[6] Compare these voluntary torments with the description of the Dosèh, or horse-trampling ceremonial of the Sheik El Bekree, over the bodies of the faithful, in Lane’s Modern Egyptians.
[7] Daniel Button’s well-known coffee-house was on the south side of Russell Street, Covent Garden, nearly opposite Tom’s. Button had been a servant of the Countess of Warwick, and so was patronized by her spouse, the Right Hon. Joseph Addison. Sir Robert Walpole’s creature, Giles Earl, a trading justice of the peace (compare Fielding and “300l. a year of the dirtiest money in the world”) used to examine criminals, for the amusement of the company, in the public room at Button’s. Here, too, was a lion’s head letter-box, into which communications for the Guardian were dropped. At Button’s, Pope is reported to have said of Patrick, the lexicographer, who made pretensions to criticism, that “a dictionary-maker might know the meaning of one word, but not of two put together.”
[8] Not, however, to forget that another Duchess, Marlborough’s daughter, who loved Congreve so, had after his death a waxen image made in his effigy, and used to weep over it, and anoint the gouty feet.
[9] “They said he could not colour,” said old Mrs. Hogarth one day to John Thomas Smith, showing him a sketch of a girl’s head. “It’s a lie; look there: there’s flesh and blood for you, my man.”
Studies in Animal Life.
“Authentic tidings of invisible things;—
Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,
And central peace subsisting at the heart
Of endless agitation.”—The Excursion.