[283] Her doll. _Cf._ "Wentworth Papers," p. 451, where Lady Anne
Wentworth, aged eight, writing to her father of a younger sister, says,
"Lady Hariote desires you to bring her a baby." The best dolls were
called "Bartholomew babies," says Professor Henry Morley ("Memoirs of
Bartholomew Fair," 1859, p. 333).
A passage in Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia" (Book III.) aptly
illustrates this use of the word "baby": "We see young babes think
babies of wonderful excellency, and yet the babies are but babies."
From the private account-book of Isabella, Duchess of Grafton, who
married, as her second husband, Sir T. Hanmer, it appears that in
1710 the Duchess gave £2, 3s. for a "baby" ("Correspondence of Sir T.
Hanmer, Bart.," 1838, pp. 236 _seq._).
[284] Elderly men wore black, brown, or grizzly wigs.
[285] See the letter from Isaac Bickerstaff in No. 246, and No. 151. In
Lillie's "Letters sent to the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_," i. 210-211,
there is a letter dated Jan. 21, 1712, referring to "the unaccountable
custom that for some time has prevailed among our fashionable
gentlemen, of coming abroad in this cold, unseasonable weather with
their breasts and bodies almost quite naked, by which means they have
procured such terrible coughs." The object here was to display the
shirt; old men followed the fashion in the hope of seeming young.
[286] See No. 24, and Sheridan's "School for Scandal," act iii. sc. 3:
"Let the toast pass,
Drink to the lass,
I warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass!"
[287] A strain of martial music. "Turning your books to greaves, your
ink to blood, your pens to lances; and your tongue divine to a loud
trumpet, and a point of war" ("2 Henry IV.," act iv. sc. I).
The term was still current in Steele's day, as appears from the
following extract, quoted by Mr. Dobson from Mackinnon's "History of
the Coldstream Guards," ii. 332: "1717.--A party of drummers of the
Guards were committed to the Marshalsea for beating a point of war
before the Earl of Wexford's house on his acquittal of charges brought
against him."
[288] "The children then reappear to complete a domestic interior
which, at a time when wit had no higher employment than to laugh at the
affections and moralities of home, could have arisen only to a fancy
as pure as the heart that prompted it was loving and true" (Forster,
"Historical and Biographical Essays," ii.: Steele).
[289] Generally styled "Thomas." But Sterne also calls him "Jack" in
"Tristram Shandy," vol. i. chap. xiv. His tomb is still shown in Tilney
churchyard, Norfolk. [Dobson.]