Conolly.—­Speaker of the Irish House of Commons.

Pistole—­about ten shillings.

Brought to the bullion seems here to have the meaning of the French billonner or envoyer au billon, ‘to melt for recoining.’

Our Caesar’s statue.—­The statue of George I. on Essex Bridge, Dublin.

IV.  SECOND LETTER ON A REGICIDE PEACE.

Contignation.—­This rather pedantic, and now, I think, quite obsolete word (from tignum, ‘beam’) means ’having a common or continuous roof.’

The slackness of England in taking advantage of the Vendean and Chouan movements, of which Burke here complains, has never been fully explained.  The poltroonery of the Bourbon princes, and the factions of the emigrants, throw a certain but not a complete light on it; and though conjectural explanations are obvious enough, there is little positive evidence to support them.

But when the possibility ... that the.—­It will probably seem to a modern reader that either ‘that’ or ‘the’ has crept in improperly.  It might be so; but Burke still maintained the authoritative but rather inelegant tradition by which ‘that,’ like the French que, could replace any such antecedent word as ‘when,’ ‘because,’ etc.

Louis the Sixteenth.—­To this is appended a note in the editions beginning, ’It may be right to do justice to Louis XVI.  He did what he could to destroy the double diplomacy of France.’  The subject has of late years received considerable illustration in the Duke of Broglie’s Le Secret du Roi, and other works by the same author.

Montalembert.—­Marc Rene, Marquis de (1714-1800), a voluminous military writer.

Harrington—­of the Oceana.

V. PETER PLYMLEY’S LETTERS.

Dear Abraham.—­’Peter Plymley’ addresses his Letters to ‘my brother Abraham, who lives in the country,’ and is a parson.

Baron Maseres.—­Cursitor Baron of the Exchequer, a descendant of Huguenots, very well thought of by his contemporaries.  Dr. Rennel I know not, unless he was the Herodotus man.

C——­, Canning.

Dr. Duigenan.—­A delightful person who, in his hot youth, as a junior Fellow of T.C., D., threatened to ‘bulge the Provost’s’ [Provost Hely Hutchinson’s] ‘eye,’ and was afterwards a pillar of Protestantism.

This light and frivolous jester was not the Rev. Sydney Smith, but George Canning, Esq.

The pecuniary Rose.—­’Old George’ Rose, Pitt’s right hand.  He was rather heavily rewarded with places and pensions; but even Liberals now admit that the country has hardly had an abler official.

Lord Hawkesbury, Jenkinson, better known as Lord Liverpool.

Tickell—­the Rolliad Tickell.