I have just finished George Eliot’s ‘Felix Holt’. Whenever I can I read Victorian classics in the Everyman or Oxford editions. Both these have excellent footnotes. These help with some of the more obscure classical or contemporary references and words which are now obsolete like ‘megrims’. A delightful little word, meaning whims or fancies, I wonder what poor little megrims did to fall into disuse! Similarly, ‘opodeldoc’ – a medical plaster or liniment of soap, opium and herbs - is a wonderful word. I wish I had a chance to drop that into the conversation.
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