[276]. This is an excellent joke in German; the point and spirit of which is but ill-Rendered in a translation. A Noddy, the reader will observe, has two significations, the one a knave at All-fours, the other a fool or booby. See the translation by Mr. Render of Count Benyowsky, or the Conspiracy of Kamschatka, a German Tragi-Comi-Comi-Tragedy, where the play opens with a scene of a game at chess (from which the whole of this scene is copied), and a joke of the same point, and merriment about pawns, i.e., boors being a match for kings.
[277]. This word in the original is strictly fellow-lodgers—“Co-occupants of the same room, in a house let out at a small rent by the week”. There is no single word in English which expresses so complicated a relation, except perhaps the cant term of chum, formerly in use in our Universities.
[278]. [The above song is a parody on that pathetic one—given below—written by Sheridan, and introduced into Kotzebue’s drama of The Stranger, to be overheard by the latter. It was sung by Mrs. Bland—as Annetta—to a melody by the Duchess of Devonshire, in a manner, it is said, that thrilled every heart.
“I have a silent sorrow here,
A grief I’ll ne’er impart;
It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear,
But it consumes my heart.
This cherish’d woe, this lov’d despair,
My lot for ever be;
So my soul’s lord, the pangs I bear