See Anatomy, and General Index.

measure of length derived from the length of the human foot, and consisting of 12 linear inches. See Measurement; and for its length in different countries, see Weights and Measures.

Prosody, a measure consisting of certain combinations of long and short syllables. These combinations, as enumerated by the best Latin and Greek prosodists, amount in all to twenty-eight, as may be seen by the following table:

| Pyrrhie | Amphibrachys | |--------|-------------| | Sponde | Amphimacer | | Trochee | Bacchus | | Iambus | Pallimacereus | | Tribrach | Procelesmacer | | Molossus | Dispondus | | Dactyl | Ditrocheus | | Anapast | Dilambus |

sold in bottles in the shops are very bad indeed. In the first place, few of them, if we take the definition of pickle as given in the article Poon, are pickles at all. The vegetables are greened with copper, preserved with salt and water, and packed into bottles, into which some very weak vinegar and dilated sulphuric acid are poured. Even the vegetables are not always genuine, and white cabbage is dyed to pass for red, slices of turnips made to look like cucumbers, &c. Of twenty specimens examined by Dr Hazlitt, the supposed vinegar never contained the proper amount of acetic acid, and in general only about half. All contained oil of vitriol, and, which is still worse, all (sixteen were tested for this purpose) salts of copper—two in small quantities only, eight in much, one in considerable, three in very considerable, one in highly deleterious, and two in immediately poisonous amount. Of the extremely injurious effects upon the health of those who daily eat these pickles thus contaminated with copper there can be no doubt. Among the symptoms produced by the continued use of cuprous preparations in small doses are paralysis, chronic inflammation of the respiratory and digestive apparatus, slow fever, and wasting of the body. The store sauces are extensively adulterated. Of twenty-eight samples of anchovy sauce, twenty-three contained Armenian bole (a ferruginous earth of a full red colour). All the samples of soy were found to consist of treacle and salt, or at least nearly so. Six out of seven bottles of tomato sauce contained colouring matter, in all cases save one Armenian bole; and a very extensively used fish sauce contains acetate of lime and chips of charred wood. None of the sauces, however, were found to contain lead or copper. This, however, is not the case with preserves and jams, and thirty-three of these out of thirty-five that were tested were found to be adulterated with copper, and some of them in very large amount. Fruits preserved in bottles, too, nearly all had copper, and French olives in particular contained a large amount. As in preparing bottled fruits no copper utensils are employed, the poison must be deliberately added. This, too, must often be the case with preserves. Articles of sugar-confectionery are perhaps the most deleterious of all. Besides often containing sulphate of lime, which is not wholesome, the greater proportion of the colours employed are virulent poisons. Among these may be mentioned red oxide of lead, carbonate of lead, and the chromate of lead, carbonate of copper, arsenite of copper, and bisulphuret of mercury. Accordingly, from time to time, cases of virulent poisoning follow the use of these coloured articles of sugar-confectionery. (See also Adulteration.) must count a lady's age as you do a hand at picquet, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine—sixty, and he had no ambition to awake one morning and find himself so unequally matched for the whole length of a life." Driven to the stage for support, he made his début in the character of Othello; but finding tragedy ill-suited to his powers, he renounced it and betook himself to comedy, in which, however, he only played with mediocre success, till he began to parts of his own writing. In 1747 he became manager of the Haymarket theatre, and succeeded in drawing large crowds by his admirable mimicry of all the social and political notabilities of the day. He kept his theatre open for many years without a patent; but he procured one at length through the influence of the Duke of York in the following manner. Riding out one day in company with that nobleman, he was thrown from his horse, and received injuries which necessitated the amputation of his leg. The Duke of York procured for him the long-withheld patent by way of compensation for the accident. The loss of his limb did not force him immediately to quit the stage, but it undermined his constitution so much that he disposed of his patent to the elder Colman, and only acted when it suited his humour. His death is said to have been accelerated by the shock he received from being obliged to stand a public trial in consequence of an infamous charge brought against him by an old servant of his own, suborned by the notorious Duchess of Kingston, whose enmity Foote had incurred by delineating her character and detailing her history in one of his comedies. In October 1777 he set out for France with the hope of there recovering his health, but death arrested his progress at Dover. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where no memorial has yet been erected in his honour. Common consent has awarded to Foote the title of the English Aristophanes. In some respects the epithet is happy enough; in others it is little short of ridiculous. It was said of the Greek comedian that he wielded a censorship more formidable than that of the archons; it is equally true of the Englishman, that he exercised a wider jurisdiction than any chief-justice of his day. There was also a strong resemblance between the two satirists in point of wit, ready and abundant flow of humour, keen sarcasm, and above all in the audacity with which both employed their powers in bringing down laughter and scorn upon the living vices and hypocrisies of their respective eras. But Aristophanes, had he chosen to devote himself to tragedy, would have attained to as high eminence in that field as he has done in comedy. In this he shows to great advantage beside Foote, who, with comic powers as great, had neither the imagination nor the wealth of poetry of the Greek. Few of Foote's pieces are now produced on the stage. The very qualities which made him so formidable in his own day have contributed more than anything else to ensure his being forgotten in ours. His comedies, though containing admirable delineations of character, were generally pièces d'occasion, and are consequently devoid of that wide and general human interest which secures the immortality of an author. The whims, humours, caprices, and even persons of his own day were the subjects to which Foote was most partial. His plays are now more valuable in an historical than a dramatic point of view, and are now read chiefly by those who desire to know the spirit of social life in London during the latter half of last century.

Foote's most important plays are "The Minor," levelled chiefly against the Methodists; "The Englishman returned from Paris," which satirizes the mania for travelling. The bar is lashed in "The Lame Lover;" debating societies in "The Orators;" and newspapers in "The Bankrupt." Those of his pieces which kept the stage longest were "The Liar" and "The Mayor of Garrot," the humour of which is less individual than in most of his other plays. Altogether Foote is likely to be remembered by posterity rather as a social figure than as a writer or actor. As a converser he is admitted to have had almost no superior in his own day in England, except Johnson. His bon-mots are scarcely inferior to any in the English tongue. The personal character of Foote was in many respects very amiable. He dissipated three fortunes, of which he inherited the first and made the other two, but his heart remained as open to noble influences at the end of his career as at the beginning. He was utterly devoid of jealousy, the besetting sin of his craft; and countless instances are recorded of his generosity to obscure but meritorious actors. His friend Jewel erected a monument to his memory in Dover where he died, and inscribed on it nothing about his genius or his humour, his acting or his writing, but merely that "he had a hand as open as day to melting charity." (See Quarterly Review, vol. xcv., p. 483.)