7 33 FO FO... FI FI: "This paragraph is a caricature of a story told in Staunton's Account of the Earl of Macartney's Embassy to China in 1792."—MASSON.
8 4 ÇA IRA ("This will do," "This is the go"): "a proverb of the French Revolutionists when they were hanging the aristocrats in the streets, &c., and the burden of one of the most popular revolutionary songs, 'Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira.'"—MASSON.
8 18 ALL MORALITY,—ARISTOTLE'S, ZENO'S, CICERO'S: Each of these three has a high place in the history of ethical teaching. Aristotle wrote the so-called Nicomachean Ethics. According to his teaching, "ethical virtue is that permanent direction of the will which guards the mean [to méson] proper for us... Bravery is the mean between cowardice and temerity; temperance, the mean between inordinate desire and stupid indifference; etc." (Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 169). Zeno, who died about 264 B.C., founded about 308 the Stoic sect, which took its name from the "Painted Porch" (Stoa poklae) in the Agora at Athens, where the master taught. The Stoics held that men should be free from passion, and undisturbed by joy or grief, submitting themselves uncomplainingly to their fate. Such austere views are, of course, as far as possible removed from those of the Eudæmonist, who sought happiness as the end of life. Cicero was the author of De Officiis, "Of Duties."
9 9 ASTROLOGICAL SHADOWS: misfortunes due to being born under an unlucky star; house of life is also an astrological term.
9 24 VON TROIL'S ICELAND: The Letters on Iceland (Pinkerton's Voyages and Travels, Vol. I, p. 621), containing Observations ... made during a Voyage undertaken in the year 1772, by Uno Von Troil, D.D., of Stockholm, contains no chapter of the kind. Such a chapter had appeared, however, in N. Horrebow's (Danish, 1758) Natural History of Iceland: "Chap. LXXII. Concerning snakes. No snakes of any kind are to be met with throughout the whole island." In Boswell's Johnson, Vol. IV, p. 314, Temple ed., there is a much more correct allusion, which may have been in De Quincey's mind: "Langton said very well to me afterwards, that he could repeat Johnson's conversation before dinner, as Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of The Natural History of Iceland, from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus: 'Chap. LXXII. Concerning Snakes. There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.'"
9 25 A PARLIAMENTARY RAT: one who deserts his own party when it is losing.
10 16 "JAM PROXIMUS," etc.: Æneid, II, lines 311-312: "Now next (to Deiphobus' house) Ucalegon (i.e. his house) blazes!"
11 27 QUARTERINGS: See p. 47, footnote, and note 47 2.
11 32 WITHIN BENEFIT OF CLERGY: Benefit of clergy was, under old English law, the right of clerics, afterward extended to all who could read, to plead exemption from trial before a secular judge. This privilege was first legally recognized in 1274, and was not wholly abolished until 1827.
12 9 QUARTER SESSIONS: This court is held in England in the counties by justices of the peace for the trial of minor criminal offenses and to administer the poor laws, etc.