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

22 miles S.E. from Salerno, 471

Pantheon, a circular temple in Rome, erected by Agrippa, son-in- law of Augustus, and dedicated to the gods in general: now a church and place of burial for the illustrious Italian dead

Paoli, the Corsican general (1796-1807) who, failing against the might of France, made his home in England, and was chaperoned by Boswell

Parnell, Thomas, Archdeacon of Clogher, satirist and translator. He was a sweet and easy poet with a high moral tone; friend of Addison and Swift (1679-1718)

Parson Barnabas, Parson Trulliber (see Fielding's Joseph Andrews)

Pasquin, Antony, a fifteenth-century Italian tailor, noted for his caustic wit

Paulician Theology originated in Armenia, and flourished c.660- 970 A.D. Besides certain Manichee elements it denied the deity of Jesus and abjured Mariolatry and the sacraments

Pescara, Marquis of, an Italian general who betrayed to the emperor, Charles V., the plot of Francesco Sforza for driving the Spaniards and Germans out of Italy

Peter Martyr, a name borne by three personages. The reference here is to the Italian Protestant reformer who made his home successively in Switzerland, England, Strasburg, and Zurich (d. 1562)

Phidias, Athens's greatest sculptor. A contemporary of Pericles (d. 432 B. C.)

Philips, John, best remembered by The Splendid Shilling, a good burlesque in imitation of Milton (1676-1708)

Pilpay, the Indian Aesop. For the pedigree of the Pilpay literature, see Jacobs: Fables of Bidpai (1888), 641

Pisistratus and Gelon, two able Grecian tyrants who ruled 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.