Part 73

Kitcat Club, founded c. 1700 by thirty-nine Hanoverian statesmen and authors on the basis of an earlier society (see Spectator No. 9)

LA BRUYERE, John de, tutor to the Duke of Burgundy and a member of the Academy; author of Characters after the manner of Theophrastus (1644~96)

La Clos, author of Liaisons Dangereuses, a masterpiece of immorality (1741-1803)

Lambert, Daniel, weighed 739 lbs., and measured 3 yds. 4 ins. round the waist (1770-1809)

Langton, Bennet, a classical scholar and contributor to The Idler. Entered Johnson’s circle in 1752 (1737-1801)

League of Cambray, the union in 1508 of Austria, France, Spain and the Papacy against Venice

League of Pilnitz, between Austria, Prussia, and others (1791) for the restoration of Louis XVI.

Lee, Nathaniel, a play-writer who helped Dryden in his Duke of Guise (1655-92)

Leman Lake, Lake of Geneva

Lope de Vega, Spain’s greatest, and the world’s most prolific dramatist. Secretary to the Inquisition (1562-1635)

Lunsford, a notorious bully and profligate; a specimen of the worst type of the royalist captains

MACLEOD, Colonel (see Tour to the Hebrides, Sept. 23)

Mainwaring, Arthur, editor of the Medley, and Whig pamphleteer (1668-1712)

Malbranche, Nicholas, tried to adopt and explain the philosophy of Descartes in the interests of theology (d. 1715)

Mallet, David, a literary adventurer who collaborated with Thomson in writing the masque Alfred in which the song “Rule Britannia” was produced (1703-65)

Malone, Edmund, an eminent Shakesperian scholar, who also wrote a Life of Reynolds and a Life of Dryden (1741-1812)

Manfred, King of the Two Sicilies who struggled for his birthright against three popes, who excommunicated him and gave his kingdom to Charles of Anjou, fighting against whom he fell in 1266

Manichees, the sect founded by Mani (who declared himself to be the Paraclete) which held a blend of Magian, Buddhist, and Christian principles

Manlius, the Roman hero who in B.C. 390 saved Rome from the Gauls, and who was later put to death on a charge of treason

Marat, Jean Paul, a fanatical democrat whose one fixed idea was wholesale slaughter of the aristocracy; assassinated by Charlotte Corday (1743-93)

Markland, Jeremiah a famous classical scholar and critic (1693-1776)

Marli, a royal (now presidential) country-house ten miles west from Paris

Marsilio Ficino, an eminent Italian Platonist, noted for his purity of life and for his aid to the Renaissance (1433-99)

Mason William, friend and biographer of Gray; wrote Caractacus and some odes (1725-97)

Massillon, Jean Baptiste, famous French preacher, Bishop of Clermont, a master of style and persuasive eloquence. (1663-1742)

Master of the Sentences, Peter Lombard, a disciple of Abelard and one of the most famous of the “Schoolmen” of the twelfth century

Maximin, surnamed Thrax--“the Tracian.” Roman Emperor, 235-38. His cruel tyranny led to a revolt in which he was murdered by his own soldiers

Meillerie, on the Lake of Geneva, immortalised by J. J. Rousseau