Note 152 — Chapter XVII
Reading edition
Mr. Tonson was a small part in the comedy entrusted with much appropriateness to Mr. Charles Knight, whose Autobiography has this allusion to the first performance, which, as Mr. Pepys says, is "pretty to observe." "The actors and the audience were so close together that as Mr. Jacob Tonson sat in Wills's Coffee-house he could have touched with his clouded cane the Duke of Wellington." (iii. 116.)