Critical and Historical Essays - Volume 2 by Thomas Babington Macaulay (fun to read .txt) 📕

of letters, sometime a Jesuit. An elegant Latin versifier, especially on philosophical themes (1666-1728)

Franc de Pompignan, Advocate-General of France, an Academician and an opponent of Encyclopaedists, in consequence of which Voltaire lampooned him (1709-84)

Franche Comte, that part of France which lies south of Lorraine and west of Switzerland

Freron, took sides with the Church against the attacks of Voltaire; had some reputation as a critic (d. 1776)


GALLIENUS and Honorius, late Roman emperors who suffered from barbaric invasions

Galt, John Scotch custom-house officer and novelist, wrote The Ayrshire Legatees, The Provost, Sir Andrew Wylie, etc.

Galway, Lord (Macaulay is not quite so severe on him in his History of England)

Ganganelli, who as Clement XIV. held the papacy, 1769-74, and suppressed the Jesuits

George of Trebizond, a celebrated humanist (1396-1486), professor of Greek at Venice in 1428 and papal secretary at Rome, C. 1450

Gibby, Sir, Sir Gilbert Heathcote

Gifford, editor of the Anti-Jacobin and afterwards of the Quarterly Review, in which he attacked Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. His satires, the Baviad and the Maviad, had some reputation in their day (1757-1826)

Gilpin, Rev. Joshua G., rector of Wrockwardine, whose new and corrected edition of the Pilgrim's Progress appeared in 1811

Godfrey of Bouillon, a leader of the First Crusade; he took Jerusalem in 1099

Goldoni, "the founder of Italian Comedy" (1707-93), whose pieces supplanted the older Italian farces and burlesques

Gondomar, Count of, the Spanish ambassador at the court of James I. who ruined Raleigh, and negotiated the proposed marriage of Charles I. with the Infanta

Gonsalvo de Cordova, the great captain who took Granada from the Moors, Zante from the Turks, and Naples from the French (1443- 1515)

Grecian, the, the resort of the learned in Devereux Street Strand

Grotius, a celebrated Dutch scholar, equally famed for his knowledge of theology, history, and law (d. 1645)

Gwynn, Nell, an orange girl who became mistress of Charles II. and the ancestress of the Dukes of St. Albans


HAILES, Lord, David Dalrymple, author of the Annals of Scotland (1726-92)

Hale, Sir Matthew, Chief Justice of the King's Bench under Charles II, and author of several religious and moral works

Halford, Sir Henry, one of the leading physicians in Macaulay's day (1766-1844)

Hamilton, Gerard, M.P. for Petersfield, and of a somewhat despicable character. The nickname was "Single-speech Hamilton,"

Harpagon, the miser in Moliere's L'Avare

Hawkins, Sir John. a club companion of Johnson's (d. 1780), whose Life and Works of Johnson (II vols., 1787-89) was a careless piece of work, soon superseded by Boswell's

Hayley, William, Cowper's friend and biographer (1745-1820). Byron ridiculed his Triumphs of Temper and Triumphs of Music, and Southey said everything was good about him except his poetry

Henriade, Voltaire's La Ligue, ou Henri le Grand

Hierocles, a neo-Platonic philosopher (c. 450 A.D.), who after long labour collected a book of twenty-eight jests, a translation of which (Gentleman's Magazine, 1741) has been attributed to Johnson

Hill, Aaron, playwright, stage-manager, and projector of bubble schemes (1685-1750). See Pope's Dunciad, ii. 295 ff.

Hippocrene, "the fountain of the Muses, formed by the hoof of Pegasus"

Holbach, Baron, a French "philosophe" who entertained at his hospitable board in Paris all the Encyclopaedia (q.v.) writers; a materialist, but a philanthropist (1723-89)

Holofernes, the pedantic school-master in Love's Labour 's Last

Home, John, a minister of the Scottish Church (1724-1808), whose tragedy of Douglas was produced in Edinburgh in 1756

Hoole, John, a clerk in the India House, who worked at translations, e.g. of Tasso and Ariosto, and original literature in his spare hours

Hotel of Rambouillet, the intellectual salon which centred round the Italian Marquise de R.(1588-1665), and degenerated into the pedantry which Moliere satirized in Les Preceiuses Ridicules

Hughes, John, a poet and essayist, who contributed frequently to the Tatler, and Guardian (1677-1720)

Hume, Mr. Joseph, English politician, reformer, and philanthropist (1777-1855)

Hurd, Richard, Bishop in succession of Lichfield, Coventry, and Worcester; edited in 1798 with fulsome praise the works of his fellow bishop Warburton of Gloucester

Hutchinson, Mrs., wife of Colonel Hutchinson, the governor of Nottingham Castle in the Civil War, whose Memoirs (published 1806) she wrote

Hutten, Ulrich von, German humanist and reformer (1488-1523)


IMLAC (see Johnson's Rasselas, Ch. viii xii.)

Ireland's Vortigern, a play represented by W. H. Ireland as Shakespeare's autograph; failed when Sheridan produced it in 1796, and afterwards admitted a forgery

Ivimey, Mr., Baptist divine and historian of the early nineteenth century, who compiled a life of Bunyan


JANSENIAN CONTROVERSY, arose early in the seventeenth century over the Augustinian principle of the sovereign and the irresistible nature of divine grace, denied by the Jesuits. In connection with this controversy Pascal wrote his Provincial Letters

Jeanie Deans (see Scott's The Heart Of Midlothian)

Jedwood justice; the little town of Jedburgh was prominent in border-warfare, and its justice was proverbially summary, the execution of the accused usually preceding his trial

Jonathan's and Garraway's, Coffee-houses in Cornhill and Exchange Alley respectively, specially resorted to by brokers and merchants

Jortin, John, an eminent and scholarly divine, who wrote on the Truth, Christian Religion and on History (1698-1770)

Julius, the second pope (1502-13) of that name, whose military zeal outran his priestly inclination. He fought against the Venetians, and the French

Justiza, M Mayor, "a magistrate appointed by King and the Cortes who acted as mediator between the King and the people." Philip II. abolished the office)

KENRICK, William, a hack writer, who in the Monthly Review in 1765, attacked Johnson's Shakespeare with "a certain coarse smartness" (1725?-79)

Kitcat Club, founded c. 1700 by thirty-nine Hanoverian statesmen and authors on the basis of an earlier society (see Spectator No. 9)

LA BRUYERE, John de, tutor to the Duke of Burgundy and a member of the Academy; author of Characters after the manner of Theophrastus (1644~96)

La Clos, author of Liaisons Dangereuses, a masterpiece of immorality (1741-1803)

Lambert, Daniel, weighed 739 lbs., and measured 3 yds. 4 ins. round the waist (1770-1809)

Langton, Bennet, a classical scholar and contributor to The Idler. Entered Johnson's circle in 1752 (1737-1801)

League of Cambray, the union in 1508 of Austria, France, Spain and the Papacy against Venice

League of Pilnitz, between Austria, Prussia, and others (1791) for the restoration of Louis XVI.

Lee, Nathaniel, a play-writer who helped Dryden in his Duke of Guise (1655-92)

Leman Lake, Lake of Geneva

Lope de Vega, Spain's greatest, and the world's most prolific dramatist. Secretary to the Inquisition (1562-1635)

Lunsford, a notorious bully and profligate; a specimen of the worst type of the royalist captains


MACLEOD, Colonel (see Tour to the Hebrides, Sept. 23)

Mainwaring, Arthur, editor of the Medley, and Whig pamphleteer (1668-1712)

Malbranche, Nicholas, tried to adopt and explain the philosophy of Descartes in the interests of theology (d. 1715)

Mallet, David, a literary adventurer who collaborated with Thomson in writing the masque Alfred in which the song "Rule Britannia" was produced (1703-65)

Malone, Edmund, an eminent Shakesperian scholar, who also wrote a Life of Reynolds and a Life of Dryden (1741-1812)

Manfred, King of the Two Sicilies who struggled for his birthright against three popes, who excommunicated him and gave his kingdom to Charles of Anjou, fighting against whom he fell in 1266

Manichees, the sect founded by Mani (who declared himself to be the Paraclete) which held a blend of Magian, Buddhist, and Christian principles

Manlius, the Roman hero who in B.C. 390 saved Rome from the Gauls, and who was later put to death on a charge of treason

Marat, Jean Paul, a fanatical democrat whose one fixed idea was wholesale slaughter of the aristocracy; assassinated by Charlotte Corday (1743-93)

Markland, Jeremiah a famous classical scholar and critic (1693- 1776)

Marli, a royal (now presidential) country-house ten miles west from Paris

Marsilio Ficino, an eminent Italian Platonist, noted for his purity of life and for his aid to the Renaissance (1433-99)

Mason William, friend and biographer of Gray; wrote Caractacus and some odes (1725-97)

Massillon, Jean Baptiste, famous French preacher, Bishop of Clermont, a master of style and persuasive eloquence. (1663- 1742)

Master of the Sentences, Peter Lombard, a disciple of Abelard and one of the most famous of the "Schoolmen" of the twelfth century

Maximin, surnamed Thrax-"the Tracian." Roman Emperor, 235-38. His cruel tyranny led to a revolt in which he was murdered by his own soldiers

Meillerie, on the Lake of Geneva, immortalised by J. J. Rousseau

Merovingians, a dynasty of Frankish kings in the sixth and seventh centuries A.D.

Metastasio, Pietro Trapassi, an Italian poet (1698-1782)

Mina, a famous guerilla chief in the Peninsular war, and (in 1834) against Don Carlo (1781-1834). Empecinado ( "covered with pitch") a nick-name given to Juan Matin Diaz, an early comrade of Mina

Mirabel and Millamont, the Benedick and Beatrice of Beaumont and Fletcher's Wildgoose Chase

Mithridates, king of Pontus (B.C. 120-63), famous for his struggle against Rome, and the general vigour and ability of his intellect

Moliere's doctors (see L'Amour Medecin (II. iii.), Le Malade Imaginaire, and Le Medicin malgre lui)

Mompesson, Sir Giles, one of the Commissioners for the granting of monopoly licenses

Monks and Giants, "These stanzas are from a poem by Hookham Frere, really entitled Prospectus and specimen of an inteneded national Work . . . relating to King Arthur and his Round Table,"

Monmouth Street, now called Dudley Street

Morgante Maggiore, a serio-comic romance in verse, by Pulci of Florence (1494)

Morone, an Italian cardinal and diplomatist (1509-80)

Murillo, Spain's greatest painter (1618-82)

Murphy, Arthur, an actor-author, who, besides writing some plays, edited Fielding, and published an Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson (1727-1815)

Murray, Lindley, the Pennsylvania grammarian (1745-1826), who settled near York, and there produced his Grammar of the English Language


NARSES the Roman general (d. 573) who drove the Goths out of Rome. In his youth he had been a slave

Nephelococcygia, i.e. "Cuckoo town in the cloud"-a fictitious city referred to in the Birds of Aristophanes,

Newdigate and Seatonian poetry, verse written in competition for prizes founded by Sir R..Newdigate and Rev. Thos. Seaton at Oxford and Cambridge respectively, Dodsley (ib.) was an honest publisher and author who brought out Poems by Several Hands in 1748,

Nugent, Dr., one of the original members and a regular attendant at the meetings of the Literary Club


OCTOBER CLUB, a High Church Tory Club of Queen Anne's time, which met at the Bell Tavern, Westminster

o Daphnis K. T. L., "Daphnis went into the waters; the eddies swirled over the man whom the Muses loved and the nymphs held dear" (Theocritus, Idylls, i.). An allusion to Shelley's death

Odoacer, a Hun, who became emperor, and was assassinated by his colleague Theodoric the Ostrogoth in 493

Oldmixon, John, a dull and insipid historian (1673-1742), roughly handled by Pope in the Dunciad (ii. 283)

Orlando Furioso, Ariosto's (1471-1533) great poem of chivalry suggested by the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo (c. 1430-94). Alcina is a kind of Circe in the Orlando Furioso

Ortiz, eighteenth-century historian, author of Compendio de la Historia de Espana

Osborn, John, a notorious bookseller who "sweated" Pope and Johnson among other authors (d. 1767)

Otho, Roman emperor (69 A.D.) The only brass coins bearing his name were struck in the provinces, and are very rare


PADALON, the Hindu abode of departed Spirits

Paestum, ancient Posidonia, mod. Pesto,