1. "watchmaker's eye": hidden behind its magnifying glass (loupe) for
close vision.

2. "Lizard": a headland at the southwest tip of Cornwall, the southern-
most point of England. The Book of Egoism, laid out leaf to leaf, would
cover the British Isles.

3. "crow-scalp": the top leaf, one sup-poses, on the mountain of
leaves making up the book.

4. "Dover": the cliff in King Lear, Act IV. Meredith fancies Shakespeare
atop it, comparing the immeasurable oceans outside and inside himself.

5. "branfulness": an excess of bran (chaff) and a deficiency of grain.

6. "ancestry": the anthropoids, whose possible relation to man had been
disturbing Victorian England since Darwin's Origin of Species (1859). Mon-
keys "hunker down" on their heels, and Meredith refers to it as an "Oriental
posture."

7. The precise cure, the right solution.

8. "index": index finger; "stillatory": distillery.

9. Drink, liquor—from the Roman god of wine, Bacchus.

10. "Hymen . . . Hades": whatever our human destination (marriage or hell or
both), our pulses keep the same monotonous time.

11. Amph-i-tri-te is a sea-nymph, wife of the sea-god Poseidon; into her
bower drowned men are gathered.

12. "he": still the man with an index on the book, above.

13. Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I; Prospero, when he came to the island,
freed Ariel from the hag Sycorax.

14. "floriferous": flower-bearing.

15. The delicate ironies of the free comic spirit are contrasted with bovine
society, content with its gross satisfactions, sensi-tive only to gross dis-
contents.

16. "moisture": tears; so also "briny drops," below.

17. Sir Willoughby Patterne, in whom the greedy instincts of his ancestors
survive under a veneer of social graces.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 1


1. Parents and imps; "premier": the first-born, the eldest son.

2. Primogeniture is the law of England; the oldest son inherits the title and
the estate, the younger sons whatever the father wants to give them, gener-
ally nothing.

3. As distinguished from county regiments, rich in tradition and social pres-
tige (the Hampshire Rifles, Seaforth Highlanders, etc.), the Marines were ple-
bian fighters.

4. During the mid-nineteenth century the British entered China by force to
export religion, manufactured goods, and opium. Merchants worked hand in
glove with the military to force open Chinese ports and rivers?hence "river-
ain," on the analogy of "sovereign."

5. He who dispenses (Fate), with the overtone of a free clinic.

6. "dying-top": a top which, is losing momentum and so wobbling.

7. Presumably, you may meet in trade some members of the royal family.

8. "shock-head": a bumpkin-hero

9. "limes-avenue": avenue of linden trees; "in quest": called for.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 2


1. "the county": County society in England is the local gentry (and aristo-
cracy, if any)--quite separate, most of the year, from the world of the court
and the metropolis.

2. "would have sent": would have made distorted and ugly pictures of her
neighbors pass for true ones.

3. I.e., the favored and successful.

4. "Hebe": handmaiden, cupbearer (from Greek mythology).

5. "Alcibiades": the great rake and tricky diplomat of Periclean Athens, im-
proved (rather grotesquely) by a full wig from the court of Louis X1V, the
Grand Monarque of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

6. Mythologically, Arcadia is a simple, natural, but crude society; England,
having passed through the pastoral poets, is now a refined and elegant Ar-
cadia.

7. Charles Stuart, Charles the First, "martyred," i.e., executed, by the Pu-
ritans in 1649. His "Merrie Son" was bawdy Charles 11 of Restoration fame.
Sir Willoughby is a Cavalier; a humble, practical fellow like Crossjay Patterne
(of the Marines) is identified with the "Roundheads," the Puritans, whose de-
scendants now populate America. This conflict between two Englands, one of
the ruling class, one of the working class, both dating back to the Civil Wars
of 1640-60, is important to Meredith's novel, and can be found as well in an-
other novel, that of Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil: or the Two Nations (1845).

8. Famous courtiers of the Stuart era, great court gentlemen.

9. footmen . . . draymen: heavy-handed, thick-limbed porters.

10. "valiance": a heroic deed or statement. Cicero, as the greatest of orators,
had a tongue indeed.

11. Pagan divinities are suggested; a "carpet-knight" is, however, only a par-
lor hero.

12. The age of twenty-one. He is therefore twenty-four "now" when first en-
gaged to Miss Durham.

13."the public service": spoken with bitter irony.

14. For an analysis of the strength of jealousy in structuring the "love" of
fictional characters, see Rent Girard, Mensonge romantique et verite roman-
esque (Paris: Grasset, 1961).

15. "Indian Gods": Buddhas.

16. After dinner it was customary for the ladies to retire and talk scandal,
while the gentlemen indulged in port, cigars ("the weed"), and scandal by
themselves.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 3


1. Theseus ventured into the maze built by Daedalus, but after killing the
Minotaur he was able to get out only because Ariadne held one end of a
string that he had unwound behind him as he went. The "salvage" or wild
man is a figure in Spenser's Faerie Queene; Vernon, more "natural" than his
overcivilized, is also a "green" man.

2. "Sir Roger de Coverley" is the title of an air and of a dance performed to
it--giving rise through its old-fashioned merriment to the name of a charac-
ter in Addison's Spectator.

3. He is of course grossly rude.

4. "moral . . . in a moral country": ironic, once again, to the point of sarca-
sm.

5. "metropolitan conquests": London girls, with latent overtones of easy
pickings. The novel repeatedly suggests that Sir Willoughby has had all the
casual connections he wants. These were thought perfectly condonable, e-
ven admirable, in a gentleman, though unthinkable in a lady. But see below
for the suggestion that the London girls judged Willoughby too sharply for
his own complete comfort.

6. Captain Oxford is named after the university and a street in central Lon-
don, both societies where Willoughby's peculiar predominance is subject to
challenge

7. Worshippers of the Indian god Jagarnnath (he is an aspect of Vishnu)
were popularly but erroneously supposed to fling themselves under the
wheels of the wagon bearing the god's image, to be crushed on the festive
day.

8. Meredith touches sharply yet swiftly and only intermittently on the theme
of barbaric cruelties surviving in the midst of "civilization."


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 4


1. "rushlight": a weak, flickering candle.

2. Cromwell's Puritans.

3. The "Infernal of Paris" was the ruling clique of the French Revolution.
Travelling to America in the 1870's, Willoughby would have met in the presi-
dency Ulysses S. Grant, hardly a flaming radical.

4. "congery": muddied combination.

5. The whole sentence is built on the old metaphor for Americans teasing
Britons, "twisting the lion's tail." "Terga cauda" is a kind of pig-Latin for
"tail on back."

6. The cousins are Britain and America, on the overt plane; Vernon and
Willoughby, covertly,

7. He is now, therefore, twenty-seven.

8. He really does not want to know who they are.

9. The garlands are for May Day. "No slugabeds tomorrow" is a recall of the
Cavalier poet Robert Herrick in "Corinna's Going a-Maying": "Get up, sweet
slug-a-bed, and see / The dew bespangling herb and tree."

10. The point is quietly made that Vernon, poor and dependent, is paying for
the support of wealthy Willoughby's kinsman

11. The royal dockyards near Plymouth, by Willoughby's standards a sad and
grubby environment.

12. In tickling fish one stalks the wary creatures so stealthily that one can
touch them in the water.

13. Especially in the Alps, mountains often make echoes; Meredith may have
some particular one in mind. But the phrase by itself suggests loftiness, pur-
ity, mystery.

14. A flighty allusion to Diana of Ephesus, late representative of a cult origi-
nally dedicated to an Amazon. Such warlike virgins would not mourn over a
slight.

15. "cicerone": guide, from the oratorical habits of Italian tour-guides: in al-
lusion to the Roman rhetorician, Cicero.

16. Egeria was the nymph who inspired and there remained faithful to him:
Ovid, Numa with his conception of the Roman Metamorphoses, XV.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 5


1."scientifically know": i.e., from the book of Mr. Darwin, The Origin of Spe-
cies.

2."caul": the thin membrane protecting a baby's tender skull during child-
birth.

3. Willoughby is to be an Oriental Sultan. Clara the shrouded, guarded, sub-
missive beauty of his harem.

4."rogue": In addition to its common meaning of "playful rascal"--a meaning
that stretches sometimes as far as "outlaw"--the word has the meaning a-
mong ceramists of"crack" or"flaw."

5."paste-sparkle": Of artificial brilliants: costume jewelry.

6. Delicate Chinese drawings are made on rice paper. But French dressing
won't improve it.

7. Leonardo da Vinci and Bernardo Luini, Italian artists famous for the sfu-
mato, the heavy-lidded, shadowy features of their Lombard models.

8. "a parasite and a chalice": The phrase catches with stunning concision
two classic definitions of female function as formulated by male chauvinists.

9. i.e., to angle for allegiance within a grant of freedom, also to angle for me
in you.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 6


1. "Your people," said Alexander Hamilton, "is a great beast."

2. "basiation's obscurity": kissing in dark corners.

3. "Get thee behind me, Satan."

4. "pervious": vulnerable.

5. The legal term for a widow.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 7


1. "Dian-like": like the chaste and virginal goddess Diana.

2. Clara has said it all in words of one syllable.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 8


1. Crossjay is not to be blamed for ignorance of Mary Ambree; she is the
heroine of a ballad, published in 1680, describing her bravery at the battle
of "Gaunt." Hannah Snell is more historical; she fought in India during the
eighteenth century. The wife of the celebrated William Taylor is not to be
found, nor is he. Boadicea was the warlike queen of an ancient British
tribe; Romans finally defeated her.

2. "Valentine's day": February 14, 1797, when Sir John Jervis, ably sup-
ported by Nelson in the Captain, won the battle of Saint Vincent.

3. Just after Robinson Crusoe finds a first footprint on the beach, he is
scared by a goat in a cave.

4."Flibbertigibbet": the foul fiend, as in King Lear, used euphemistically
here for ill humor.

5. Cure.

6."billman": footsoldier with a pike.

7. Horace in his Art of Poetry deplores the lack of order that results in a
grotesque figure, a beautiful woman ("mulier formosa") on top, a fish-tail
below.

8. To the point of awing her.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 9


1. "Vestal": The Vestal Virgins were Priestesses of ancient Rome, clad al-
ways in white.

2. "hamadryad": wood nymph.

3. "immediate lesson": her subconscious means Willoughby.

4. Vernon's metaphor of Mont Blanc (p. 61) dominates the metaphors used
to describe Clara's thoughts.

5. Flogging with birch rods was accepted practice at English public schools.
Doctor Busby was a famous practitioner of corporal punishment in the
seventeenth century. "Horsing" is laying one boy on another's back, or
over a chair, to flog him.

6. Heavy silver vessels often used on the altar in religious ceremonies.

7. To the point of disgust.

8. Willoughby implies that the lease will not be renewed. Total social sub-
servience of tenant to landlord, a feudal remnant, was fading from the
countryside. This is very backward behavior.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 10


1. "pull at the collar": decline obstinately.

2. "Armand Dehors": The cook's name means Armand Outside, perhaps be-
cause his concern is the inner man. "Homilies d'esprit": men of wit.

3. "French philosopher": This is Auguste Comte, who planned not only cal-
endars but cities to celebrate the great culture-heroes. Meredith admired
him.

4. In classical mythology, Perseus rescued the enchained Andromeda from a
fearful sea-beast.

5. "Harry Whitford": Clara has made, as we would say now, a Freudian slip.
Meredith knew about it without benefit of Freud.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 11


1. "that man": Flitch, the banished coachman. His name means literally "a
side of ba-con, generally smoked," but he is also (unbeknownst to anyone)
an emblem of domestic content. The Dunmow Flitch is awarded annually, in
that Essex village, to the couple who will take an oath that they have lived
through the year without strife. The custom, begun in the thirteenth cen-
tury and long discontinued, had just been revived in 1855: Meredith speci-
fically alludes to it in Chapter 18.

2. Satyrs have goat-feet; modern gentlemen, though nicely shod, are satyrs
at heart.

3. "The Precepts" are the old and tired forms of correct conduct for young
girls. Where Willoughby thinks her passionately chaste, she is only pretend-
ing conventionality as a mask for dislike.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 12


1. Melusine is the water-sprite of French legend, like Undine among the
Germans.

2. "Piedmontese Bersaglieri": picked infantrymen of Northern Italy.

3. "Styria": a province of Austria.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 13


1. "grace a barouche": look so well in an open carriage.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 14


1. Spartan masters used to get their slaves ("helots") drunk as a lesson
for the young against intoxication.

2. "sauf votre respect": "I beg your pardon."

3. "Parsee": here, an Indian devotee; literally, a Zoroastrian of Persian de-
scent living in India.

4. "emulgence": the act of milking out.

5. "multiplication-table": One times one is an emblem of marriage; one
man times one woman equals one flesh.

6. Balsam or balm is the universal medication.

7. "cop": tip.

8. "chatelaine": a chain on which women used to carry purse, keys, etc.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 15


1. I.e., a complete ignoramus, indirectly described.

2. "histrionically": like a play-actor.

3. Daniel Heinsius, seventeenth-century Dutch editor of the classics.

4. We are left to guess what advice Clara got from Vernon in the great
skipped scene between them; see the interval be-tween Chapters 14 and
15.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 16


1. The myth in Clara's mind is that of Perseus rescuing Andromeda.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 17


1. A lady touched by scandal.

2. "orb": sphere, as of a heavenly body.

3. From 1610 to 1774--from the onset of the French ("Galilean") old
regime up to a discreet period before the Revolution.

4. The code duello has a place in Willoughby's fantasy-life but not in his
actual existence, which is more prudent.

5. "ad inferas": to the infernal regions.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 18


1. Like Calypso, the nymph who detained Odysseus so long on his wanderings.

2. "fichu": a neckerchief or small triangular shawl fastened in front.

3. "in stressing the first syllable": maybe to make "eyrie" sound like "airy,"
maybe to make it sound like "I-ry."


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 19


1. "quid femina possit": what a woman is capable of, i.e., anything.

2. "semper eadem": always the same.

3. Dr. Middleton quotes Milton's Satan.

4. Dr. Middleton translates each of his Latin sentences in the next.

5. "neoteric": newfangled; "the institution" is the madhouse.

6. The reference ("Y") is to her phrase just above, "I...I accuse myself."
Where she speaks her heart, he hears only phonemes.

7. "It's been done; he is cheerful; lovers' quarrels (are soon over)."

8. "figure naught": i.e., himself.

9. Rowena is the fair Saxon lady in Scott's Ivanhoe.

10. I.e., "Are you for Irish independence?" The question was just coming
to the fore of public attention, under pressure from radicals like Charles
Stewart Parnell. Colonel De Craye is no such firebrand.

11. Note the omission of Willoughby, who has no instinct for play.

12. "last portrait of Britannia": the figure on the British penny-Piece.
"The Prado" is the fashionable promenade of Madrid.

13. I.e., pronounce the "aitch," instead of making the word 'Ibernia, easy
to confuse with Iberia.

14. The sentinel at Pompeii maintained his post when Vesuvius erupted,
and was found there many centuries later.

15. Crossjay normally eats with the housekeeper, as children commonly did
in great houses.

16. Reward.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 20


1. "nugae": aphorisms, adages.

2. "bow-winged bird": the swallow, loftier and swifter than the pecking
sparrow.

3. She was the apple of the orator's eye, but died inconsiderately young.

4. "Port," as its name implies, comes via the harbor of Oporto from Spain
or Portugal; it is a rich, strong wine. "Hermitage" is a lighter, though still
opulent French vintage, from the Rhone valley.

5. "Hocks": German white wines (from Hochheimer).

6. Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, who disputed the prize of beauty before
Paris on Mount Ida.

7. Classical verse forms, the first regular and majestic, the second ner-
vous and exalted.

8. "To the Greeks, greedy for nothing except praise": Horace, The Art of
Poetry; "cloacaline floods": a very roundabout way of referring to the gas-
tric juices.

9. "enceinte": enclosure.

10. In mythology, aged and chilly Tithonus is married to rosy Aurora, who
is normally glad to leave his cold, ungrateful bed every morning. But if he
had drunk this wine, she might have stayed with him. Willoughby doesn't
get the Doctor's weighty allusion.

11. A classical fountain where the Muses live; its water is often used as a
symbol of poetic inspiration.

12. "A women's best reputation is to have none": Cicero, Letters to Atticus
II, 1, 1.

13. "As the hidden flower is born in fenced gardens"; the doctor is quoting
an epithalamion or marriage poem by Catullus (LXII). The "Carmen Nupti-
ale"that he supposes Vernon will write is another such.

14. Foolish Phaethon tried to drive the sun's horses and almost incinerated
the world.

15. "houris": delectable female angels of the Mohammedan paradise.



　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 21


1. "kismet": fate.

2. "modus agri non ita magnus": "a bit of ground, not very much": Horace,
Satires, II, vi. But the Latin poet was thinking of his Sabine farm, not of
Canada.

3. "What virtue and how much of it is involved in living poor." Horace,
Odes, II, xvi, says he "lives well on a little."


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 22


1. The focus of attention, a guiding light.

2. "the Veil": devotional celibacy; there are few Protestant nunneries.

3. "ictus": impetus, determination.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 23


1. We would perhaps call these qualities severity and persuasion.

2. "Saturnalia": The festival of Saturn, toward the end of December, was a
time of misrule and inaulgence.

3. Greek sophists were famous for their ability to make reason serve any
end which at the moment they happened to favor.

4. "golden dish”: a nimbus, as of a painted saint.

5. With a studded club or mace.

6. "verdigris": green, traditional color of jealousy.

7. "Lesbia...Beatrice": Rather different ladies (Lesbia voluptuous, Beatrice
sacred) admired by Catullus and Dante respectively.

8. A very vulgar mistress indeed, a streetcorner mistress.

9. "antre": cave.

10. "Mr. Merriam": Willoughby's contemptuous phrase for a writer of joke
books.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 24


1. "proof-armour": Armor of proof cannot be penetrated; the indifference
of a mistress spells the doom of her lover.

2. "bile tumet jecor": The liver swells with bile, classical phrase for being
in a rage, from Horace, Odes, I, 13.

3. "kai triskakodaimon": literally, "and three bad devils," meaning something
like "with a vengeance."

4. "index": mere indication.

5. "centipedal": a hundred feet long.

6. "ferule": The ruler serves both to measure the scansion of a Latin line
and to punish the careless schoolboy who wrote it.

7. Gottfried Hermann (1772-1848) wrote a book on Greek meters, one of
which is the dochmian verse.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 25


1. Prayers for the entire household, especially the staff, were customary in
Victorian stately homes. "Mechanical service" is Vernon's severe judgment.
Dr. Middleton, being in orders, presides.

2. "wigging": scolding.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 26


1. A nymph or wood sprite given to agreeable minor sins (peccadilloes).


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 27


1. "private Walhalla": the parlor of the pub, the hall of Norse gods, very
strange to a Grecian like Vernon. The "manners of energy" are rude and
direct.

2. "In vino veritas": "in wine is truth," a proverb ancient and dubious.

3. "dies solemnes": literally, "my sol-emn days," but also the opposite,
"holidays."


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 28


1. "this thing": allowing De Craye to accompany her to London. Her intu-
itive ecision not to do this, partly provoked by his eagerness to do it,
lies too deep for description, but is communicated in her contradictory
command, "Open the door," below.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 29


1. "eidolon": image

2. "Lanthorn": lantern

3. "solus": alone.

4. "Green Man": Vernon, mockingly as before, a wild man of the woods.

5. "Jupiter's cupbearer": Ganymede, an effeminate young person. Mrs.
Mountstuart Jenkinson quickly corrects herself.

6. "shuttle of deceit": The weaving of lies is done as with a shuttle on
a loom.

7. "philippic": oration, like those of Demosthenes against Philip of Mac-
edon.

8. "gaze de Chambery": light, translucent stuff, woven in southern France.

9. Doctor Middleton's entire speech is patched up from a poem by Catullus,
in which he attacks Egnatius, a Celtiberian, for his silly grin. Celtiberia was
a district of ancient Spain.) The Latin means, "Whatever the matter, wher-
ever he is or whatever he's doing. he gleams his teeth at you." "fustiga-
tion": whipping; "morbus": literally, illness, here, nothing more than a
mannerism.

10. Comic sayings from Joe Miller's jest book, already antiquated and stale
in Meredith's day.

11. "epitonic": cooked through

12. on the spur of the moment


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 30


1. "refrain": as it were, the chorus of a ballad; the burden is its under-
lying and sometimes contrasting theme.

2. "Stagyrite": Aristotle, who was born in Stagiria

3. "Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?": Marlowe, Hero and Le-
ander.

4. Opportunely. "Fridolin": the allusion is to a ballad by Schiller, "Der Gang
nach dem Eisenhammer." Innocent Fridolin is sent on a fatal errand, but
delays in order to worship in church and is saved when his wicked accuser
is burnt alive in his stead.

5. "quenelle": meatball. Cookery controls at this point the mind of Mrs.
Mountstart Jenkinson.

6. Vernon in his jealousy wholly misinterprets the reason for Clara's
return. Nobody corrects him.

7. "acting wet jacket": pretending to be soaked through

8. The project is that of Chapter 14. Texts print "she had frequently
outlined,"but sense demands "he."


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 31


1. Swiss Guards at the Vatican used to wear huge striped pantaloons:
Sir Willoughby is complaining of Dr. Middleton's speech at the end of
Chapter 29.

2. "election": choice; "rara avis": rare bird

3. "de trop": in the way

4. Willoughby seems to be mangling the poetry by muddling the images.

5. When Moses struck the rock in the wilderness and drew water from it,
he must have got uncomfortably splashed; so with a modern tear-jerker
like Willoughby.

6. After pretending all through the scene that it is Clara he is talk-
ing about, Willoughby covers up by shifting to Crossjay.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 32


1. We are to juxtapose this version of Willoughby's visit to Crossjay's
room against Laetitia's gentle thoughts at the end of Chapter 30.

2. Clara assumes that Willoughby is releasing her only because he has
guessed, from Professor Crooklyn's conversation, that she was about to
run away with De Craye, or actually did so.

3. Judge and ruler of the ancient underworld, Rhadamanthus assigned
one to the particular torture one merited.

4. "Triton": a son and herald of Neptune in the shape of a sea-centaur
--man, horse, and fish.

5. "friend of the sea": the monster from whom Andromeda was rescued by
Perseus. In connection with the "strange old monster of earth," he sur-
rounds Clara with mythological menaces and overtones.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 33


1. "domino": a cloak, draped over naked self-love.

2. "particular way": a man, any other man. Clara can always and easily
escape via the door of scandal--for example, simply by riding in a railway
car with Horace De Craye to London.

3. "ravishing divisions": exquisite variations on melody

4. Dr. Middleton compared to rumbling thunder compared to bowling balls
rumbling down the alleys of the gods.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 34


1. Fluent, amusing.

2. "Aspasia": a mistress--from the name of Pericles' extramarital friend.

3. "come by it": She had been in the fly with De Craye.

4. Egeria, who was faithful to Numa (first king of ancient Rome) even after
death; Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi--of whom she said proudly, "These
are my jewels."

5. "One always comes back."

6. Four Scottish leaders of the Jacobite (pro-Stuart) rising of 1745 were
executed by the House of Hanover which gave England four Georges in a row.

7. "Always this porcelain!"

8. "Chinese bridge": Dr. Middleton too has been staring at the willow pat-
tern.

9. "maenad": Bacchanalian, as of a female worshipper of Dionysus. The
Phrygian cap, looking rather like a loose nightcap, became during the French
Revolution a symbol of revolutionary sentiments.

10. Modesty

11. Troubled with black bile, bitter.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 35


1. "In the Shades" removes Mr. Mountstuart Jenkinson discreetly to the
realm of the nonliving.

2. The "Presidencies" were the major divisions of India under British rule.
"Suttee": the practice, once frequent in India, of a widow burning herself
on her husband's funeral pyre. See above, chapter 6.

3. "in toto": completely, entirely.

4. Othello and Leontes are both Shakespearean victims of jealousy, the lat-
ter in A Winter's Tale.

5. Like offerings on an altar.

6. The allusion is to Othello.

7. Cf. Chapter 34, note 4.

8. "Cramoisy" is scarlet cloth; the phrase means she will blush.

9. I.e., no jealousy in the case?

10. Without an inheritance

11. Louis XIV

12. "Croesus": a fabulously wealthy Lydian king of antiquity.

13. William the Conqueror tripped when first setting foot on English soil,
but converted the bad omen to a good one by coming up with a handful of
English earth.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 36


1. "Plato . . . atticizing": Plato is a Hebrew prophet and lawgiver in Greek
clothing.

2. I.e., modern ideas have their roots in ancient ideas.

3. "court": an allusion to the Old French romance Valentine and Orson.
Having been brought up by a bear, Orson at his first appearance in court
was uncouth. "Tapestry Adams": the sort of Adam that might be represent-
ed in a tapestry--i.e., clipped, clean, and decently clothed.

4. "quintain": the five of them.

5. I.e., you win.

6. Admiral Benbow, who died in 1702, was a type of the rough fighting sai-
lor.

7. "epergnes": silver table stands, capable of holding several different
sorts of thing--as, for example, candles and fruit.

8. Claret, as a lighter wine, is more suitable for lunchtime drinking than
port, which is reserved for after dinner.

9. "Saxony . . . Sevres . . . China": These are all varieties of collector's
porcelain.

10. Two women, disputing over a child, appealed to Solomon; he offered to
split it in two, and declared the one who protested to be the true mother.

11. "latrons": thieves.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 37


1. "pig-sconces": grunting heads.

2. "ad infinitum": forever.

3. Above suspicion.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 38


1. "Spartan": severe.

2. Referring to the emblems of civil government, Cromwell said, "Away
with those baubles!"

3. "blue-stocking": bookish.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 39


1. "beam": a shaft, as of enchantment, perhaps also as of a balance.

2. The famous statue shows Laocoon, priest of Troy, struggling with his
two sons against a tangle of serpents sent by Apollo.

3. "puffed at": touched by the breath of scandal.

4. "si brachia forte remise": i.e., if by chance he relaxes his efforts
...down the stream he goes, "in pejus," for the worse: Virgil, Georgics I,
202.

5. "Kitchen-midden": the garbage-heap of shards and bones and rubble that
generally constitutes our record of the earliest civilizations.

6. "penetralia": bowels, inmost feelings.

7. What Willoughby's schemes are for using Crossjay, and how locking the
door of his bedroom will serve them, we are deliberately not told; he is a
man devious even to himself.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 40


1. "Doctors of Divinity": His mind is on Dr. Middleton.

2. "sue": woo.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 41


1. Confessed.

2. Professor Crooklyn's sniffles are laid to Clara's account.

3. "once in a lustrum": once in five years.

4. "Now spring brings back balmy warmth": Catullus XLVI; "equinoctial
fury": seasonal storms.

5. Threatening a kiss.

6. "horn that blows the mort": the call sounded at the death of the stag.

7. "Lady Vauban": Vauban was a seventeenth-century French expert in
defensive fortifications; jocularly, a lady intent on saying no.

8. "Dian, all arrows": The goddess of the hunt is always portrayed with bow
and sharp arrows.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 42


1. "Punch-like blows": In puppet shows, of a cudgel. the dwarf Punch always
makes free use of a cudgel.

2. "kern governed by Strongbow": an Irish bog-warrior ruled by an invading
Englishman.

3. The idyllic pastoral paradise of Greek legend is Arcadia.


4. Of "Mutiny on the Bounty" fame--a legendary hero/villain of the British
navy.

5. To prevent De Craye from getting seasick on the Dublin boat, Cornet'
evidently prescribed the liqueur known as Chartreuse.

6. "Toldeo": a blade of Toledo steel, the best.

7. On one cast of the dice.

8. De Craye adapts Caesar's laconic "I came, I saw, I conquered."

9. "haha": a hedged ditch, named from the echo it created.

10. A careful scrutinizer.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 43


1. "pro forma": formally.

2. Apollo, the sun-god, gave to the Trojan princess Cassandra the gift of
prophecy, but with this curse: that nobody would ever believe her. People
naturally thought her mad: sunstroke is Dr. Middleton's learned joke.

3. "plaguncula": a silly little doll--the word is from Cicero; "chit": baggage,
minx

4. "Optume": fine, splendid; "ad rem": pertinent to the matter at hand.
"Firma-vit fidem": he has given his word; "puss in the field": the hare,
which dodges and turns to elude the hounds.

5. "knot . . . Gordian": The great knot in Gordium, Asia Minor, was so
intricate that nobody could untie it. Alexander on his way to the East
cut it with his sword.

6. "Grecian portico of a boy": his bottom, by which, through school-
masterly beatings, he might be induced to learn Greek.

7. "Orion": Orion the hunter is a constellation suggesting Vernon Whitford
the lean pedestrian; but it is not the star Clara is trying to think of, just
near to it...

8. Sirius, the dog-star, is emphatically mentioned in the first lines of Eur-
ipides' play Iphigenia in Aulis, which is about a daughter, Iphigenia, threat-
ened with sacrifice on the altar by her father, Agamemnon.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 44


1. Scipio and his legions represent Roman soldiers of the rough and ready
republican era.

2. "old-fashioned-island instrument": the birch rod.

3. Sunburnt by service in India, also withered by Oriental fevers.

4. "bradypeptics": slow of digestion.

5. "Strephon" is a pastoral name, generally signifying a lover; his usual
beloved is Chloe.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 45


1. A lively dance.

2. Burke's Complete Peerage, sometimes known in county sporting circles
as the stud-book.

3. Far beyond patient Griselda.

4. "chartered": priveleged.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 46


1. "proleptic": prophetic, far-seeing.

2. "gauche": awkward, unsophisticated.

3. "turtles": turtle-doves, lovebirds.

4. "Polyphemus eye": the glaring single eye of the giant Cyclops in Ho-
mer's Odyssey.

5. "rivet his gyves": hammer tight the chains on his ankles.

6. "Hue-and-cry sheets" used to be circulated to advertise for criminals;
"post-boys" would sometimes be shown on them, crying aloud a descrip-
tion of the fugitive.

7. "deglutition" swallowing balsamic: generally efficacious.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 47


1. Sir Cloudesley Shovell was a picturesquely named British admiral of the
eighteenth century.

2. Laetitia will not wear herself out trying to write literature anymore, but
will confine her efforts to the nursery.

3. "verbum sap": a word to the wise.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 48


1. softly.

2. "grain": real nature.

3. The dismal science of economics. Vernon has been scrupulous in not
imposing his attentions on a lady who, he is afraid, does not want them.

4. Bregenz is a mountain-climbing center in the Austrian Alps.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 49


1. "Walpurgis nights": witches' sabbaths.

2. "beams of Hecate": the moon in her aspect as patroness of hags and
witches. "Brocken": a German mountain on which witches are said to hold
their revels, as in Goethe's Faust."Greymalkin and Paddock": beasts in-
fested by diabolic spirits.

3. Laetitia has always wanted money, in order to give it to others.


　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Chapter 50


1. "hymenaeal men and women": men and women about to marry; "dram-
atis personae": the characters in a play.

2. "gull": bamboozled victim, sucker.

Prelude