P. 211. Addison.—Hor. 2 Ep. ii. 61:
What would you have me do,
When out of twenty I can please not two?—
One likes the pheasant's wing, and one the leg;
The vulgar boil, the learned roast an egg;
Hard task, to hit the palate of such guests.—Pope.
The Vindication was the work of Charles Leslie, the non-juror; Pharamond, a romance dealing with the Frankish empire, by La Calprenède; Cassandra is wrong—the French work, also by La Calprenède, was Cassandre (the son of Antipater); All for Love, Dryden's play; Sophonisba, by Lee; The Innocent Adultery, the second name of Sotherne's The Fatal Marriage; Mithridates was by Lee, who also wrote The Rival Queens, or The Death of Alexander the Great, and Theodosius; Aureng-Zebe, Dryden's tragedy. (T. Arnold's Addison: Clarendon Press).
P. 213. Sheridan.—The first reference to a circulating library given in the Oxford English Dictionary is an advertisement, June 12, 1742—'Proposals for erecting a Public Circulating Library in London.' Joseph Knight, in the Oxford edition of Sheridan's Plays, annotates this passage fully. Dillingham, sending his Latin translation of Herbert's Porch to Sancroft, says: 'I know that if these should be once published, it would be too late then to prevent, if not to correct a fault; I therefore shall take it as a great kindness if you will please to put on your critical naile, and to give your impartial censure on these papers while they are yet in the tireing roome; and I shall endeavour to amend them with one great or more lesser blotts.' Sancroft replies: 'I greedily took your original in one hand, and your copy in the other, of which I had suffered one nayl (though it pretends not to be a critical one) to grow ever since you bespoke its service.'
Compare Herrick:—
Be bold, my book, nor be abashed, or fear
The cutting thumb-nail, or the brow severe;
But by the Muses swear, all here is good,
If but, well read or ill read, understood.
Blonds=blond laces, produced from unbleached silk.
All the works mentioned have been identified. The Innocent Adultery is the alternative title of Sotherne's Fatal Marriage; The Whole Duty of Man was by Allestree, once Provost of Eton; the 'admirable Mrs. Chapone', an admirer of Richardson, and a contributor to the Rambler; 'Under the most repulsive exterior that any woman ever possessed she concealed very superior attainments and extensive knowledge'; Fordyce was Johnson's friend, and his sermons were specially addressed to young women.
P. 216. Chaucer.—holwe=hollow; courtepy=short upper coat of a coarse material; fithele=fiddle; sautrye=psaltery; hente=borrow; yaf=gave; scoleye=to attend school; sentence=sentiment; souninge in=conducing to.
P. 216. Brant.—Sebastian Brant's Narrenschiff, published in 1497, at Basle, was the first printed book that treated of contemporaneous events and living persons, instead of old German battles and French knights. Barclay's translation, Professor Max Müller points out, 'was not made from the original but from Locher's Latin translation. It reproduces the matter, but not the marrow of the original satire ... in some parts his translation is an improvement on the original.' The Ship of Fools in its original form, and in numerous translations, had an enormous success, edition after edition being printed.