[2] The seven planets, so called by Mercurius Trismegistus.
[3] Payne Knight, the scourge of Repton and his school, speaking of the license indulged in by the modern landscape-gardeners, thus vents his indignation:
But here, once more, ye rural muses weep
The ivy'd balustrade, and terrace steep;
Walls, mellowed into harmony by time,
On which fantastic creepers used to climb;
While statues, labyrinths, and alleys pent
Within their bounds, at least were innocent!—
Our modern taste—alas!—no limit knows;
O'er hill, o'er dale, through wood and field it flows;
Spreading o'er all its unprolific spawn,
In never-ending sheets of vapid lawn.
The Landscape, a didactic Poem,
addressed to Uvedale Price, Esq.
[4] Mason's English Garden.
[5] Cowley.
[6] Query, Damocles?—Printer's Devil.
[7] James Hind—the "Prince of Prigs"—a royalist captain of some distinction, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, in 1652. Some good stories are told of him. He had the credit of robbing Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Peters. His discourse to Peters is particularly edifying.
[8] See Du-Val's life by Doctor Pope, or Leigh Hunt's brilliant sketch of him in The Indicator.
[9] We cannot say much in favor of this worthy, whose name was Thomas Simpson. The reason of his sobriquet does not appear. He was not particularly scrupulous as to his mode of appropriation. One of his sayings is, however, on record. He told a widow whom he robbed, "that the end of a woman's husband begins in tears, but the end of her tears is another husband." "Upon which," says his chronicler, "the gentlewoman gave him about fifty guineas."
[10] Tom was a sprightly fellow, and carried his sprightliness to the gallows; for just before he was turned off he kicked Mr. Smith, the ordinary, and the hangman out of the cart—a piece of pleasantry which created, as may be supposed, no small sensation.