NOTES. SWIFT. 1. 6.-Harlequin. A popular character in the Italian comedy. He was a buffoon, dressed in party-colored clothes, who amused the audience by horse play. 2. 12. The humourous writer, etc. Thackeray is here doubt. less referring to a famous humourist of the nineteenth centuryhimself. 2. 16. To the best of his means, etc. This sentence is an example of Thackeray's occasional carelessness in style. the extreme awkwardness of the construction. Note 3. 3.-Kilkenny. Town in the county of Kilkenny, in the southern part of Ireland. Congreve, Farquhar, and Berkeley also attended this grammar school. In view of Swift's quarrelsome disposition, it seems not inappropriate that his early life should have had associations in a place made famous by the legend of the Kilkenny cats. 3. 5.-Was wild. It does not appear that Swift was dissipated. He was morose and rebellious. Extreme poverty is not apt to lessen the pride and sensitiveness of an undergraduate like Swift. He did well in Greek and Latin, was poor in philosophy, and, curiously enough, the future Dean was marked negligenter in theology. 4. 8.-He was appointed Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, in Dublin, in April, 1713, and was installed on June 13. 6. 17.-Would you have liked to be a friend of the great Dean? The majority of Swift's readers would to-day undoubtedly answer in the affirmative. 8. 11. His servility. This is surely unfair. Swift was not a cringing toady, nor a boot-licker. Manliness was an essential feature of his character; and it is well known that in dealing out patronage he always served himself last, especially when there was not enough to go around. 9. 14.-Macheath. A highwayman who is the hero of Gay's Beggars' Opera (1728). II. 7.-Condottieri. Italian for "soldiers of fortune." Battle fought July 1, 1690, in Ireland, in which King William III decisively defeated the deposed Stuart King James II. The Boyne is the most important river in eastern Ireland, being 65 miles long. An obelisk, 150 feet high, now commemorates the great battle. 12. 6. South Sea Bubble. The South Sea Company was established by Lord Treasurer Harley in 1711 with the design of providing for the extinction of the public debt, then about £10,000,000. The debt was assumed by a number of merchants, the Government agreeing to pay per cent. interest for a certain period, securing the sum by making permanent certain impost duties. The Government granted to purchasers of the fund a monopoly of the trade to the South Sea (the coast of Spanish America), and the Company was organised under the name "South Sea Company." The prevailing opinion was that enormous riches awaited all stockholders; the Company flourished; it vied with the Bank of England in controlling English finances. In 1720 the Company assumed the entire debt of over £30,000,000, bearing interest at 5 per cent. The stock was in great demand. A rage for speculation followed. The sum of £1000 was paid for a single share of £100. Other bubbles followed suit; to make oil from sunflowers, to extract silver from lead, etc. The streets near 'Change Alley were lined with desks. As the year 1720 drew to a close, the bubble burst. Thousands of families were ruined. ་ 12. 24. Coup. A political stroke, usually called coup d'état. 13. 1.-Copenhagen. The city was bombarded in 1807. "Shortly after the trea' of Tilsit Canning learnt that Napoleon meant to seize the fleet of Denmark, which was at that time neutral, and to employ it against Great Britain. A British fleet and army were sent to Copenhagen, and the Crown Prince of Denmark was asked to deliver up the Danish fleet on a promise that it should be restored at the end of the war. On his refusal, Copenhagen was bombarded till at last the Danes gave way. The fleet was surrendered, and the British Government, on the plea that it had been driven to use force, refused to be bound by its offer to restore the ships ultimately to their owners. There were many in England who found fault with the whole proceeding, and even George III seems to have been very much of their opinion. Speaking to the gentleman who had carried to the Crown Prince the message asking him to give up the fleet, the old King asked whether he found the Prince upstairs or downstairs. He was on the ground floor, please your Majesty,' was the reply. 'I am glad of it for your sake,' said the King; 'for if he had half my spirit, he would have kicked you downstairs.' (Gardiner's Student's History of England, p. 860.) 15. 1.—Poetical power. Although Swift wrote many clever rimes and witty verses, his poetical powers were very slight, and the real reason why he was afraid to use them was because he did not possess them. No great writer ever made more clearly a false start in literature than did Swift. As the most convincing proof of Bacon's lack of poetic genius lies in his own verse-writing, so no one can read Swift's early poems without mentally saying Amen to Dryden's famous remark, "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet." It was not the brutality of Dryden's statement that galled Swift; it was its truth. Let readers examine Swift's early Pindaric Odes, and judge for themselves. 15. 10.-Sir William Temple. The elegant essayist, littérateur and dilettante, born 1628, died 1698. 15. 23.-Mantua væ, etc. From Vergil, Ecl. ix. 28. "Alas, Mantua, too near the wretched Cremona !"' An excellent quip. 19. 10.—Moxa. "A soft woolly mass prepared from the young leaves of Artemisia Chinensis, and used as a cautery by burning it on the skin; hence, any substance used in a like manner, as cotton impregnated with niter, amadou." (Webster's Dict.) Amadou is a spongy substance growing on trees. 20. 25.-Plates-bandes. Flower-beds. 20. 26.-Epicurus. The founder of the Epicurean philosophy (see W. Wallace's admirable exposition of this system). He was born on the island of Samos in 337, or, as some say, in 341 B.C. He removed to Athens about 307. His personal character was amiable and virtuous, and the real nature of his philosophical teaching has been commonly misrepresented. He died 270 B.C. 20. 26.--Diogenes Laertius. This name was ascribed to a kind of scrap-book, labeled "Lives and Doctrines of Famous Philosophers." Of Laertius himself we know nothing. 20. 27. Semiramis [Legendary and Mythical]. The wife of Ninus, founder of the Assyrian kingdom-a woman of great beauty, passion, and power. She is supposed to have flourished about 2200 B.C. 20. 27.-Hesperides. These were the daughters of the Night, who guarded the golden apples belonging to Here or Juno. [See any Classical Dictionary, or Professor Gayley's excellent book, Classic Myths in English Literature, published by Ginn & Co.] 21. 1.-Mæcenas. Gaius Cilnius Mæcenas, born between 74 and 64 B.C., died 8 B.C. He was a statesman, but chiefly famous as a patron of literary men. He was a friend of young Octavian and his most trusted counsellor. He created and formed the center of a literary circle at Rome, which included Vergil, Horace, and others. 21. I.-Strabo. A Greek geographer, born 63 B.C., died after 21 A.D. He traveled extensively, wrote histories, and particularly a geography in seventeen books. 21. 3.-Pythagoras. A Greek philosopher, supposed to have been born at Samos about 582 B.C. He is chiefly known on account of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. He laid the greatest stress on simplicity and self-restraint in living. 23. 1.-Bishop Kennet. White Kennett, D.D., bishop of Peterborough (1660-1728). Sir Walter Scott published this description of Swift from a MS. in the British Museum. Scott says: "The picture is powerfully drawn, though with a coarse and invidious pencil."-Swift's Works, ed. Scott, I. 125. 26. 4.-Bolingbroke. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751). His philosophical views exerted a powerful influence on contemporary men of letters; shown most prominently perhaps in Pope's Essay on Man. He was titled in 1712, and was Prime Minister in 1714. A brilliant and rather shallow man. 26. 13.-Gay. The well-known poet (1688-1732). 28. 5.-Peccavi. I am a sinner. 29. 8.-Consciousness of his own scepticism. We shall probably never know the exact attitude of Swift toward religious dogmas-perhaps he did not know himself. His mind was apparently skeptical by nature, but he abhorred and despised free-thinkers, and belaboured them soundly. He was the most powerful champion of Christianity the age of Anne produced, but he certainly derived little peace and consolation from it for his own suffering soul. He may have thought that the Church was a necessary social institution, and hence regarded its assailers as little better than anarchists. At times we are inclined to class him as a skeptic, as Thackeray does; but when we read his beautiful and passionate "Prayers for Mrs. Johnson," we have to make many reservations. 29. 22.-Abudah. He was a wealthy merchant of Bagdad, who figures in Tales of the Genii, by James Ridley (1736-65). Abudah meets with strange adventures in his quest for a talisman which he is driven to seek by the threats of a little old hag who haunts him by night and makes his life miserable. At last he finds that the inestimable talisman is to obey God and to keep his commandments; and he also discovers that all his wonderful adventures have been only a dream. "And there too was Abudah, the merchant, with the terrible old woman hobbling out of the box in his bedroom."-Dickens. 30. 8.-Sava indignatio. "According to the precise instructions of his Will, Swift was buried privately, on the 22nd of October, at twelve o'clock at night: and, likewise by his own instructions, on a tablet of black marble over his grave in the Cathedral, in 'large letters, deeply cut, and strongly gilded,' there were inscribed the words HIC DEPOSITUM EST CORPUS DECANI: UBI SÆVA INDIGNATIO ULTERIUS COR LACERARE NEQUIT. ET IMITARE, SI POTERIS, STRENUUM PRO VIRILI LIBERTATIS VINDICEM. OBIIT ANNO (1745) MENSIS (OCTOBRIS) DIE (19) ÆTATIS ANNO (78).” -Craik's Life of Swift, II. 258. |