[113] "By him." (MS.)
[114] Leonard Welsted, a protégé of Steele's, wrote also the Epilogue. He was a clerk in the office of one of the Secretaries of State, and wrote a play and various poems, some of which were addressed to Steele. Pope gave him a place in the Dunciad, and Swift attacked him in his On Poetry: a Rhapsody.
[115] Pinkethman.
[116] The reference is to Bartholomew Fair, which was held in Smithfield.
[117] Here and throughout this dialogue Steele closely follows the conversation of Simo and Sosia in Terence's Andria, Act I. scene i.
[118] This and the two following speeches by Sir John Bevil are borrowed from Terence.
[119] In the old Royal Palace at Westminster, the House of Lords was formed out of the ancient Court of Requests, and the old Painted Chamber separated the Lords from the Commons. Steele has described (Spectator, No. 88) how servants, waiting for their masters at an alehouse at Westminster, debated upon public affairs, addressing each other by their employers' names.
[120] At the ridotto there was music, followed by dancing, the company passing, when the music was over, from the pit to the stage. Burney says that this Italian entertainment was first introduced into England in 1722, the year in which Steele produced The Conscious Lovers.
[121] Belsize House was the forerunner of Ranelagh and Vauxhall. There were gardens, in which refreshments could be obtained, and hunting, races, &c., were provided to amuse the visitors, for whose protection twelve stout men, well armed, patrolled the road to London. A poetical satire, Belsize House, appeared in 1722, the year of this play. In the same year unlawful gaming at Belsize was forbidden (Park's Hampstead, 246-9).
[122] Among the Blenheim papers is a fragment, in Steele's writing, of a dialogue between two servants, Parmeno and Pythias—names taken, no doubt, from Terence's Eunuchus. The pair discuss the charm of the soft moments of servants in love, free from their usual restraints. Why should any man usurp more than his share of the atmosphere? The whole art of a serving-man is "to be here and there, and everywhere, unheard and unseen till you are wanted, and never absent when you are. This gives our masters and mistresses the free room and scope to do and act as they please—they are to make all the bustle, all the show—we are like convenient demons or apparitions about 'em, never to take up space or fill the air nor be heard of or seen but when commanded." Pythias remarks how much she learns from Parmeno's conversation, and produces a little collation from the last night's supper which she has prepared for him. Parmeno eats the eggs, gorges, sings a song, and says kind things between whiles to Pythias.