Chapter VIII: October 23. Numbered IX

_Captain Parry._ Captain, afterwards Sir William Edward Parry (1790–1855), explorer of the North-West Passage.

139. Note. _Painful scene in Evelina._ Letter XXV.

142. Note. _My old acquaintance_ (_Dr. Stoddart_). Sir John Stoddart (1773–1856), Hazlitt’s brother-in-law. He was knighted in 1826.

144. _Mutually reflected charities._ Burke, _Select Works_, ed. Payne, II. 40.

Note. _In the manner of Swift._ Add, from the newspaper:—‘So accomplished an equestrian (thought I) might ascend a throne with popularity and effect! It was not the first or the last time in my life I have been rebuked for glancing a sceptical eye at the same sort of grave masquerading.—Cucullus non facit Monachum. It was but the other day that I was called to account for having hinted that a subscriber to _The Sentinel_,[60] and a patron and prime mover in Blackwood, is not one of the best and greatest characters of the age; or that, if so, then a tool of power, a party-bigot, and a suborner of private slander, in support of public wrong, is one of the best and greatest characters of the age. Mr. Blackwood should take care how he implicates any really respectable character by defending it. The worst ever supposed of the author of _Waverley_ was, that there was a clandestine understanding between him and Mr. Blackwood—through Sir Walter Scott! The _Ned Christian_[61] compliment turns upon this. Mr. Taylor of Fleet-street, need not have disavowed the paragraph; it might as well have been laid to the charge of Mr. Taylor of _The Sun_. The passage was not worth speaking of—but I have since done the same thing better, and the one passage is (cleverly enough) brought forward as a screen to the other.’

145. _Thrust us from a level consideration._ _2 King Henry IV._, Act II. Sc. 1.

_Garlanded with flowers._

Cf. ‘All garlanded with carven imag’ries
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass.’
Keats, _The Eve of St. Agnes_, XXIV.

_The lean abhorred monster._ _Romeo and Juliet_, Act V. Sc. 3.

_No black and melancholic yew-trees._ Webster’s _The White Devil_, Act IV. Sc. 2.

_Pansies for thoughts._ _Hamlet_, Act IV. Sc. 5.

146. _The daughter of Madame d’Orbe._ _Sixième Partie_, Lettre XI.

146. _Ney._ Michel Ney (1769–1815), Napoleon’s great general, ‘the bravest of the brave,’ who had five horses shot under him at Waterloo. He urged Napoleon to abdicate after the campaign of 1814, and on Napoleon’s return from Elba was sent to fight him. He went over to his old Emperor, however, and, after Waterloo, was arrested for high treason, condemned to death, and shot in the Luxembourg Gardens.

_Massena._ André Masséna (1756–1817), another of Napoleon’s generals, ‘the favoured child of victory.’

_Kellerman._ François Christophe de Kellermann (1735–1820), the successful general at Valmy (1792).

_Fontaine._ Jean de la Fontaine (1621–1695), the fabulist.

_De Lille._ Jacques Delille (1738–1813), French poet and translator of _Paradise Lost_.