Note 138 — ACT I. SCENE I.

Masters of dependencies.] They were a set of needy bravoes, who undertook to ascertain the authentic grounds of a quarrel, and in some cases to settle it, for the timorous or unskilful. In the punctilious days of our author, all matters relative to duelling were arranged, in set treatises, with a gravity that, in a business less serious, would be infinitely ridiculous. Troops of disbanded soldiers, or rather of such as pretended to be so, took up the "noble science of arms," and, with the use of the small sword, (then a novelty,) taught a jargon respecting the various modes of "honourable quarrelling," which, though seemingly calculated to baffle alike the patience and the understanding, was a fashionable object of study. The dramatic poets, faithful to the moral end of their high art, combated this contagious folly with the united powers of wit and humour; and, after a long and well-conducted struggle, succeeded in rendering it as contemptible as it was odious, and finally suppressed it altogether.—Gifford.