_the Duke of Newcastle_: the Prime Minister.
83 Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_ consists of a series of letters on European manners and customs, purporting to be written by a Chinaman who has never before visited England.
86 _whatever accidentally becomes indisposed, etc_.; i.e. whoever falls out with the authorities.
87 _There never was a period, etc_.: this was written in 1777, during the American War of Independence.
92 The initials at the foot of the letter are those of William Cowper and Mary Unwin, a friend of the poet's.
99 _David Garrick_: the celebrated actor (1717-1779).
100 Frank Osbaldistone, the hero of Scott's novel _Rob Roy_, goes to Yorkshire on a visit to his uncle, Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone, whom he has never seen. As he approaches his destination he falls in with a young lady on horseback, who turns out to be Diana Vernon, a niece of Sir Hildebrand's. The period of the story is early in the eighteenth century.
106 _The 'Festin de pierre'_: Moliere's play, in which the hero, Don Juan, rashly invites the statue of a man he has murdered to dine with him. The invitation is unexpectedly accepted.
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.
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.