[21] The custom in North Germany is to sleep under a bed as well as upon one; consequently, when this happens to be a cheap one, it cannot be stuffed with feathers, down, &c., but with some heavier material.
[22] 'Meerschaum:' I believe a particular kind of clay, called 'sea-spray,' from its fineness and lightness, from which the boles of pipes are made in Turkey—often at enormous prices, and much imported into Germany, where they are in great request. Such is the extent of my knowledge on the subject; or perhaps of my ignorance. But, in fact, I know nothing about it.
[23] In the original—'eine marketenderin,' a female sutler: but I have altered it, to save an explanation of what the old sutler was after.
[24] If any reader should happen not to be acquainted with this word, which, however, is fine old English, and classical at Eton, &c.—the nearest synonym which I remember at this moment is Expavesco.
[25] In the original Knecht Rupert. The allusion is to an old Christmas usage of North Germany: a person comes in disguise, in the character of an ambassador from heaven, with presents for all the young children who are reported to him as good and obedient: but those who are naughty he threatens and admonishes. See Coleridge's Friend, vol. ii. p. 322.
[26] This man, whose case I have read in some French Medical Memoirs, was a desperate fellow: he cared no more for an ounce of opium, than for a stone of beef, or half a bushel of potatoes: all three would not have made him a breakfast. As to children, he denied in the most tranquil manner that he ate them. ''Pon my honour,' he sometimes said, 'between ourselves, I never do eat children.' However, it was generally agreed, that he was pædophagous, or infantivorous. Some said that he first drowned them; whence I sometimes called him the pædobaptist. Certain it is, that wherever he appeared, a sudden scarcity of children prevailed.—Note of the Translator.
[27] What I mean is this. Vernacular (from verna, a slave born in his master's house). 1. The homely idiomatic language in opposition to any mixed jargon, or lingua franca, spoken by an imported slave:—2. Hence, generally, the pure mother-tongue as opposed to the same tongue corrupted by false refinement. By vernacular English, therefore, in the primary sense, and I mean, such homely English as is banished from books and polite conversation to Billingsgate and Wapping.