ESSAY XX. ON COFFEE-HOUSE POLITICIANS
Some variations from the MS. are given in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of Table Talk.
[190]. ‘They live and move,’ etc. Acts, xvii. 28. The Queen, etc. Queen Caroline returned to England in June 1820, and died on August 7, 1821. During that time her case was of course the chief topic of conversation in London. George IV. was crowned on July 19, 1821. ‘That of an hour’s age,’ etc. Macbeth, Act IV. Scene 3. The Two-penny Post-Bag. Moore’s, published in 1813. The Westminster Election. Two memorable elections took place in Westminster in 1819 and 1820. In the first Hobhouse was defeated by George Lamb; in the second he was successful. Have nothing farther to say. In the MS. this sentence is followed by ‘They are like an oyster at the ebb of the tide, gaping for fresh tidings.’ The Bridge Street Association. The Constitutional Association or, as it was called by its opponents, ‘The Bridge Street Gang,’ founded in 1821 ‘to support the laws for suppressing seditious publications, and for defending the country from the fatal influence of disloyalty and sedition.’ The Association was an ill-conducted party organisation and created so much opposition by its imprudent prosecutions that it very soon disappeared. See an article in The Edinburgh Review for June, 1822. (Vol. XXXVII. p. 110). Mr. Cobbett’s Letter. Cobbett’s Letter ‘To Mr. James Cropper, a Quaker Merchant of Liverpool, on his letter to Mr. Wilberforce relating to East India and West India Sugar,’ appeared in the Weekly Register on July 21, 1821 (Vol. XL. p. 1.) [191]. ‘Any six of these men in buckram.’ See Henry IV. Part I., Act II. Scene 4. Note. This note is not in the MS., but the words ‘Draper’ and ‘Radical Tobacco’ are jotted down in the text. As Trim blew up the army, etc. Tristram Shandy, III. 20. Note. ‘Dream on, blest pair,’ etc.
‘Sleep on,
Blest pair! and O! yet happiest, if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more.’
Paradise Lost, IV. 773–5.
‘a great arithmetician,
One Michael Cassio, a Florentine.’
Othello, Act I. Scene 1.