“For their pomp and ease being borne
In triumph on men’s shoulders.”
[24] The word hackney, possibly derived from the old French Haquenée, was the natural word to be used for a public coach, it being merely a synonym, used by Shakespeare and others, for common.
[25] Curialia Miscellanea. Samuel Pegge, F.S.A. London, 1818.
[26] Which was about the same sum that Defoe had to pay in London earlier in the century. “We are carried to these places [the coffee-houses],” he wrote in 1702, “in chairs which are here very cheap—a guinea a week, or a shilling per hour; and your chairmen serve you for porters, to run on errands, as your gondoliers do at Venice.”
[27] cf.
“With chest begirt by leathern bands,
The chairman at his corner stands;
The poles stuck up against the wall
Are ready at a moment’s call.