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1. 31. child, used as a term of endearment.

11. 31-3. that the pigeon-house ... table, thus chiming in with his wife's determination to look upon everything from a gloomy point of view.

1. 32. wench, maid servant; commonly but not always, nor necessarily, used in a depreciatory sense.

1. 34. battle of Almanza, in Spain, where, in 1708, in the War of the Succession in Spain, the allied forces of the English and Dutch were utterly defeated by the Duke of Berwick, a natural son of James the Second.

1. 35. the figure I made, the_sorry position in which I felt myself to be; the poor figure I cut.

1. 36. dispatched, finished with haste.

P. 16, 1. 1. to my utter confusion, the preposition expresses the result.

1. 2. quitting, leaving, as having finished eating.

11. 2, 3. laying ... plate, another omen; from a fancied resemblance to swords crossed in combat, the crossing of the knife and fork was supposed to indicate a quarrel.

1. 4. humour her, pay regard to her fancies on the subject. figure, position in which I had laid them.

1. 15. unfortunate aspect, look which boded evil. Here again there is an allusion to astrology, aspect being properly in that so-called science the way in which the planets, from their relative positions, look upon each other, but popularly transferred to their joint look upon the earth; cp. Troilus and Cressida, i. 3. 92, "Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil.”

1. 21. properly, necessarily, in a way belonging to us; Lat. proprius, own.

1. 22. indifferent, that do not in themselves point in one direction or another; hence petty, trifling.

11. 24, 5. I have known rest, from its being regarded as ominous; the "stars with trains of fire" which Horatio speaks of as "harbingers preceding still the fates And prologue to the omen coming on," Haml. i. 1. 122, 3.

11. 26, 7. upon ... merry-thought, the merry-thought is a name given to the craw-bone of a bird, more commonly to that bone in a duck, which was used as a childish means of divination, two persons taking hold of its extremities and pulling till it snapped. If the break was in the middle, where the two limbs of the bone meet, the omen was good to both parties; if, on the other hand, one of the limbs broke off short, the person holding that limb was threatened with bad luck. screech-owl, the common or barn-door owl, whose screeching or hooting at night

was thought ominous; cp. M. N. D. v. 1. 383-5, "Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud" ; iii. H. VI. v. 6. 44, "The owl shriek'd at thy birth,- —an evil sign."

1. 30. inconsiderable, trifling.

11. 32, 3. shoot... prodigies, are magnified into omens of terrible significance; prodigy,' Lat. prodigium, a showing beforehand, sign, token.

1. 36. thirteen... company, a superstition that even now has not quite died out. The belief that if thirteen people sit down to table together, one of them will be dead before a year has passed, has its origin in Christ's Last Supper with His twelve disciples, one of whom, Judas Iscariot, immediately afterwards betrayed Him to death. Of one of the favourite companions of Frederick the Great, the Marquess D'Argens, Macaulay, Essay on Frederick the Great, writes, "His was one of that abject class of minds which are superstitious without being religious. Hating Christianity with a rancour which made him incapable of rational inquiry, he was the slave of dreams and omens, would not sit down to table with thirteen in company, turned pale if the salt fell towards him, begged his guests not to cross their knives and forks on their plates, and would not for the world commence a journey on Friday."

P. 17, 1. 1. a panic terror, by the ancients any sudden and unreasonable terror was ascribed more especially to the influence of Pan, the god of flocks and shepherds among the Greeks, from the legend that when Phidippides, the Athenian, was sent to Sparta to solicit its aid against the Persians, the god accosted him and promised to terrify the barbarians, if the Athenians would worship him. The same power was also ascribed to Dionysus (Bacchus), of whom Pan was one of his most constant attendants, to Hecate, and to other deities.

1. 8. to break the omen, to dispel the belief in some impending misfortune foreboded by the number thirteen.

1. 10. An old maid, a term applied to a woman who has passed what is generally considered the marriageable time of life. the vapours, see note on p. 12, 1. 13.

1. 12. a great family, a family of high rank.

1. 13. sybils, more properly spelt 'Sibyls,' from Gk. Elẞuλλai, Lat. Sibyllæ, the name by which several prophetic women are designated in classical literature. By some authors only four are mentioned, others increase the number to ten, among whom the most famous was the Cumaan Sibyl, who was consulted by Æneas before he descended to the lower world, and later on was said to have appeared to the Roman King Tarquinius and offered him the Sibylline books for sale.

1. 15. death-watches, noises superstitiously supposed to forebode the death of some one in the house, frequently caused by insects within the wainscot of walls; cp. Tennyson, The May Queen, Conclusion, 1. 21, “I did not hear the dog howl, mother, or the death-watch beat, There came a sweeter token when the night and morning meet," said by the dying 'May Queen.'

1. 18. extravagant, going beyond the limits of good sense. cast of mind, disposition, character, of mind: engages, binds, involves.

1. 19. impertinent, used in its literal sense of what is not pertinent, has no real relation to, the matter in question.

11. 19, 20. but in ... life, but in the performance of duties which are unnecessary; these works of supererogation being performed in order to avert imaginary ill consequences.

1. 22. entertain, receive into our minds and dwell upon.

1. 25. observation, notice.

1. 27. retrench, lessen, curtail; literally to cut off, F. retrencher; the word in this figurative sense as applied to evils is

uncommon now.

1. 31. this divining quality, this habit of mind which is always interpreting trifling events to have some important significance; from O. F. divin, a diviner, augur, one who predicts the future by holy methods.

P. 18, 1. 3. thread, a metaphor from the thread of life which the Greeks supposed to be spun by the three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, the first of whom held the distaff, the second spun the web, and the last cut it off.

1. 8. question not, doubt not.

1. 11. solicitous, anxious, eager to pry into it.

REFLECTIONS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. No. 26.

1. 26. Westminster Abbey, England's great national temple, originally founded by Sebert, King of the East Saxons, who died in 616; rebuilt by Edward the Confessor, 1049-1065; and again by Henry the Third, 1245-1272.

1. 27. the use ... applied, i.e. as the burial place of great men.

P. 19, 1. 1. cloisters, generally, as here, used for the partially enclosed walk beneath the upper story of monasteries, convents, colleges, etc., but also for any place of religious seclusion, from Lat. claustrum, an enclosure.

1. 18. in holy writ, in the Bible; The Wisdom of Solomon, v. 12, 13, "Or like as when an arrow is shot at a mark, it parteth

17-21.] REFLECTIONS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 159

the air, which immediately cometh together again, so that a man cannot know where it went through: Even so we in like manner, as soon as we were born, began to draw to an end, and had no sign of virtue to shew; but were consumed in our own wickedness. 11. 21, 22. entertained... grave, found food for reflection in watching the making of a grave.

1. 25. had a place... body, formed part of the substance of which a body was composed.

1. 29. prebendaries, functionaries of a cathedral church, so called from the 'prebend' or portion received for their maintenance, from Lat. præbenda, a payment to a private person from a public source.

11. 34, 5. this great... mortality, this great storehouse of the dead. as it were... lump, so to speak, as a whole.

P. 20, 1. 10. poetical quarter, now generally known as the 'Poets' Corner,' a name first given by Goldsmith to the southern end of the south transept, the burial place of most of the great English poets from Chaucer to the present day.

1. 11. monuments ... poets, i.e. which were cenotaphs, the bodies of the poets they commemorated being buried elsewhere.

1. 15. Blenheim, the great victory of Marlborough over the French, in the war against Louis the Fourteenth, A.D. 1704.

1. 22. turn, character, nature. Cp. p. 7, 1. 13.

1. 25. Sir Cloudesly Shovel, 1707, Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet; wrecked off the coast of Sicily when returning from Gibraltar. His body, being washed on shore, was buried, disinterred, and brought to England.

1. 27. character, characteristic.

1. 30. canopy, a covering; from “Gk. Kwvwπelwv, kwvwπetov, an Egyptian bed with mosquito curtains.-Gk. кwvwπ-, stem of Káva, a gnat, mosquito; lit. 'cone-faced,' or an animal with a cone-shaped head, from some fancied resemblance to a cone.-Gk. Kŵvos, a cone; and ❝, a face, appearance" (Skeat Ety. Dict.). is answerable to, corresponds with, sc. in its want of fitness.

...

1. 36. greater taste... politeness, a truer appreciation of ancient art and refinement; antiquity and politeness is little more than a hendiadys for 'ancient politeness.'

P. 21, ll. 4, 5. rostral crowns, decorations such as those of the Rostra, or pulpit in the Forum at Rome, so called because adorned with the (rostra) prows of ships taken from the Antiates, A.U.C. 416; from rostrum, the beak of a bird, the prow of a ship. 11. 7, 8. the repository... kings, that portion of the Abbey in which so many of the English sovereigns are buried.

1. 9. so serious an amusement, so serious a subject for meditation; though now used only of a pleasurable diversion of the mind, amusement originally meant any occupation that caused one to muse, ponder, over something, frequently with the idea of wonder, sorrow, etc.

1. 10. entertainments, occupations of the mind.

1. 26. holy men, divines; from the context, Addison appears to be using the epithet with something of latent sarcasm.

1. 28. competitions, rivalries. debates, altercations, quarrels ; a stronger sense than the word now has, that of oral dispute only.

FALSE WIT AND HUMOUR. No. 35.

P. 22, 1. 4. to miscarry, to go wrong, fail; literally to carry amiss, to the wrong point.

1. 6. teems with, is abundantly full of; the verb literally means to produce, to be fruitful, pregnant, prolific.

1. 9. set up for, claim to be, assert their title to being.

1. 17. Bedlam, a contracted form of Bethlehem, a lunatic asylum originally in Moorfields near Bishopsgate, since transferred to the junction of Kennington Road and Lambeth Road; the name is also used typically for mad-houses generally.

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1. 19. nicest, most accurate.

1. 20. by so... more, in proportion as.

1. 21. nature, naturalness.

1. 23. discover, show.

1. 26. delirious, frantic, insane; Lat. delirus, one who goes out of the furrow in ploughing, hence crazy, mad; de, from, and lira, a furrow.

P. 23, 1. 1. Shadwell, a contemporary of Dryden's, satirized by him in his poem of The Medal.

11. 2, 3. an empty rake, a foolish, empty-headed, profligate.

1. 7. chimerical, fanciful, extravagant; from Chimera, a fabulous monster with a lion's head, serpent's tail and goat's body, mentioned by Homer, Iliad, vi. 181; from Gk. xíμaipa, a she-goat. 1. 8. distempered, diseased; see note on p. 12, 1. 23.

1. 23. habit, dress. Cp. p. 9, 1. 28.

1. 26. a merry-andrew, a buffoon, jester; Andrew being a personal name, 66 asserted by Hearne ... to have been given to jesters in remembrance of the once famous Andrew Boorde, Doctor of Physic in the reign of Henry viii.; several jest-books were ascribed to him, perhaps wrongly"... (Skeat, Ety. Dict.).

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