P. 253,

30. comitia. The filiation of the term comices is introduced to show what it involves.

P. 256, l. 1. grand compounders-shorten the road to their degrees. Alluding to an obsolete practice in the universities.

1. 12. stiff and peremptory. The expression is from Browne's Christian

Morals.

1. 15. grand climacteric. The sixty-third year (7×9=63) of human life.

1. 17. Si isti mihi largiantur, &c. Slightly altered from Cic. de Senect. xxiii. 83. The original sentiment occurs in a favourite book of Burke's, Browne's Christian Morals, Part III, § 25, and was adopted by Prior as a motto for his poem 'Solomon.'

P. 260, l. 16. until some popular general, &c. A similar prediction was made by Schiller, who thought that some popular general of the Republic would make himself master not only of France but of a great part of Europe. It was accurately fulfilled in Bonaparte.

P. 262, 1. 29. The colonies assert, &c. Burke's presages on the colonies were accurately fulfilled in the terrible history of the Revolution of St. Domingo.

P. 265, 1. 5. image and superscription. St. Luke xx. 24.

1. 17. unfeathered two-legged things.

The famous Greek definition of a man, in the words used by Dryden in his celebrated description of Achitophel.

P. 268, l. 20. systasis of Crete. See an account of it in Plutarch's Treatise De Fraterno Amore. The Cretan cities quitted their internal feuds and united for defence when attacked by a common enemy. This was called σvykρητise, whence our word 'Syncretism.'

P. 269, l. 11. The revenue of the state, &c. This admirable exposition of the nature of public revenues, and their relation to national action, should not be passed over as part of the merely critical section of the work. It possesses a real historical significance, for Pitt's great reforms in the revenue were just coming into operation.

P. 271, 1. 20. Cedo qui vestram, &c. Naevius, quoted in Cic. de Senect. c. vi. 20. It is necessary to refer to the context: 'Quod si legere aut audire voletis externa, maximas respublicas ab adolescentibus labefactas, a senibus sustentatas et restitutas reperietis.

'Cedo, qui vestram rempublicam tantam ámisistis tám cito?' Sic enim percontantur, ut est in Naevii ludo: respondentur et alia, et haec in primis:

'Proveniebant orátores noví, stulti, adolescéntuli.”

P. 273, 1. 22. John Doe, Richard Roe. Cp. vol. i. p. 64, 1. 23.

1. 31. took an old huge full-bottomed perriwig, &c. The allusion is to the offerings of silver plate made to Louis XIV by the court and city of Paris at the financial crisis, produced by the long war, of 1709. See Saint Simon, Mémoires, vol. vii. p. 208. Cet expédient,' says Saint Simon, ‘avait

déjà été proposé et rejeté par Pontchartrain, lorsqu'il était contrôleur-général, qui, devenu chancelier, n'y fut pas plus favorable.' Notwithstanding the fact that the king expected every one to send their plate, the list of donors amounted to less than a hundred names: and the result was far below the king's expectation. Au bout de trois mois, le roi sentit la honte et la faiblesse de cette belle ressource, et avoua qu'il se repentait d'y avoir consenti.' Saint Simon confesses that he sent a portion only of his own, and concealed the rest.

P. 274, 1. 4. tried in my memory by Louis XV. In 1762, towards the close of the calamitous Seven Years' War. 'La France alors était plus malheureuse. Toutes les ressources étaient épuisées: presque tous les citoyens, à l'exemple du roi, avaient porté leur vaisselle à la monnaie.' Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XV, ch. 35.

P. 278, 1. 8. Mais si maladia, &c. From the comical interlude in Molière's Malade Imaginaire, in which the examination of a Bachelor for the doctor's degree is conducted in dog-latin. The candidate has already given the famous answer to the question, Quare opium facit dormire ?' 'Quia est in eo virtus dormitiva,' &c. On being interrogated as to the remedy for several diseases in succession, he makes the same answer:

Clysterium donare,

Postea segnare,

Ensuita purgare.'

Which is repeated after the final question in the text. Burke happily compares the ignorance which made the assignat the panacea of the state, to this gross barbarism in the art of medicine.

1. 22. pious and venerable prelate. Bitter irony, on Talleyrand.

P. 284, l. 19. club at Dundee. The Dundee ‘Friends of Liberty,' whose proceedings acquired some notoriety a year or two later. In 1793 the Unitarian minister Palmer was transported for seven years for writing and publishing a seditious address bearing the name of this society.

P. 286, 1. 6. Credat who will. Horace, Sat. lib. i. v. 100.

1. 31. nuzzling following blindly by the nose.

So Pope:

The blessed Benefit, not there confin'd,

Drops to the third, who nuzzles close behind.'

P. 287, 1. 5. glimmerings of reason-solid darkness. Pope, Dunciad iii. 226:

a ray of reason stole

Half through the solid darkness of his soul.'

So Dryden, Macflecknoe:

'Some beams of wit on other souls may fall,

Strike through, and make a lucid interval,' &c.

P. 288, 1. 22. his atlantic regions. The allusion is to Bailly's Letters on the subject of the fabled island of Atlantis.

1. 23. smitten with the cold, dry, petrifick mace. Par. Lost, x. 293:

The aggregated Soyle

Death with his Mace petrific, cold, and dry,
As with a Trident smote.'

P. 290, 1. 16. tontines. Lotteries on groups of lives, so called from their inventor. They had been adopted in England, and in the session which preceded the publication of this work, a batch of them had been converted into ordinary annuities.

1. 31. all-atoning name. Dryden, in the famous character of Achitophel, says that he

'Assumed a patriot's all-atoning name.'

P. 291, 1. 6. Grand, swelling sentiments, &c. See especially, Lucan, Book VII. This poet was excluded from the collection of classics edited 'for the use of the Dauphin,' on account of his tyrannicide principles. Corneille records his preference of Lucan before Virgil.

1. 9. Old as I am, &c. Perhaps an allusion to Addison's Cato, Act II: 'You have not read mankind; your youth admires

The throes and swellings of a Roman soul,
Cato's bold flights, th' extravagance of virtue.'

1. 10. Corneille. See Cinna' (Clarendon Press Series).

1. 14. severe brow, &c. Perhaps a reminiscence of Thompson, Liberty, Book III:

That often hang on Freedom's jealous brow.'

P. 294, 1. 3. one of our poets. Cato, Act v. sc. I:

Addison, in the celebrated Soliloquy of

'Eternity! thou pleasing dreadful Thought!
Through what Variety of untry'd Being,

Through what new Scenes and Changes must we pass !'

1. 15. snatches from his share, &c. The allusion is to the proceedings against Hastings.