Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2
by
Thomas Babington Macaulay

Part 16 out of 16



beneficially at Athens (541-527 B.C.), and at Syracuse (484-473
B.C.), respectively

Pococurante, one who cares little and knows less: a dabbler

Porridge Island, the slang name of an alley near St. Martin's-in-
the-Fields, which was pulled down c. 1830


Politian, a distinguished poet and scholar in the time of the
Italian Renaissance; professor of Greek and Latin at Florence
(1454-94)

Pompadour, Madame de, mistress of Louis XV., and virtually ruler
of France from 1745 till her death in 1764

Prior, Matthew, a wit and poet of the early eighteenth century
whose lyrics were pronounced by Thackeray to be "amongst the
easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humorous" in the
English language,

Pudding, Jack, a clown who swallows black puddings, etc. Cp.
Germ. Hans Worst, Fr. Jean-potage

Pulci, a Florentine poet (noted for his humorous Sonnets), and
friend of Lorenzo de' Medici (1432-84)

Pye--the immediate--Cibber--more remote--predecessor of Southey
in the Laureateship

Pyrgopolynices, a braggart character in Plautus's Miles Gloriosus

Pyrrho, "the father of the Greek sceptics," contemporary with
Aristotle. Like, Carneades (ib.), he denied that there was any
criterion of certainty in the natural or the moral world


QUEDLINBURGH, an old town in Saxony at the foot of the Harz, long
a favourite residence of the mediaeval emperors


RALPHO, the clerk and squire of Hudibras in Samuel Butler's
satire of that name

Rambouillet, the marchioness of this name was a wealthy patron of
art and literature, and gathered round her a select salon of
intellectual people, which degenerated into pedantry, was
ridiculed, and dissolved at her death in 1665

Ramus, Peter French, philosopher and humanist; attacked Aristotle
and Scholasticism; massacred on the eve of St, Bartholomew, 1572

Rehearsal, The, a burlesque based on Beaumont's Knight of the
Burning Pestle, produced in 1671 by George Clifford, Duke of
Buckingham, and Samuel Butler

Relapse, a comedy by Sir John Vanbrugh (d. 1726), who also
achieved some distinction as a soldier and an architect

Richard Roe, nominal defendant in ejectment suits. CP. the "M. Or
N." of the Prayer-Book

Richelieu . . Torcy, Richelieu and Mazarin were cardinals and
statesmen in the seventeenth century, whose power exceeded that
of the king; Colbert Louvis, and Torcy were influential and able
men of the same time, but dependent upon the royal pleasure

Robertson, William, wrote History of Scotland, History of the
Reign of Charles V., etc. A friend of Hume's (1721-93)

Rochelle and Auvergne, head-quarters of the Huguenots

Rowe, Nicholas, dramatist and poet laureate (1715), editor of a
monumental edition of Shakespeare

Rymer, Thomas, Historiographer-royal, and the compiler Of
Foedera--a collection of historical documents concerning the
relations of England and foreign powers (1639-1714)

Ryswick, Peace Of, by this treaty (in 1697) Louis XIV. recognised
William as King of England, and yielded certain towns to Spain
and the Empire

SALVATOR ROSA, a Neapolitan author and artist (1615-73); "the
initiator of romantic landscape,"

Satirist . . . Age, small, libellous, and short-lived weekly
papers in the year 1838

Saxe, led the invading Austrian army into Bohemia, and afterward
became a marshal of the French army, defeating the Duke of
Cumberland at Fontenoy, 1745

Scamander, a river of Troas, in Asia Minor

Scapin, the title-character of one of Moliere's comedies; a
knavish valet who fools his master

Scott, Michael, a twelfth-century sage who gained a large
reputation as a wizard and magician

Scriblerus Club a literary coterie, founded in 1714, which had
only a short life, but produced Swift's Gulliver

Scroggs, Chief-justice in 1678--the year of Titus Oates and the
"Popish Plot." A worthy successor to Jeffreys

Scudert, George de, French poet and novelist (1601-67)

Scudery, Madeleine, a woman of good qualities, but as a novelist
exceedingly tedious (1607-1701)

Scythians, i. e. Russians. Scythia proper is the steppe-land
between the Carpathian Mountains and the river Don in South-East
Russia

Seged (see The Rambler, Nos. 204, 205)

Shafton, Sir Piercie (see Scott's The Monastery)

Shaw, prize-fighter of immense strength and size, who enlisted in
the Life Guards, and was killed at Waterloo

Sieyes, Abbe, one of the leaders of the Revolution, who retired
on discovering that his colleagues were using him for their own
end (d. 1836)

Simond, M. (the reference is to his Journal of a Tour and
Residence in Great Britain during the years 1810 and 1811, PP.
48-50)

Simonides, lived at Athens and Syracuse, and besides being a
philosopher, was one of Greece's most famous lyric poets (556-467
B.C.),

Smalridge, George, one of Queen Anne's chaplains, and a good
preacher; became Bishop of Bristol in 1714 (d. 1719)

Sobiesky, John, King of Poland, who defended his country against
Russians and Turks. In 1683 he fought a Turkish army which was
besieging Vienna, and so delivered that city

Solis, Antonio de, dramatist and historian (Conquest of Mexico)
(1610-86)

Somers, the counsel for the Seven Bishops, 1688. He filled many
high legal offices, and from 1708 to 1710 was President of
the Council

Southcote, Joanna, a Methodist "prophetess" who, suffering from
religious mania, gave herself out to be the woman of Revelation
ch. xii., and sold passports to heaven which she called "seals"
(1750-1814)

Spectator (the reference is to No. 7)

Spinola, Spanish marquis and general who served his country with
all his genius for naught (1571-1630)

Squire Sullen (see Farquhar's The Beaux Stratagem)

Squire Western, the genial fox-hunting Squire of Fielding's Tom
Jones

Statius, a Latin poet (61-96 A.D.), author of the Thebais, who
lived at the Court of Domitian

Steenkirk, a neckcloth of black silk, said to have been first
worn at the battle of Steenkirk, 1692

Stepney, George, a smart but somewhat licentious minor poet who
translated Juvenal (1663-1707)

Sternholds, metrical translators of the Psalms, so called from
Thomas Sternhold, whose version of 1562 held the field for 200
years

St James's, the London residence of the Georges; Leicester
Square, the residence of the Princes of Wales

Stowell, Lord, Advocate-General, judge of the High Court of
Admiralty, etc., etc., the greatest English authority on
International Law (1745-1836)

Strahan, Dr., vicar of Islington and friend of Johnson, whose
Prayers and Meditations he edited

Streatham Park, the home of the Thrales. At St. John's Gate in
Clerkenwell, the Gentleman's Magazine was long printed

Simon, Duc de, ambassador to Spain and the writer of amusing and
Valuable memoirs. An uncompromising aristocrat

Sweden gained Western Pomerania

Swerga, the Hindu Olympus an the summit of Mount Meru


TAMERLANE, the great Asiatic conqueror (1336-1405), whose empire
reached from the Levant to the Ganges

Tanais, the river Don in Eastern Russia

Tate, Nahum, succeeded Shadwell in 1690 as poet-laureate; mainly
remembered by his collaboration with Nicholas Brady in a metrical
version of the Psalms

Telemachus, the son of Ulysses, whose search for his father was
only successful when he returned home. Fenelon, the great French
divine (1651-1715), wrote of his adventures

Thales, flourished c. 600 B.C., and held that water was the
primal and universal principle,

Thalia, the muse of Comedy and one of the three Graces

Theobalds, a Hertfordshire hamlet where James I. had a beautiful
residence, originally built by Burleigh

Thiebault, Professor of Grammar at Frederic's military school

Thirlby, Styan, Fellow of Jesus Colleges Cambridge. He edited
Justin Martyr's Works and contributed to Theobald's Shakespeare
with acumen and ingenuity (c. 1692-1753)

Thraso, a braggart captain in Terence's Eunuch

Three Bishoprics, those of Lorraine, Metz, and Verdun taken from
the Germans by Henry II. of France in 1554 and recovered in 1871

Thundering Legion, the Roman legion which overcame Marcomanni in
179 A.D., their extreme thirst having been relieved by a
thunderstorm sent in answer to the prayers of Christian soldiers
in its ranks

Thurtell, John, a notorious boxer and gambler (b. 1794) who was
hanged at Hertford on Jan. 9, 1824, for the brutal murder of
William Weare, one of his boon companions

Tickell, Thomas, a politician, minor poet, and occasional
contributor to the Spectator and the Guardian (1686-1740)

Tillotson, John Robert. Trained as a Puritan, he conformed to the
Episcopal Church at the Restoration and ultimately became
Archbishop of Canterbury a man of tolerant and moderate views
like Baxter and Burnet, and unlike Collier

Tilly, Johann Tserklaes, Count of, the great Catholic general of
the Thirty Years War; mortally wounded at Rain in 1632

Tiresias, in Greek mythology a soothsayer on whom Zeus conferred
the gift of prophecy in compensation for the blindness with which
Athens had struck him

Treatise on the Bathos, "The Art of Sinking in Poetry," a work
projected by Arbuthnot, Swift, and Pope, and mainly written by
the last-named

Treaty of the Pyrenees, between France and Spain, 1659

Trissotin, simpering literary dabbler in Moliere's Les Femmes
Savantes

Turgot, a French statesman 727-81) who held the doctrines of the
philosophe party and was for nearly two years manager of the
national finances under Louis XVI.

Two Sicilies, the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples

Tyers, Tom, author of a Biographical Sketch of Doctor Johnson. It
was a remark of Johnson's that Tyers described him the best



VAUCLUSE, a village in S.E. France, twenty miles from Avignon
where Petrarch lived for sixteen years

Verres, the Roman governor of Sicily (73-71 B.C.), for plundering
which island he was brought to trial and prosecuted by Cicero

Vico, John Baptist, Professor of Rhetoric at Naples and author of
Principles of a New Science, a work on the philosophy of history
(d. 1744)

Victor Amadeus of Savoy, soldier and statesman (1655-1732) His
sons-in-law were Philip V. and the Duke of Burgundy

Vida, an Italian Latin poet (c. 1480-1566)

Vida et Sannazar, eminent modern Latin poets of the early
sixteenth century

Villars, Louis, Duc de, French marshal, defeated at Ramillies and
Malplaquet
(d. 1734),

Vinegar Bible, published at Oxford in; 1717; in it the headline
of Luke xx. reads "vinegar," an error for "vineyard,"


Vision of Theodore, set Johnson's Miscellaneous Works (for the
"Genealogy of Wit," see Special", NO. 35; for the "Contest
between
Rest and Labour," Rambler, No. 33)

Vitruvius, contemporary with Julius Caesar and author of a famous
work on Architecture

Vossius, Gerard, Dutch philologist and friend of Grotius; the
historian of Pelagianism (1577-1649)


WARBURTON, William, Bishop of Gloucester, friend of Pope, and
author of the Divine Legation of Moses and other theological and
legal works (1698-1779)

Wild, Jonathan, a detective who turned villain and was executed
for burglary in 1725; the hero of one of Fielding's stories

Williams, Archbishop of York (and opponent of Laud) in the time
of Charles I.; Vernon, Archbishop of York, 1807. The tenure of
the See of York seems to be the only parallel

Williams, Sir Charles Hanbury, Ambassador to Berlin (1746-49).
His satires against Walpole's opponents are easy and humorous (d.
1759)

Will's. See Button's

Windham, Rt. Hon. William, Secretary of War under Pitt and again
in 1806. In his Diary is an account of Johnson's last days (1750-
1810)

Windsor, poor Knights of, a body of military pensioners who
reside within the precincts of Windsor Castle

Witwould, Sir Wilful. Set Congreve's The Way of the World

Wronghead, Sir Francis, Vanbrugh and Cibber's The Provoked
Husband


XIMENES, Cardinal, statesman, and regent (1436-1517)


ZADIG, the title-character of a novel by Voltaire, dealing with
the fatalistic aspect of human life

Zephon, the cherub sent with Ithuriel by Gabriel to find out the
whereabouts of Satan after his flight from hell

Zimri in Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel stands for the second
Duke of Buckingham (for the original see 3 Kings xvi. 9)







 


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