A Book of English Prose Part 14

107 Coleridge, the poet, was an old friend and school-fellow of Charles Lamb's.

109 An imaginary dialogue between the two philosophers. Plato, born 427 B.C., was some years the older of the two.

111 Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, with whom Plato had lived for a time, was overthrown and expelled by his subjects, and driven to support himself as a schoolmaster at Corinth.

_The Demiurgos_: the Creator.

113 Mrs Elton, in Jane Austen's novel _Emma_, is the somewhat meddlesome wife of the village parson. Mr Knightley is a gentleman living at Donwell, in the neighbourhood. The rest of the people named are other neighbours and friends, one of them, Mr Woodhouse, being an old gentleman of valetudinarian habits.

118 Coleridge, as a young man (he was born in 1772), was for a time in the habit of preaching in Unitarian chapels.

122 This is an extract from a letter of Keats to a friend, written in 1818.

124 _The Flight to Varennes_: by the middle of 1791 the French Revolution had gone so far that the king and queen were practically prisoners in the palace of the Tuileries at Paris. They at last determined to try to escape, and the arrangements for their flight were carried out, in all possible secrecy, by Choiseul, an officer of the French army, and Fersen, a young Swedish count. Carlyle's vivid account tells how the start was made; but the royal party were stopped at Varennes, not far from the frontier, and brought back to Paris.

_the Carrousel_, or 'tilting-ground,' was an open s.p.a.ce in front of the Tuileries.

130 _Trial of the Seven Bishops_: James II, in 1687, issued a 'declaration of indulgence,' promising to suspend certain laws against Roman Catholics. His command that this declaration should be read in all parish churches was resisted by seven bishops, who were accordingly brought to trial for sedition. The declaration was very unpopular in the country, so that the result of the trial was anxiously awaited.

135 _Cimon_ was one of the Athenian commanders in the Persian war. He died in 449 B.C.

140 The scene of Hawthorne's novel, _The House of the Seven Gables_, is laid in a small town in New England.

148 Mr Weston was in the plot with the highwayman to rob Dr Barnard.

He had himself tampered with his own pistols (in the stable at Maidstone) so that they should miss fire. Hence his peevishness with Denis Duval, for so unexpectedly routing the thief.

153 Jane Eyre is governess to Mr Rochester's daughter, Adele. She describes how he cross-questioned her with regard to her accomplishments.

157 Th.o.r.eau lived for two years in a small hut which he built for himself in a wood near Concord, in New England. This extract is from the account he wrote of his life there.

171 Stevenson came of a family of engineers, and he himself was supposed to be preparing for the same profession. But he already wished to be a writer, and his interest in the harbour-works at Wick, in Caithness, which he had been sent to study, was romantic rather than practical.