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Schlosser’s Literary History Of The Eighteenth Century
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[3] ‘Little nurse:’–the word Glumdalclitch, in Brobdingnagian, absolutely means little nurse, and nothing else. It may seem odd that the captain should call any nurse of Brobdingnag, however kind to him, by such an epithet as little; and the reader may fancy that Sherwood forest had put it into his head, where Robin Hood always called his right hand man ‘Little John,’ not although, but expressly because John stood seven feet high in his stockings. But the truth is–that Glumdalclitch was little; and literally so; she was only nine years old, and (says the captain) ‘little of her age,’ being barely forty feet high. She had time to grow certainly, but as she had so much to do before she could overtake other women, it is probable that she would turn out what, in Westmoreland, they call a, little stiffenger–very little, if at all, higher than a common English church steeple.
[4.] ‘Activity,’–It is some sign of this, as well as of the more thoroughly English taste in literature which distinguished Steele, that hardly twice throughout the ‘Spectator’ is Shakspeare quoted or alluded to by Addison. Even these quotations he had from the theatre, or the breath of popular talk. Generally, if you see a line from Shakspeare, it is safe to bet largely that the paper is Steele’s; sometimes, indeed, of casual contributors; but, almost to a certainty, not a paper of Addison’s. Another mark of Steele’s superiority in vigor of intellect is, that much oftener in him than in other contributors strong thoughts came forward; harsh and disproportioned, perhaps, to the case, and never harmoniously developed with the genial grace of Addison, but original, and pregnant with promise and suggestion.
[5] ‘Letters of Joseph Mede,’ published more than twenty years ago by Sir Henry Ellis.
[6] It is an idea of many people, and erroneously sanctioned by Wordsworth, that Lord Somers gave a powerful lift to the ‘Paradise Lost.’ He was a subscriber to the sixth edition, the first that had plates; but this was some years before the Revolution of 1688, and when he was simply Mr. Somers, a barrister, with no effectual power of patronage.
[7] ‘Milton, Mr. John:’–Dr. Johnson expressed his wrath, in an amusing way, at some bookseller’s hack who, when employed to make an index, introduced Milton’s name among the M’s, under the civil title of– ‘Milton, Mr. John.’
[8] ‘Louis Baboon:’–As people read nothing in these days that is more than forty-eight hours old, I am daily admonished that allusions the most obvious to anything in the rear of our own time, needs explanation. Louis Baboon is Swift’s jesting name for Louis Bourbon, i.e., Louis XIV.
[9] ‘Of his MSS.:’–And, if all that I have heard be true, much has somebody to answer for, that so little has been yet published. The two executors of Burke were Dr. Lawrence, of Doctors’ Commons, a well-known M. P. in forgotten days, and Windham, a man too like Burke in elasticity of mind ever to be spoken of in connection with forgotten things. Which of them was to blame, I know not. But Mr. R. Sharpe, M. P., twenty-five years ago, well known as River Sharpe, from the [Greek: aperantologia] of his conversation, used to say, that one or both of the executors had offered him (the river) a huge travelling trunk, perhaps an Imperial or a Salisbury boot (equal to the wardrobe of a family), filled with Burke’s MSS., on the simple condition of editing them with proper annotations. An Oxford man, and also the celebrated Mr. Christian Curwen, then member for Cumberland, made, in my hearing, the same report. The Oxford man, in particular, being questioned as to the probable amount of MS., deposed, that he could not speak upon oath to the cubical contents; but this he could say, that, having stripped up his coat sleeve, he had endeavored, by such poor machinery as nature had allowed him, to take the soundings of the trunk, but apparently there were none; with his middle finger he could find no bottom; for it was stopped by a dense stratum of MS.; below which, you know, other strata might lie ad infinitum. For anything proved to the contrary, the trunk might be bottomless.