[7] Quarterly Review, July, 1819; art. “British Monachism, by D. Fosbrooke.”
[8] In Candide, or the Optimist, there is an admirable stroke of Voltaire’s; eight travellers meet in an obscure inn, and some of them with not sufficient money to pay for a scurvy dinner. In the course of conversation they are discovered to be eight monarchs in Europe, who had been deprived of their crowns. What gave point to this satire was, that these eight monarchs were not the fictitious majesties of the poetic brain; imperial shadows, like those that appeared to Macbeth; but living monarchs, who were wandering at that moment about the world.
[9] This was not the tree which gave the name to “Royal Oak Day.”
[10] The hair has often been found very useful as a means of concealment for other purposes. The Indian lavadores, whilst washing the sand, for the grains of gold, were observed by the overseers to be continually scratching their heads, or passing their fingers through their thick woolly hair. A suspicion arising, the hair was combed, and was found full of the gold grains. On keeping their hair quite short it was discovered that the necessity for such frequent application to the head had ceased.
[11] The editor saw her at Philadelphia, where she exhibited once to a small audience, and then disappeared.
[12] This lover of truth, at the commencement of his pamphlet, with consummate assurance thus proposes himself as a private tutor: “Gentlemen who are desirous to secure their children from ill example, by a domestic education, or are themselves inclined to gain or retrieve the knowledge of the Latin tongue, may be waited on at their houses, by the author of the following essay, upon the receipt of a letter directed to the publisher or author.—N.B. Mr. Lauder’s abilities, and industry in his profession, can be well attested by persons of the first rank in literature in this metropolis.”
[13] “Dr. Johnson, who had been so far imposed upon by Lauder, as to furnish a preface and postscript to his work, now dictated a letter for him, addressed to Dr. Douglas, acknowledging his fraud in terms of suitable contrition. This extraordinary attempt of Lauder’s was no sudden effort; he had brooded over it for years, and it is uncertain what his principal motive was.”—Boswell’s Life of Johnson.
[14] The modern mode of copying coins enables any one with industry to possess a large cabinet.
[15] Dark blue is called, by the modern Egyptians, eswed, which properly signifies black, and is therefore so translated here.
[16] Mr. Matthews, the comedian, in his “Humours of a Country Fair,” has hardly exaggerated, in describing a quack thus reading acknowledgments from those cured by his specific. ‘Sir,—I was cut in two in a saw-pit, and cured by one bottle.’ ‘Sir,—By the bursting of a powder-mill, I was blown into ten thousand anatomies. The first bottle of your incomparable collected all the parts together; the second restored life and animation—before the third was finished, I was in my usual state of health.’ This hardly exceeds a reasonable satire on the presumptuous promises that still frequently accompany each bottle or box licensed from the Stamp Office!