French literature: probably an allusion to the Confessions ( 1782) of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

one celebrated man: S. T. Coleridge.

Mead. Richard Mead ( 1673-1754), a well-known and controversial
physician and author of numerous medical treatises.

Φωναντα συνετοιοι: 'speaking to the wise'.

Humani nihil a se alienum putat: 'he deems nothing human alien to
him'; from Terence, Heauton Timoroumenos, 77.

David Ricardo: pioneer of political economy ( 1772-1823); author of
Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817.

Scottish Professors: British Philosophy in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries was dominated by a series of distinguished philo-
sophers who taught at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The
professor whom De Quincey knew was John Wilson ( 1785-1854),
Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University; under the
pseudonym "'Christopher North'" Wilson edited Blackwood's Magazine.

A third exception: the critic and essayist William Hazlitt ( 1778-1830),
who in 1805 had published an Essay on the Principles of Human Action,
a philosophical work.

a blockhead: the Revd Edward Spencer, headmaster of Winkfield
School, Wiltshire.