[Footnote 1: The wise Scandinavians probably called their bards by the queer-looking title of Scald in a delicate way, as it were, just to hint to the world the hot water they always get into.]
[Footnote 2:To demonstrate quickly and easily how per--versely absurd 'tis to sound this nameCowper,As people in general call him namedsuper,I remark that he rhymes it himself with horse-trooper.]
[Footnote 3:(If you call Snooks an owl, he will show by his looksThat he's morally certain you're jealous of Snooks.)]
[Footnote 4:(Cuts rightly called wooden, as all must admit.)]
[Footnote 5:That is in most cases we do, but not all,Past a doubt, there are men who are innately small,Such as Blank, who, without being 'minished a tittle,Might stand for a type of the Absolute Little.]
[Footnote 6:(And at this just conclusion will surely arrive,That the goodness of earth is more dead than alive.)]
[Footnote 7:Not forgetting their tea and their toast, though, the while.]
[Footnote 8:Turn back now to page—goodness only knows what,And take a fresh hold on the thread of my plot.]
[Footnote 9: The reader curious in such matters may refer (if he canfind them) toA sermon preached on the Anniversary of the Dark Day, AnArtillery Election Sermon, A Discourse on the Late Eclipse, Dorcas, AFuneral Sermon on the Death of Madam Submit Tidd, Relict of the lateExperience Tidd, Esq., &c., &c.]
[Footnote 10: Aut insanit, aut versos facit.—H.W.]
[Footnote 11: In relation to this expression, I cannot but think that Mr. Biglow has been too hasty in attributing it to me. Though Time be a comparatively innocent personage to swear by, and though Longinus in his discourse [Greek: Peri 'Upsous] have commended timely oaths as not only a useful but sublime figure of speech, yet I have always kept my lips free from that abomination.Odi profanum vulgus, I hate your swearing and hectoring fellows.—H.W.]
[Footnote 12: i hait the Site of a feller with a muskit as I du pizn But theirisfun to a cornwallis I aint agoin' to deny it.—H.B.]
[Footnote 13: he means Not quite so fur I guess.—H.B.]
[Footnote 14: the ignerant creeter means Sekketary; but he ollers stuck to his books like cobbler's wax to an ile-stone.—H.B.]
[Footnote 15: it must be aloud that thare's a streak of nater in lovin' sho, but it sartinly is 1 of the curusest things in nater to see a rispecktable dri goods dealer (deekon off a chutch maybe) a riggin' himself out in the Weigh they du and struttin' round in the Reign aspilin' his trowsis and makin' wet goods of himself. Ef any thin's foolisher and moor dicklus than militerry gloary it is milishy gloary.—H.B.]
[Footnote 16: these fellers are verry proppilly called Rank Heroes, and the more tha kill the ranker and more Herowick tha becum.—H.B.]
[Footnote 17: it wuz 'tumblebug' as he Writ it, but the parson put the Latten instid. i sed tother maid better meeter, but he said tha was eddykated peepl to Boston and tha wouldn't stan' it no how. idnow as thawoodand idnowastha wood.—H.B.]
[Footnote 18: he means human beins, that's wut he means. i spose he kinder thought tha wuz human beans ware the Xisle Poles comes from.—H.B.]
[Footnote 19: The speaker is of a different mind from Tully, who, in his recently discovered tractateDe Republica, tells us,Nec vero habere virtutem satis est, quasi artem aliquam, nisi utare, and from our Milton, who says: 'I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for,not without dust and heat.'—Areop. He had taken the words out of the Roman's mouth, without knowing it, and might well exclaim with Donatus (if Saint Jerome's tutor may stand sponsor for a curse),Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint!—H.W.]
[Footnote 20: That was a pithy saying of Persius, and fits our politicians without a wrinkle,—Magister artis, ingeniique largitor venter.—H.W.]
[Footnote 21: There is truth yet in this of Juvenal,—
'Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas.'—H.W.]
[Footnote 22: Jortin is willing to allow of other miracles besides those recorded in Holy Writ, and why not of othere prophecies? It is granting too much to Satan to suppose him, as divers of the learned have done, the inspirer of the ancient oracles. Wiser, I esteem it, to give chance the credit of the successful ones. What is said here of Louis Phillippe was verified in some of its minute particulars within a few months' time. Enough to have made the fortune of Delphi or Hammon, and no thanks to Beelzebub neither! That of Seneca in Medea will suit here:—
'Rapida fortuna ac levisPræcepsque regno eripuit, exsilio dedit.'
Let us allow, even to richly deserved misfortune, our commiseration, and be not over-hasty meanwhile in our censure of the French people, left for the first time to govern themselves, remembering that wise sentence of Æschylus,—
[Greek: Apas de trachus hostis han neon kratae.]
[Footnote 23: A rustic euphemism for the American variety of theMephitis.—H.W.]
[Footnote 24:Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English.]
[Footnote 25: Cited in Collier. (I give my authority where I do not quote from the original book.)]
[Footnote 26: The word occurs in a letter of Mary Boleyn, in Golding, andWarner. Milton also was fond of the word.]
[Footnote 27: Though I find Worcëster in theMirror for Magistrates.]
[Footnote 28: This was written twenty years ago, and now (1890) I cannot open an English journal without coming upon an Americanism.]
[Footnote 29: The Rev. A.L. Mayhew of Wadham College, Oxford, has convinced me that I was astray in this.]
[Footnote 30:Dame, in English, is a decayed gentlewoman of the same family.]
[Footnote 31: Which, whether in that form, or under its aliaseswitch-grass andcooch-grass, points us back to its original Saxonquick.]
[Footnote 32: And, by the way, the Yankee never says 'o'nights,' but uses the older adverbial form, analogous to the Germannachts.]
[Footnote 33: Greene in hisQuip for an Upstart Courtiersays, 'tosquareit up and downe the streetes before his mistresse.']