[Footnote 425:  I have a pamphlet called “The Tatler’s Character (July 21) of AEsculapius guessing diseases, without the knowledge of drugs; applied to the British Physicians and Surgeons:  or, The difficult diseases of the Royal Family, Nobility and Gentry will never be understood and recover’d, when the populace are oppress’d and destroy’d by the Practising-Apothecaries and Empiricks confess’d by the College and Mr. Bernard the Surgeon.  By a Consultation of Gentlemen of Quality.”  London, 8vo, 1709.  The pamphlet contains some interesting remarks on the physicians, apothecaries and hospitals of the time.  Mr. Bickerstaff is called “the most ingenious physician of our vices and follies.”]

[Footnote 426:  See No. 42.]

[Footnote 427:  A friend of Nichols said, “I have seen somewhere, but cannot immediately refer to the book, an account of a theatre built at Southwick, in the county of Hants, by a Mr. Richard Norton, whose will is in the Gentleman’s Magazine, 1733, p. 57.  He is the person, I believe, who wrote a play called ‘Pausanias’ (1696).  Cibber dedicated his first play to him.”  The MS. annotator mentioned in No. 4 also identifies the gentleman of Hampshire with “Mr. N——­n.”]

[Footnote 428:  An auctioneer.]

[Footnote 429:  Christopher Rich, the manager.]

[Footnote 430:  Under the name of Powell, the puppet-show man, Steele attacked Dr. Blackall, Bishop of Exeter (see No. 37), who was engaged in a controversy with Benjamin Hoadly.  In March 1709, Blackall preached before the Queen a sermon laying down the doctrine of passive obedience in its most extreme form, but in 1704 he had preached obedience limited by the laws of the State.  Hoadly wrote against the sermon of 1709, and brought against the Bishop the sermon of 1704.  The Bishop, angry at this mode of refutation, answered haughtily, and dwelt on the superiority of his rank as compared with that of Hoadly, then simply rector of a London parish.  Bickerstaff here reproaches Blackall for the pride and rudeness of his answer, and then, under the guise of Powell, proprietor of the puppet-show, satirises the extreme doctrine of divine right taught by the Bishop, a doctrine which would make the subjects mere automata, to be moved only at the will of the prince.]

[Footnote 431:  Ovid, “Met.” xiii. 20.]

[Footnote 432:  The following printed advertisement appeared in 1682:  “At the sign of the wool-sack, in Newgate-market, is to be seen, a strange and wonderful thing, which is an elm-board, being touched with a hot iron, doth express itself, as if it were a man dying with groans, and trembling, to the great admiration of all the hearers.  It hath been presented before the King and his nobles, and hath given great satisfaction. Vivat Rex.”—­(MSS.  Sloan. 958.)]