. Addison kept up this healthful practice. At all events, like most of the fat club goers of the age, he gave evidence in his later years of the need of more vigorous physical exercise, and he died at the early age of forty-seven.
120: 23. A Latin treatise of exercises. Artis Gymnasticae apud antiquos, by Hieronymus Mercurialis, Venice, 1569.
XV. Sir Roger goes A-Hunting
This paper and XXX of the present collection were written by Eustace Budgell. This sanguine, brilliant, but ill-starred young man was a cousin of Addison's, an Oxford graduate, and a writer of considerable promise. He was introduced to public life by Addison, whom he accompanied as clerk when Addison went to Ireland as secretary. For a time Budgell was a member of the Irish Parliament, and seemed to have a successful career in prospect both in politics and in letters; but he became involved in unfortunate financial speculations, especially in the notorious South Sea Bubble, was guilty of forgery in his efforts to extricate himself, and finally, in despair, drowned himself in the Thames.
Motto. "Cithaeron calls aloud and the dogs on Mount Taygetus."—Virgil, Georgics, iii. 43.