ator's
staying in the city at all, when he could easily have escaped.

[28] Explained by the two following phrases.

[29] Whom.

[30] "Lay close to me," i.e., was constantly in my mind.

[31] Kept safe from the plague.

[32] "My times are in thy hand" (Ps. xxxi. 15).

[33] Dorking is about twenty miles southwest of London.

[34] Rather St. Martin's-in-the-Fields and St. Giles's.

[35] Was.

[36] Charles II. and his courtiers. The immunity of Oxford was doubtless
due to good drainage and general cleanliness.

[37] Eccl. xii. 5.

[38] Have seen.

[39] Nor. This misuse of "or" for "nor" is frequent with Defoe.

[40] The four inns of court in London which have the exclusive right of
calling to the bar, are the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Lincoln's
Inn, and Gray's Inn. The Temple is so called because it was once the
home of the Knights Templars.

[41] The city proper, i.e., the part within the walls, as distinguished
from that without.

[42] Were.

[43] The population of London at this time was probably about half a
million. It is now about six millions. (See Macaulay's History, chap.
iii.)

[44] Acel'dama, the field of blood (see Matt. xxvii. 8).

[45] Phlegmatic hypochondriac is a contradiction in terms; for
"phlegmatic" means "impassive, self-restrained," while "hypochondriac"
means "morbidly anxious" (about one's health). Defoe's lack of
scholarship was a common jest among his more learned adversaries, such
as Swift, and Pope.

[46] It was in this very plague year that Newton formulated his theory
of gravitation. Incredible as it may seem, at this same date even such
men as Dryden held to a belief in astrology.

[47] William Lilly was the most famous astrologer and almanac maker of
the time. In Butler's Hudibras he is satirized under the name of
Sidrophel.

[48] Poor Robin's Almanack was first published in 1661 or 1662, and was
ascribed to Robert Herrick, the poet.

[49] See Rev. xviii. 4.

[50] Jonah iii. 4.

[51] Flavius Josephus, the author of the History of the Jewish Wars. He
is supposed to have died in the last decade of the first century A.D.

[52] So called because many Frenchmen lived there. In Westminster there
was another district with this same name.

[53] "Gave them vapors," i.e., put them into a state of nervous
excitement.

[54] Soothsayers.

[55] In astrology, the scheme or figure of the heavens at the moment of
a person's birth. From this the astrologers prete