[21] Highwaymen, as contradistinguished from footpads.
[22] Since Mr. Coates here avows himself the writer of this diatribe against Sir Robert Walpole, attacked under the guise of Turpin in the Common Sense of July 30, 1737, it is useless to inquire further into its authorship. And it remains only to refer the reader to the Gents. Mag., vol. vii. p. 438, for the article above quoted; and for a reply to it from the Daily Gazetteer contained in p. 499 of the same volume.
[23] In reference to this imaginary charm, Sir Thomas Browne observes, in his "Vulgar Errors." "What natural effects can reasonably be expected, when, to prevent the Ephialtes, or Nightmare, we hang a hollow stone in our stables?" Grose also states, "that a stone with a hole in it, hung at the bed's head, will prevent the nightmare, and is therefore called a hag-stone." The belief in this charm still lingers in some districts, and maintains, like the horse-shoe affixed to the barn-door, a feeble stand against the superstition-destroying "march of intellect."
[24] Brown's Pastorals.
[25] The Merry Beggars.
[26] The parties to be wedded find out a dead horse, or any other beast, and standing one on the one side, and the other on the other, the patrico bids them live together till death do them part; and so shaking hands, the wedding dinner is kept at the next alehouse they stumble into, where the union is nothing but knocking of cannes, and the sauce, none but drunken brawles.—Dekkar.
[27] Receiver.
[28] Memoirs, of the right villainous John Hall, the famous, and notorious Robber, penned from his Mouth some Time before his Death, 1708.
[29] A famous highwayman.
[30] A real gentleman.