‘That unfeather’d two-legged thing, a son.’
Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, l. 170.
Unpleasing flats and sharps. Cf. 4 ‘Straining harsh discords and unpleasing sharps.’ Romeo and Juliet, III. 5.
His Muse has been silent. Waverley was published in 1814, the Lord of the Isles in 1815; other novels followed, and, with the exception of Harold the Dauntless, published in 1817, Sir Walter’s work was confined to novels until the issue of Halidon Hill in 1822. Scott publicly acknowledged his authorship of the Waverley Novels on Feb. 23, 1827.
[6]. The translation of Ossian’s poems. James Macpherson’s (1736–1796) so-called translations were published in 1761–1763.
Shaftesbury’s Characteristics. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions and Times (1711), a collection of the works of Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671–1713) third Earl of Shaftesbury, who, says Sidgwick, was ‘the first to make psychological experience the basis of ethics.’ Mr. W. C. Hazlitt says that Hazlitt’s attention was drawn to this work in Baskerville’s edition, which his father is represented as reading in the oil painting executed in 1804.
Foregone conclusion. Othello, III. 3.
Horne Tooke. John Horne Tooke (1736–1812) was elected Member for Old Sarum in 1801, after unsuccessfully contesting Westminster in 1790 and 1797.
The Portraits of Kneller, Richardson, and others. Sir Godfrey Kneller (1648–1723), painter of the Kit-Cat Club Portraits, and Jonathan Richardson (c. 1665–1745), who, after Kneller’s death, was considered the head of his profession.
[7]. He murmurs by the running brooks. Wordsworth’s ‘A Poet’s Epitaph.’