[Footnotes]
[1.] This was the same Apollonius, who while one day vehemently haranguing the populace at Ephesus, suddenly broke off and exclaimed—Strike the tyrant, strike him!—the blow is given!—he is wounded—he is fallen—he dies! And at that very moment the emperor Domitian had been stabbed at Rome.
[2.] Aristophanes ridiculed them both on the stage with great humour and success.
[3.] I believe it was the man his mother married; but he never told me so, being retentive on that subject. —Biog.
[4.] There are many people in America who remember Hodgkinson’s excellence in singing the famous laughing song “Now’s the time for mirth and glee.”
[5.] The writer laments that he has forgot this person’s name.
[6.] That nonsensical song called Galloping Dreary Dun.
[7.] I congratulate Mr. S. on his promotion to office. Certainly a person of his rigid economy will discharge the duties of treasurer of the navy, with the utmost precision; nor could a properer man be fixed on to manage public business of a pecuniary nature, than he who administers his own affairs with such care and frugality. Heaven forefend then, I should object to the propriety of his election to that office.—I only join with the muse in lamenting his dereliction from her service.
[8.] It is with regret that I animadvert on such a veteran in literature as Mr. Cumberland. I admire his abilities and attainments. I have read his Observer, particularly the papers relating to Greek comedy, with the highest pleasure; but I think it a disgrace to him to have carried his admiration and fondness for that witty profligate Aristophanes to such a length as to attempt to raise his character on the ruins of the brightest ornament of the Heathen world, the wise and virtuous Socrates. As to his account in his “Memoirs” of Bentley’s Manuscripts, credat judæus.
[9.] Mr. Colman cannot plead that, like Shakspeare, he wishes to humour the age. This would be to insult the acknowledged taste of many thousands of the present day. But if he is sunk so low, as to prefer the noisy applause of the “groundlings,” or rather of the “gods,” to the approbation of the judicious, who are now “not a few,” then the case is hopeless, and he must be content to be despised by those whose esteem alone is worth having.