1. We have as good a Right to Liberty as yourselves: Aunt Western adopts the rhetoric of Astellian feminism: ‘If all Men are born free, how is it that all Women are born slaves?’ (Mary Astell, Reflections upon Marriage, 3rd edn (1706), preface).
2. The Reader… in Milton: Perhaps she has been reading not Paradise Lost but Ovid’s Metamorphoses: ‘At length his Patience was subdu’d by Pain’ (ix. 203 in John Gay’s contribution to the collaborative translation of 1717 assembled by Samuel Garth).
3. Pox… feed upon: Western’s words caricature the rhetoric of Jacobite complaint in ways echoed throughout HF’s ironic Jacobite’s Journal. See, e.g., No. 9 for 30 January 1748, in which a Hampshire squire protests that the true reason for the embargo on exporting corn to France ‘is, that it may be all saved in order to buy it afterwards cheap, and zend it to Handhover… to be all defoured by a Parcel of Handhover Rats’ (pp. 144–5). Hanover was often satirized as a ‘turnep-garden’ (as in Smollett’s The History and Adventures of an Atom, ed. Robert A. Day (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989), p. 51). ‘The King shall enjoy his own again’, originally a royalist ballad of the English civil wars, was a popular Jacobite song.
BOOK VII.
CHAPTER I.
1. The World hath been often compared to the Theatre: Including by HF himself, in the Champion for 19 August 1740 (pp. 431–2).
2. St. James’s… Drury Lane: i.e. the fashionable court district, and the ‘Court’ politicians who frequent it, as opposed to theatre-land.
3. the Hypocrite… one and the same Name: YΠοκριτήϛ, from which the English hypocrite derives, is also the Greek term for actor.
4. So the immortal Shakespear… heard no more: Adapting Macbeth V. v. 24–6.
5. a Poem called the DEITY… buried in Oblivion: By Samuel Boyse (1708–49), first published in 1740, when HF favourably reviewed the poem in the Champion (12 February 1740), quoting this same passage to illustrate its sublimity: see Companion, p. 33. HF appears to have been giving an advance puff here to the poem’s second edition of March 1749.
6. As Garrick… ‘incredibly childish’: For HF’s friendship with, and many compliments to, the actor David Garrick (1717–79), see Companion, pp. 65–6; also later, IX. i and XVI. v. The childish recreations of Scipio Aemilianus (c. 185–129 bc) and Caius Laelius Sapiens (b. c. 186 bc) are indicated by Horace in his Satires, II. i. 71–4, and by Cicero in De Oratore, II. vi. 22. See also Joseph Andrews, p. 252 (III. vii), in which Adams wonders ‘at some Passages in ancient Authors, where Scipio, Laelius, and other great Men were represented to have passed many Hours in Amusements of the most trifling kind’.
7. Patentee: i.e. the person who held the letters patent for the operation of a theatre.
8. Nil admirari… stare at nothing: Horace, Epistles, I. vi. 1.
9. Mr. William Mills: A celebrated contemporary actor (d. 1750), who had appeared in several of HF’s plays, and is praised in Joseph Andrews, p. 79 (I. viii), for his famously gory appearance as Banquo’s ghost. See Companion, p. 101.
CHAPTER II.
1. The World… all before him: Adapting Paradise Lost, xii. 646 (the expulsion from Paradise of Adam and Eve in the closing lines).
2. Nothing out of Nothing: Cf. HF’s ‘Essay about Nothing’, in which he quotes ‘that old Proverb… Ex Nihilo nihil Fit. / Thus translated by Shakespeare, in Lear. / Nothing can come of Nothing.’ Henry Knight Miller adds that ‘the ultimate source of this proverbial expression is uncertain, but cf. Lucretius, De rerum natura, i. 155–6; Aristotle, Physica, I. iv. 2–3; and Metaphysica, IV. v. 4–7’ (Miscellanies I, p. 180 and n.).
CHAPTER III.
1. no more of the Philosophy of Socrates… Alcibiades: Interrogation, as opposed to straightforward instruction, was central to the Socratic method. Alcibiades, though featuring in two of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, was an Athenian general and politician, not a philosopher.
2. a separate League… Interest of the Dutch: Referring to anxieties more fully expressed in HF’s Dialogue between a Gentleman of London… and an Honest Alderman… (1747) about the influence of the pro-French faction in Dutch politics: ‘But the Dutch, I thank God, have now opened their Eyes’ (in JJ, p. 38; see also above, V. vii, n. 2).
3. Bailey’s Dictionary: Nathan Bailey’s Dictionarium Britannicum (1721), a work shortly to be superseded by Samuel Johnson’s great Dictionary of 1755.
4. Bumtrap: Slang term for a bailiff or sheriff’s officer (the sole example recorded in OED2).
5. a Daughter of France… considered in the Match: Probably a reference to the marriage arranged by Louis XV between his twelve-year-old daughter, Louise Elizabeth, and Don Philip, the middle-aged son of Philip V of Spain. Battestin quotes an observation in the General Advertiser (3 February 1748) that ‘a Daughter of France is little set by, if a Provision for her any Way interferes with the Aggrandizement of the Monarchy’ (Wesleyan edn, p. 335).
6. a Whig of the Girl: i.e. one who believes in authority, not as natural or absolute, but as a contract entered into between ruler and ruled.
7. what Plato says on that Subject: Laws, iv. 717 b–e.
CHAPTER IV.
1. to drink the King over the Water: i.e. to toast the exiled Jacobite claimant to the throne, James Francis Edward Stuart (1688–1766).
2. B—d—y: ‘Bawdry’ or obscene talk.
CHAPTER V.
1. She may ’dite me of a Plot… and give my Estate to the Government: Longstanding laws making forfeiture of estates the penalty for those indicted of treason had been intensified by an Act of 1744 (17 George II, c. 39), which specified corresponding with the Pretender’s sons as an offence punishable by forfeiture.
CHAPTER VI.
1. a Rule of Horace… shining Light: Ars Poetica, lines 149–50 (as above, IV. xiv, n. 3).
2. Ortolan… Epicure: An ortolan is a small songbird (a species of bunting), prized for its delicate flavour. Cf. Colley Cibber, The Careless Husband (1704), II. ii. 169–71: ‘I had rather have a plain slice of my wife’s woman than my guts full of e’er an ortolan duchess in Christendom.’
3. Taxes… from the Propagation of the human Species: The Crown received a tax of five shillings, and the Church a fee of one shilling, from each marriage licence.
CHAPTER VII.
1. your Corpse… a Stake drove through you: Referring to traditional practices, still current though becoming outmoded, of burying suicides: cf. Richardson’s Pamela, in which the heroine fears ‘the dreadful Stake, and the Highway Interrment’ (p. 173).
2. lieverer: More willingly (the comparative of lief).
3. one’s Virtue… as a Body may say: HF resumes his old mimicry of Richardson’s Pamela here, Honour’s words recalling the style and substance of Pamela’s protestations against the sexual advances of her master. Cf. Shamela, letter x: ‘I value my Vartue more than all the World, and had rather be the poorest Man’s Wife, than the richest Man’s Whore’ (in JA, p. 28).
CHAPTER VIII.
1. like the old Woman in Quivedo… false Accusation: Referring to the Spanish satirist Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Villegas (1580–1645). The exact source remains untraced, but Battestin cites a comparable passage in the seventh of Quevedo’s Visions (Wesleyan edn, p. 353).
2. a glouting Humour: A sulk. Cf. Clarissa, p. 274: ‘my mamma was in the glout with her poor daughter all the way.’
CHAPTER IX.
1. broken the Law… robbed her: HF elsewhere glosses the law in question as follows: ‘Robbery is an Offence not only against the Party robbed, but against the Public, who are therefore entitled to Prosecution; and he who prevents or stifles such the Prosecution, is no longer an innocent Man, but guilty of a high Offence against the Public Good’ (Enquiry, p. 156).
2. two Informations… a third: The King’s Bench was the supreme court of common law in the kingdom; an information quo warranto was the step by which proceedings were begun to remedy the usurpation of an office such as that of Justice of the Peace, which
could be revoked in cases of abuse.
3. that strange prodigious Creature Man: Adapting Rochester’s Satire against Reason and Mankind (1679), line 2.
CHAPTER X.
1. two Pair of Stairs: Two floors or storeys up.
2. Broadbrim: Nickname given to Quakers (from their style of hat), including caricatures such as Dr Melchisedech Broadbrim in Samuel Foote’s The Devil upon Two Sticks (1778); the present instance is the earliest recorded in OED2.
CHAPTER XI.
1. the last Trumpet: Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:52.
2. the glorious Duke of Cumberland: William Augustus (1721–65), Duke of Cumberland, who was summoned back from the continental theatre of war to lead Hanoverian forces against the Jacobite rising of 1745–6 (see below, n. 3). His appointment was formally announced on 23 November 1745.
3. a Circumstance… the Metropolis: The novel’s first unambiguous reference to the Jacobite rebellion, which began with the Young Pretender’s disembarkation in western Scotland and the raising of the Stuart standard in August 1745. Having crossed the Tweed on 6 November, the Jacobite army reached Derby, the southernmost point of its advance, on 4 December. News reached London on 6 December – ‘that memorable Day [as HF later wrote] when the Rebels having, as it was thought, slipt the Duke’s Army, were feared to be approaching this City by hasty Marches; and when this Apprehension, joined to that of an immediate Invasion from France, had thrown all Men into the most dreadful Consternation’ (TP, p. 210 (No. 14, 28 January – 4 February 1746)).
4. tied Neck and Heels… run the Gantlope: For ‘tied Neck and Heels’ see above, V. v, n. 2. To run the gantelope (pronounced gauntlet) was ‘a military punishment in which the criminal running between the ranks receives a lash from each man’ (Johnson, Dictionary (1755), s.v. Gantelope).
5. Halberd: i.e. sergeant, so called because traditionally armed with a halberd, a weapon combining a spear with an axe.
CHAPTER XII.
1. Battle of Tannieres: The battle of Malplaquet or Taisnières (11 September 1709), where Marlborough defeated French forces during the War of the Spanish Succession.
2. Pope’s Homer… Silence of the Grecians: Alluding to Pope’s Iliad translation (1715–20), iii. 1–13 (where the comparison, as in Homer, is with cranes).
3. Madam Daciere: Anne Lefèvre Dacier (1654–1720), French classical scholar, translator of both the Iliad (1699) and Odyssey (1708), who is frequently complimented in HF’s writings: see Companion, pp. 54–5.
4. Corderius: Referring to Mathurin Cordier (1479–1564), a French scholar whose Colloquia were still a standard Latin textbook in schools.
5. The old Put… a Pimp too: Most of Northerton’s slang terms are defined in A New Canting Dictionary: Comprehending All the Terms… Used in the Several Tribes of Gypsies, Beggars, Shop-lifters, Highwaymen, Foot-Pads, and All Other Clans of Cheats and Villains (1725), a work HF cites at a comparable moment in Jonathan Wild (Miscellanies III, p. 23 (I. v)): ‘PUT. A Country-Put, a silly, shallow-pated Fellow’; ‘NICK it, to win at Dice’; ‘CULL, a Man, either Honest, or otherwise’. ‘Smack’ may possibly be a printer’s error for ‘SNACK, Share or Part’; either way, Northerton swears he will absorb no part or taste of his father’s scheme. A pimp is ‘a Man who follows that base Employment, of procuring’, and Northerton applies the term insultingly to the clergy.
6. on ne parle pas de la Religion dans la Guerre: One does not speak of religion in time of war.
7. Smoke the Prig: ‘SMOKE, to suspect or smell a Design… Smoke him, Smoke him again; to affront a Stranger at his coming in’; ‘PRIG, a Thief, a Cheat: Also a nice beau-ish, silly Fellow, is called a meer Prig’ (New Canting Dictionary).
8. Bridges-street: A street near Covent Garden that fell into disrepute in the Restoration period – ‘Our Bridges-street is grown a Strumpet Fair’, wrote John Crowne in the epilogue to Sir Courtly Nice (1685)–and was reputedly the location of 107 brothels by 1725. See also Miscellanies III, p. 57 (II. iii).
9. de Englise Ley… dat tush him last: Apparently a misunderstanding of English law, and one shared by the young lawyer who, coming on the injured hero in Joseph Andrews, worries ‘that now they might be proved to have been last in his Company, if he should die, they might be called to some account for his Murder’ (p. 89 (I. xii)).
10. Drawer: ‘One whose business is to draw liquors from the cask’ (Johnson, Dictionary (1755), s.v. Drawer).
CHAPTER XIII.
1. above forty Shillings… stopt up all we could: A reference to the notorious Window Tax of 1747 (20 George, II c. 3), which removed the upper limit of 20 shillings that had been in effect since 1696 (and was still in effect, strictly speaking, at the time of the novel’s action), taxing houses with more than twenty windows at a shilling per window. In bricking up her windows to avoid the tax, the landlady resembles one of Squire Western’s many precursors in HF’s satire, the Jacobite Humphry Gubbins: ‘As vor a new Window-Tax, I falue it not of a Rush. I put out one haf of my Windows last Year… D—n me a Man may drink in the Dark, and mayhap he may then be the buolder in toasting honest Healths’ (JJ, pp. 157–8 (13 February 1748)); see also JVL, p. 59 (14 July 1754).
2. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus: ‘No one reaches the depths of wickedness all of a sudden’ (Juvenal, Satires, ii. 83). The surgeon probably remembers the passage from a school textbook, Epigrammatum Delectus; it refers not to wounds, as he thinks, but to moral degeneracy.
3. the Command of him who hath expressly forbid it: See above, I. vii, n. 2.
4. I love my Religion… my Honour more: Cf. Richard Lovelace (1618–57), ‘To Lucasta, Going to the Wars’, lines 11–12: ‘I could not love thee (Dear) so much, / Lov’d I not Honour more.’
5. Buss: Kiss.
CHAPTER XIV.
1. the Battle of Dettingen: A notable allied victory over the French (27 June 1743) in the War of the Austrian Succession. George II personally led the British forces; Cumberland was wounded by Austrian troops who mistook him for a French officer.
2. the bloody Banquo: Cf. Macbeth, III. iv and IV. i, where the ghost of Banquo returns to haunt his murderer. The same play is quoted earlier, VII. i, at n. 4.
CHAPTER XV.
1. the General: The drum call to assemble troops.
BOOK VIII.
CHAPTER I.
1. M. Dacier… Irishman: Referring to André Dacier (1651–1722), husband of Anne Lefèvre Dacier (q.v. VII. xii, n. 3), and his renowned French translation of and commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics (1692; English translation 1705). Glossing the Poetics, xxv. 26–31, Dacier comments that ‘the Ilias, Odysses, and Aeneis, are full of things that are humanly speaking Impossible, and yet they continue to be Probable’ (1705 edn, 427). HF compliments Dacier in passing later in the novel (XI. i), but the reference here is teasing, implying that the paradox might otherwise be dismissed as the proverbially self-contradictory ‘Irish bull’.
2. as Mr. Pope would have it… dull Nation: Referring to the ‘Observations on the Tenth Book’ in Pope’s translation of the Odyssey (1725–6), which were in fact supplied by William Broome (1689–1745). Battestin quotes Broome’s comment, with reference to the stories of Polyphemus and Circe (see below, n. 3), that Homer ‘makes Ulysses relate them before a credulous and ignorant assembly; he lets us into the character of the Phaeacians, by saying they were a very dull nation, in the sixth book, Where never Science rear’d her laurel’d Head. It is thus the Poet gives probability to his fables, by reciting them to a people who believ’d them, and who thro’ a laziness of life were fond of romantic stories’ (Wesleyan edn, p. 397).
3. Polypheme… converting it into Bacon: Referring to the ninth and tenth books of the Odyssey, in which the one-eyed Cyclops, Polyphemus, traps Ulysses and his followers in a cave with his flocks of sheep and goats, eating six of the men before the rest blind him and escape. They are later captured by Circe, the lustful enchantress, who turns most of them into swine.
The History of Tom Jones (Penguin Classics) Page 116
