[Footnote 292:  See a specimen in Aulus Gellius, where this parodist reproaches Plato for having given a high price for a book, whence he drew his noble dialogue of the Timaeus.  Lib. iii. c. 17.]

[Footnote 293:  See Spanheim Les Cesars de L’Empereur Julien in his “Preuves,” Remarque 8.  Sallier judiciously observes, “Il peut nous donner une juste idee de cette sorte d’ouvrage, mais nous ne savons pas precisement en quel tems il a ete compose;” no more truly than the Iliad itself!]

[Footnote 294:  The first edition of this play is a solemn parody throughout.  In the preface the author defends it from being, as “maliciously” reported, “a burlesque on the loftiest parts of Tragedy, and designed to banish what we generally call fine writing from the stage.”  When he afterwards quotes parallel passages from popular plays which he has parodied, he does so saying, “whether this sameness of thought and expression which I have quoted from them proceeded from an agreement in their way of thinking, or whether they have borrowed from our author, I leave the reader to determine!”]

[Footnote 295:  Les Parodies du Nouveau Theatre Italien, 4 vols. 1738.  Observations sur la Comedie et sur le Genie de Moliere, par Louis Riccoboni.  Liv. iv.]

[Footnote 296:  The Tailors; a Tragedy for Warm Weather, was originally brought out by Foote in 1767.  There had been great disturbances between the master tailors and journeymen about wages at this time; and the author has amusingly worked out the disputes and their consequences in the heroic style of a blank verse tragedy.]

[Footnote 297:  Beattie on Poetry and Music, p. 111.]

[Footnote 298:  I have arranged many facts, connected with the present subject, in the fifth chapter of “The Literary Character,” in the enlarged and fourth edition, 1828.]

[Footnote 299:  A physician of eminence has told us of the melancholy termination of the life of a gentleman who in a state of mental aberration cut his throat; the loss of blood restored his mind to a healthy condition; but the wound unfortunately proved fatal.]

[Footnote 300:  It would be polluting these pages with ribaldry, obscenity, and blasphemy, were I to give specimens of some hymns of the Moravians and the Methodists, and some of the still lower sects.]

[Footnote 301:  There is a rare tract, entitled “Singing of Psalmes, vindicated from the charge of Novelty,” in answer to Dr. Russell, Mr. Marlow, &c., 1698.  It furnishes numerous authorities to show that it was practised by the primitive Christians on almost every occasion.  I shall directly quote a remarkable passage.]

[Footnote 302:  In the curious tract already referred to, the following quotation is remarkable; the scene the fancy of MAROT pictured to him, had anciently occurred.  St. Jerome, in his seventeenth Epistle to Marcellus, thus describes it:  “In Christian villages little else is to be heard but Psalms; for which way soever you turn yourself, either you have the ploughman at his plough singing Hallelujahs, the weary brewer refreshing himself with a psalm, or the vine-dresser chanting forth somewhat of David’s.”]