Vicar, 277: 'She thought him [Thornhill] and Olivia extremely of a size, and would bid both stand up to see which was tallest.' BACKGAMMON, a twopenny hit at.' Vicar, 194. See Hit (2). BAG AND BAGGAGE, one's whole belongings. Vicar, 328. Cp. As You Like It, III. ii. 171, 'Though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage.'
BAGGAGES, young girls of but little character; sometimes used, as here, in a tone of mock censure as a term of affection. Vicar, 377.
BAGNIO, a house for bathing and sweating' (Johnson); hence applied to houses of ill fame. Vicar, 217.
BAILIFFS. The scene of the bailiffs was retrenched in repre- sentation.' Good-Natur'd Man, Preface, 3. This scene (the opening of Act III, pp. 37 seq.) was omitted after the first performance, at the desire of the manager. It was restored in preparing the play for publication, and eventually took its legitimate place in the acting version (see Appendix, p. 490). Cp. the story of Steele and his bailiffs, Austin Dobson's Richard Steele, p. 222.
BALDERDASH, confused speech or writing, jargon. Good- Natur'd Man, 20.
BANDBOX, used derisively: 'Bandbox! She's all a made-up thing, mun.' She Stoops, 125. Cp. 'Bandbox thing' in O.E.D.
Barbara Allen, The Cruelty of, an old English ballad. The story tells how a young man died of love for Barbara, and how the maid afterwards died of remorse. Goldsmith wrote in The Bee, October 13, 1759, The music of the finest singer is dissonance to what I felt when our old dairymaid sung me into tears with Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-night ", or the cruelty of "Barbara Allen". The latter ballad is printed in the Oxford Book of English Verse, No. 389.
BASKET (1), a wicker-work protection for the hand on a sword- stick, in the form of a small basket. She Stoops, 150.
BASKET (2), the overhanging back compartment on the outside of a stage coach. She Stoops, 91, 157.
BAYES, a character in Buckingham's Rehearsal, originally intended for Dryden, afterwards applied to poets generally. She Stoops, 170. Rowe was sometimes called 'Mr. Bayes the Younger; see Dryden, ed. Scott and Saintsbury, i. 384 n.
Beaux Stratagem, a comedy by George Farquhar, produced in 1707. Cherry in that play is an innkeeper's daughter. She Stoops, 133. See Farquhar.
BEDLAM, the hospital of St. Mary Bethlehem for lunatics in St. George's Fields; hence applied to any great uproar, as here, 'Bedlam broke loose.' She Stoops, 151.
BED-TIME. 'Would it were bed-time and all were well.' She Stoops, 98. Falstaff's exclamation on the eve of the battle of Shrewsbury, 1 Henry IV, v. i. 125.
BEES, dialect form of the verb Be (see Eng. Dialect Dict., Be, I. 1). She Stoops, 99.
BEGGARS, doors of the nobility beset with. Vicar, 315.
BELGRADE, battle of. This was fought in 1717, when Belgrade was retaken from the Turks by Prince Eugene. She Stoops, 111. BENEVOLENCE: Human, Vicar, 290. Universal, Good-Natur'd Man, 8, 65; Vicar, 202; cp. Citizen of the World, Letters 23 and 27. Untutored, Vicar, 337.
BENSLEY, MR. Good-Natur'd Man, 4. Robert Bensley (1738- 1817), who took the part of Leontine. His ponderous delivery of Johnson's lines is said to have dashed the spirits of the audience at the outset (Forster's Life, Book IV, chap. i).
BEROSUS. Vicar, 267. Berosus was a Babylonian priest who wrote a History of Babylonia, which is lost, though considerable fragments are preserved in Josephus, Eusebius, Syncellus, and the Christian Fathers. See Pattison's Essays, i. 644 seq., and notes on the Eusebian Chronicle.
BEST THINGS. The best things remained to be said on the wrong side.' Vicar, 310.
BIDDY BUCKSKIN, OLD MISS. She Stoops, 136. This hit was intended for Miss Rachael Lloyd, foundress of the Ladies' Club. See Walpole's Letters, viii. 263-4 (March 27, 1773): 'Miss Loyd is in the new play by the name of Rachael Buckskin, though he [Goldsmith] has altered it in the printed copies. Somebody wrote for her a very sensible reproof to him.... However, the fool took it seriously, and wrote a most dull and scurrilous answer; but, luckily for him, Mr. Beauclerk and Mr. Garrick intercepted it.'
BLADE, ' a brisk man either fierce or gay, so called in contempt' (Johnson). She Stoops, 103, 171 and passim.
BLENKINSOP FAMILY. 'The Blenkinshop mouth to a T.'
Prior records as a coincidence that there was an old family of this name living in Yorkshire, not far from the
scene where the action of the Vicar of Wakefield was laid.
BLIND MAN'S BUFF, the game of. BLOWN UP, destroyed, rendered void. BLOWZED, disordered in dress or hair.
BLUE BED TO THE BROWN. See Migrations.
BOBS, pendants, ear-rings. She Stoops, 128. Cp. Citizen of the World, Letter 52: 'Resembling those Indians, who are found to wear all the gold they have in the world, in a bob at the nose.' BODY, sensibility of the. Vicar, 202.
Books, the reputation of, Vicar, 273; 'sweet unreproaching companions to the miserable,' ib. 335.
BOOKSELLER, the philanthropic. Vicar, 294. See Newbery, John. BOROUGH, THE, a short name for the Borough of Southwark. She Stoops, 121.
BOTS, small worms in the entrails of horses. Vicar, 264. Cp. Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, II. i. 9: Sec. Carrier. Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and that is the next way to give poor jades the bots.' Commenting on this Mr. Madden writes: If carriers on the Kentish road were ignorant of the natural history of the bot (which we know to be the offspring of eggs, attached to certain leaves and swallowed by the horse), they erred in good company.' See further in Madden's Diary of Master William Silence, p. 267, ed. 1907.
Box, to fight, spar. Setting the little ones to box, to make them sharp.' Vicar, 277.
BRASS, a person of brazen manners. She Stoops, 126. Cp. Bronze.
BREADSTITCH, properly 'brede-stitch', 'applied by poets to things that show or suggest interweaving of colours, or em- broidery' (O.E.D., s.v. Brede, sb.3 4). Vicar, 251. Since the seventeenth century the variant Brede has been used poetically in the sense of plait, and by modern writers also in various vague
BRONZE. 'O, there indeed I'm in bronze.' Good-Natur'd Man, 30. Le Bronze was Lofty's original stage name, afterwards withdrawn.
Buck of Beverland, story of. Vicar, 216.
BUGLES, long slender glass beads, attached in ornamental manner to various articles of apparel. Vicar, 207. Steele, Tatler, No. 45, writes of ' Adam and Eve in Bugle-Work, curiously wrought'.
BULKLEY, MRS. (d. 1792), an actress, who took the part of Miss Richland in The Good-Natur'd Man (see p. 6), and that of Miss Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer. In both plays she spoke the Epilogue (pp. 82, 169). Indeed, in the latter play she threatened to throw up her part unless she were permitted to speak it (see Forster's Life, Book IV, chap. xv). The song, Ah me! when shall I marry me?' (see Poems, 94) was written for the character of Miss Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer, but was eventually omitted, because Mrs. Bulkley, who per- formed the part, did not sing.
BULLY, the protector of a prostitute. Vicar, 315.
BULLY DAWSON, a notorious London sharper of Whitefriars and a contemporary of Etherege; he lived and died in the seventeenth century. She Stoops, 127. See Spectator, No. 2: Sir Roger... kicked Bully Dawson in a public coffee-house for calling him youngster.'
BURCHELL, MR.: his philosophical disputes with Dr. Primrose, Vicar, 201; his nickname, ib. 216. See also Thornhill, Sir William.
BURNING NUTS on Michaelmas Eve. Vicar, 246. See Nut- burning.
BY JINGO, used as a mild oath. She Stoops, 158.
BY THE LAWS, used as a mild oath. She Stoops, 104, 132, 150. The Dialect Dict., s.v. By, gives this phrase from Wexford only, quoting Kennedy, Banks of Boro (1867) 29: 'Be the laws if you don't make haste we'll give you a cobbing.'
CANOPY OF HEAVEN, the overhanging firmament. Vicar, 269. Cp. Hamlet, II. ii. 317-18, ‘This most excellent canopy, the air, . .. this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.' Sir Thomas Browne quotes from Lucan's Pharsalia, vii. 819 Caelo tegitur qui non habet urnam'.
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, Dr. Primrose on. Vicar, 365-6.
CARICATURA, a satirical picture, now spelt 'caricature'. She Stoops, 145.
CARTESIAN SYSTEM, the system of philosophy taught by Descartes (1596-1650). Vicar, 302. Cp. Present State of Polite Learning, chap. v, where Goldsmith speaks of it as an exploded system'.
CAT AND FIDDLE. Used here as a term of contempt, perhaps with the nursery rime in mind. She Stoops, 93.
CAT-GUT, a coarse cloth formed of thick cord, woven widely, and used in the eighteenth century for lining and stiffening dress, particularly the skirts and sleeves. Vicar, 207, 242, 251.
See 'ruffles of catgut', N. & Q. 10th S. xi. January 2, 1909. CATHERINE-WHEEL, a firework in the shape of a wheel, which revolves rapidly while burning. She Stoops, 131. Catskin, The Adventures of. Vicar, 216. This was an old ballad, entitled The Catskins' Garland, or the Wandering Young Gentlewoman. The heroine is made a scullery-maid and reduced to dress in catskins. It is a form of the well-known fairy-tale of Cinderella. See Century Encyc. of Names.
CENTAURY, a popular name of a widely distributed plant, anciently said to have been discovered by Chiron the Centaur. Lat. Centaurea. Vicar, 211. See Chaucer, Nonne Priestes Tale, B. 4153,' Of lauriol, centaure, and fumetore.'
CENTINEL, an old spelling of 'sentinel'. Vicar, 214. The derivation from centenaria, 'a centurion's post,' seems to be now generally accepted. See O.E.D.
CHAPMAN, one who buys and sells, a dealer. Vicar, 264.
Che Faro. And quits her Nancy Dawson, for Che Faro.' She Stoops, 170. Che farò senza Euridice, a beautiful lament from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, was very popular in England at the time this Epilogue was spoken: the opera had been first produced in 1762, and printed in 1764 (see Grove's Dictionary of Music, ii. 184, ed. 1906).
CHICKASAW INDIANS, a tribe of the Apallachian nation, occupying the territory between the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, now reduced to a few thousands, and settled in the Indian Territory. Vicar, 317. The Chickasaws were hostile in the early part of the eighteenth century (see A Paladin of Philan- thropy, Gen. Oglethorpe, by Austin Dobson, p. 10); but after- wards grew more friendly. See the Universal Museum (1764), 43: American news. Charlestown, November 23 [1763]. The
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