Planta, Joseph (1744–1827), librarian; assistant librarian of the department of printed books in the British Museum (1773); promoted to under-librarian (1776): principal librarian (1799); extended the library’s collection considerably; increased salaries at the British Museum; author of An Account of the Romansh Language (1776): 476 n. a
Plautus, Titus Maccus (c.254–184 bc), great Roman comic playwright: 274
Plaxton, Revd George (i648?–i72o), Church of England clergyman and antiquary; rector of Barwickin Elmet, Yorkshire (1703); published in Philosophical Transactions; letter cited in Life due to its mention of S.J.’s father: 25 n. b
Pliny the younger, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (ad 61 or 62-c. 113), Roman aristocrat, author and statesman: 445 n. a
Plot, Robert (1640–96), naturalist and antiquary; establishment Tory; author of The Natural History of Oxfordshire (i6j6) and the Natural History of Staffordshire (1686); secretary of the Royal Society (1682-4); Mowbray herald-extraordinary (1695); registrar of the College of Heralds (1695): 624
Plowden, Edmund (1518–85), jurist: 935
Plutarch (c.ad 46-c. 120), biographer and moral philosopher: 22 and n. b, 977
Pococke, Dr Edward (1604–91), oriental scholar; professor of Arabic at Oxford (1636); rector of Childrey, Berks (1642); professor of Hebrew (1648); canon of Christ Church (1648); author of Specimen historiae Arabum (1650); delegate of Oxford University Press (1662); the finest European Arabist of his times: 668, 1053 n. 793
Pococke, Richard (1704–65), traveller and Church of Ireland bishop of Ossory (1756); vicar-general of Waterford and Lismore (1734); extensive travels through the Near East (1737–40); author of a Description of the East (2 vols., 1743–5); archdeacon of Dublin (1745); bishop of Elphin (1765); bishop of Meath (1765); fellow of the Royal Society (1741): 447, 668, 777, 1053 n. 793
Politian, Angelus (1454–94), Italian poet and humanist, the friend and protege of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and one of the foremost classical scholars of the Renaissance; equally fluent in Greek, Italian and Latin and equally talented in poetry, philosophy and philology: 53 and nn. b and c, 970 n. c
‘Poll’, Miss Carmichael (q.v.)
Polybius (c. 202–120 bc), Greek historian of the rise of the Roman republic; political theorist and coiner of the notion of the ‘mixed constitution’: 13, 166, 282
Pomfret, John (1667–1702), poet; rector of Maulden (1695); best known as a poet for The Choice (1700) and Reason (1700), a critique on the limits of human rationality; included by S.J. in his Lives of the English Poets: 724
Pope, Alexander (1688–1744), poet; dogged by Pott’s disease all his life; author of The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714) and The Dunciad (1728, 1742, 1743); translated Homer’s Iliad (1720) and Odyssey (1726); master of the mock-epic and heroic-comical; central figure in the Scriblerus Club and intimate of Swift; edited Shakespeare (1725); most of his major works produced in opposition as a Tory and in association with Catholicism and Jacobitism; ethicist; championed by Johnson; General: 10 n. a, 11, 13, 39, 40, 74–5, 76 n. a, 77, 80, 83, 84, 91, 103 n. b, 104, 125, 135, 147, 163, 166, 170, 177, 179, 200, 236, 263, 283 n. a, 304, 330 n. a, 344, 349, 357, 387, 441, 449 and n. a, 453, 471, 534, 557, 568, 584, 612, 631 n. a, 647, 652 n. a, 659, 661, 663, 690, 692, 698, 703, 709–11, 734, 740 and n. a, 741, 749, 767–8, 782 n. a, 784, 788–91, 794, 819, 834, 917, 933, 934 n. a, 972; Quotations and allusions: The Dunciad 631 n. a; Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady 99: Eloisa to Abelard 147; Epilogue to the Satires 413, 543, 767, 966; Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (or Prologue to the Satires) 304, 700; Essay on Criticism 557, 796: Essay on Man 112, 449, 522, 561, 571, 626, 661, 708, 831, 972, 1000; The Iliad 19 n. b; Imitations of English Poets 1032 n. 260; Imitations of Horace 69, 74, 248, 449 n. a, 568, 939; MoralEssays 136, 200, 253, 951; On his Grotto at Twickenham 791; Prologue to Addison’s Cato 21; Universal Prayer 711
Pope, Dr Walter (d. 1714), astronomer and writer; one of the first members of the Royal Society (1661); registrar of the diocese of Chester (1668–1714): 772
Porter, Captain Jervis Henry (1718–63), RN, elder son of Harry Porter: 469
Porter, Harry (d. 1734); mercer; Mrs Johnson’s first husband: 51, 55n.a
Porter, Joseph (c.1724–83), younger son of Harry Porter: 813, 904
Porter, Lucy (1715–86), Harry Porter’s daughter and S.J.’s stepdaughter: 27, 55 n. a, 56, 60,130, 131,468, 511, 515, 593, 735,746, 747,749, 813, 843, 875, 890, 904, 906, 984, 989 n. a
Porter, Mary (d. 1765), actress; took on many of the roles of Elizabeth Barry in over twenty years at Drury Lane, earning a reputation as the ‘capital Actress in tragedy’; most famous parts included Queen Elizabeth in John Banks’s The Albion Queens and Lucia in Joseph Addison’s Cato: 896
Porter, Mrs Sarah, see Johnson, Sarah
Porter, Sir James (1710–86), diplomatist; employed by Lord Carteret on several missions to the Continent; ambassador to Constantinople (1746–62); minister-plenipotentiary at Brussels (1763-5); knighted (1763); fellow of the Royal Society: 740
Porteus, Dr Beilby (1731–1809), bishop of London (1787); chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury (1762); rector of Lambeth (1767); chaplain to the King (1769); bishop of Chester (1776); patron of the Church Missionary Society; leading figure in the movement to abolish the slave trade: 674, 778, 806
Portland, Margaret, Dowager Duchess (d. 1785), widow of the 2nd Duke: 753
Portland, William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, 3 rd Duke of (1738–1809), see Index of Subjects: Coalition Ministry
Portmore, Charles Colyear, 2nd Earl of (d. I785):9ii andn.a
Pott, Dr Percivall (1714–88), surgeon; author of Fractures and Dislocations (1768) and a vast range of other surgical procedures; fellow of the Royal Society (1764); Garrick and S.J. among his patients at Princes Street, Hanover Square; honorary fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (1786); promoter of ethical standards: 894
Pott, Revd Joseph Holden (1758–1847), Church of England clergyman; rector of Beesby in the Marsh, Lincs. (1783–90); archdeacon of St Albans (1789–1813); vicar of StMartin-in-the-Fields (1812–24); archdeacon of London (1813); vicar of Kensington (1824); a governor of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (later treasurer); reputation as theologian and author of Remarks on Two Particulars in a Refutation of Calvinism (1811): 509
Potter, Revd Robert (1721–1804), translator and Church of England clergyman; rector of Crostwight (1754); master of the Scarning Free School (1761); produced blank verse translations of Aeschylus (1777) and Euripides (2 vols., 1781–2); Elizabeth Montagu his friend and patron: 662
Pratt, Charles, see Camden, Charles Pratt, ist Earl
Prendergast, Sir Thomas (i66o?–i709), brigadier-general: 357
Preston, Sir Charles (c.1735–1800), 5th Baronet: 851
Price, Dr Richard (1723–91), philosopher, demographer and political radical; minister at Poor Jewry Lane (1762–70); fellow of the Royal Society (1765); member of Shelbourne’s Bowood Group; founder member of the Society for Constitutional Reform (1780); assailed by Burke in his Reflections; author of Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals (1758) and Sermons on the Christian Doctrine (1787): 879, 893 n. a
Prideaux, Dr Humphrey (1648–1724), orientalist: 936
Priestley, Dr Joseph (1733–1804), theologian and natural philosopher; figurehead Dissenter (Arian then Unitarian); partial autodidact; minister to the Dissenting chapel at Nantwich, Cheshire (1758); tutor in languages and belles-lettres at the Warrington Dissenting Academy (1761–7); minister to the Dissenting congregation of Mill Hill Chapel in Leeds (1767–73); winner of the Copley medal for his paper on different kinds of air (1773); led a significant core of Dissenters in Birmingham (1780–91); author ofThe Rudiments of English Grammar(1761): 325, 681 n. a, 893 and n.a
Prince, Daniel (d. 1796), Oxford bookseller: 159
Prince of Wales (Frederick Louis) (1707–51), father of George III: 790
Princess Dowager of Wales (Augusta of Saxe-G
otha) (1719–72), mother of George III: 192
Pringle, Sir John (1707–82), baronet, military physician; professor of pneumatics (metaphysics) and moral philosophy in Edinburgh University; physician to the army in Flanders (1742); physician-general (1744–8); present at the battle of Culloden; physician-in-ordinary to the Duke of Cumberland (1749); council member of the Royal Society (1753), later president (1772); physician to the Queen (1761): 348, 495, 522, 523, 526 n. a, 553, 618 n. b, 657
Prior, Matthew (1664–1721), poet and diplomat; Whig who drifted to Toryism; satirized Dryden; British ambassador to The Hague (1692–9); secretary to the new ambassador in Paris (1698); fellow of the Royal Society; member of the Kit-Cat Club; friend of Swift; negotiator for the peace with France (1712–15); author of The History of his Own Time (1740); arguably the most important poet writing between Dryden and Pope; considerable influence on S.J. in his Christian pessimism: 301, 344, 627, 737, 819
Pritchard, Hannah (1711–68), actress and singer; played Monimia to Garrick’s Chamont in Otway’s The Orphan at Drury Lane (1742), later Gertrude to his Hamlet; generally recognized as the great Lady Macbeth of her day; continued to play successfully alongside Garrick until ill health brought her career to an end: 111, 307, 448, 896
Psalmanazar, George (1697?–1763), literary impostor: 192 n. b,693, 867, 915
Pufendorf, Samuel (1632–94), German jurist and historian, best known for his defence of the idea of natural law: 344, 495, 936
Pulteney, Sir William, see Bath, William Pulteney, Earl of
Purcell, Henry (1658?–95), organist and English Baroque composer most remembered for his more than 100 songs, the miniature operaDido and Aeneas, and his incidental music to a version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, called The Fairy Queen: 445
Pym, John (1584–1643), statesman; prominent memberofthe English Parliament (1621–43) and an architect of Parliament’s victory over King Charles I in the first phase (1642–46) of the English Civil Wars: 322
Queeney, a nickname of Hester, Thrale’s eldest daughter, see Thrale, Hester Maria
Queensberry, Charles Douglas, 3rd Duke of (1698–1778), friend of Gay, courtier and politician; lord of the bedchamber (1721); vice-admiral of Scotland (1722); Privy Councillor (1726); resigned offices after his wife’s outrage at the Lord Chamberlain’s refusal to license the performance of John Gay’s Polly (1729); keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland (1761–3); Lord Justice-General (1763–78); characterized by J.B. as ‘a man of the greatest humanity and gentleness of manners’: 458
Quevedo y Villegas, Francisco Gomez de (1580–1645), Spanish poet and author: 659, 1053 n. 776
Quin, James (1693–1766), actor; took the roles of Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Brutus in Julius Caesar and Macheath in The Beggar’s Opera while performing at Lincoln’s Inn Fields; England’s leading actor between the death of Robert Wilks (1732) and the London debut of Garrick (1741); generally fell out of favour by comparison with Garrick, but successful as Falstaff to Garrick’s Hotspur in 1 Henry IV(1746): 458, 584, 666
Quintilian, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (AD c. 35-c. 95), rhetorician and critic of the literature of antiquity: 781, 993
Rabelais, Francois (c.1494-c.1553), French satirist and priest; an eminent physician and humanist; author of the comic masterpiece Gargantua and Pantagruel: 383, 662
Rackstrow, Benjamin (d. 1772), museum proprietor: 939–40
Radcliffe, Charles, titular Earl of Derwentwater (1693–1746), Jacobite conspirator; younger brother of James Radcliffe; the two participated in the Jacobite rising of 1715 and surrendered at Preston; execution deferred until July 1716 but he obtained a stay due to change in public mood: 103
Radcliffe, Dr John (1650–1714), physician and philanthropist; principal physician to James II’s daughter, Princess Anne of Denmark (1686); fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (1687); MP for Buckingham (1713); his estate after death provided for two medical travelling fellowships at Oxford as well as funds to build the Radcliffe Infirmary, the Radcliffe Observatory and the Lunatic Asylum, Oxford: 926
Radcliffe, Dr John, see Ratcliff, Dr John
Ralegh, Sir Walter (1552? –i 618), courtier, explorer, author; favourite of Elizabeth I; developed the initiative to colonize America; not, as the famous myth goes, responsible for bringing tobacco to England for the first time, but certainly central to its popularization; court poet; searched for the fabled treasure of El Dorado; imprisoned in the Tower at the start of James I’s reign; author of The History of the World (1614); executed (1618), a victim of royal high-handedness: 126
Ramsay, Allan (1686–1758), poet and bookseller; one of the original members of the quasi-Jacobite Easy Club; author of the ‘medieval poem’ Christ’s Kirk on the Green (1718) and the pastoral The Gentle Shepherd (1725); early avatar of the primitivism and folklorism popular in the 1760s: 377
Ramsay, Allan (1713–84), portrait painter; son of the poet Allan Ramsay; fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (1743); founder member of the Edinburgh debating club, the Select Society (1754); author of A Dialogue on Taste (1755); royal portrait artist; vice-president of the Society of Artists (1765); influential to his friend and fellow artist Reynolds; artist of great distinction: 659, 702, 729, 968 n. a
Ranby, John (1743–1820), pamphleteer; author of the Doubts on the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1791) highly commended by J.B.; partisan Tory: 634
Rann, John, or‘Sixteen-stringJack’ (d. 1774), highwayman: 538
Raphael (1483–1520), master painter and architect of the Italian High Renaissance: 471
Ratcliff, Dr John (1700–75), master of Pembroke College, Oxford: 147
Rawlinson, Dr Richard (1690–1755), topographer and bishop of the Nonjuring Church of England; fellow of the Royal Society; Jacobite; notable and generous benefactor of Oxford University and the Bodleian Library: 854
Ray, John (1627–1705), naturalist, historian of language and theologian; fellow of the Royal Society (1667); author of Catalogus plantarum Angliae (1670), Historia plantarum (1686-8) and a Methodus (1705) of insects; collaborator with Francis Willughby: 307, 393, 455
Ray, Martha (c.1745–79), mistress of Lord Sandwich: 730
Redi, Francesco (1626–98), Italian natural philosopher and poet: 648 n. b
Reed, Isaac (1742–1807), literary editor and book collector; sent notes to S.J. for his Lives of the English Poets in 1781; fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (1777); contributor of biographical articles to the Westminster Magazine (1773–80); author of a Biographia dramatica (1782); re-edited the S.J. and Steeven’s variorum of Shakespeare (10 vols., 1785): 783
Reid, John (d. 1774), convict: 414 n. a
Reid, Thomas (1710–96), natural and moral philosopher; regent at King’s College, Aberdeen (1751); one of the founders of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society (1758–73); author of an Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense (1764); professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow University (1764); active in the Glasgow Literary Society; fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1783): 248
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69), Dutch painter and print-maker: 610
Reynolds, Frances (1729–1807), painter, poet and writer on art; younger sister of Sir Joshua Reynolds; exhibited paintings at the Royal Society (1774– 5); author of several drafts of‘The Recollections of Samuel Johnson’ andEnquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste and the Origin of our Ideas of Beauty &c (1789); greatly admired by S.J.: 254, 335, 562, 639, 655, 662, 682, 696, 733, 989 n. a, 1000 n. c
Reynolds, Sir Joshua (1723–92), portrait and history painter and art theorist; S.J. was the single most important influence on his life in the 1750s and 1760s; painted S.J. on a number of occasions; founded the Literary Club for S.J. ‘s closest circle (1764); president of the Royal Academy (1768); Discourses (first complete edition, 1797) for the Royal Academy still in print today; mayor of Plympton (1773); Burke and Fox among his closest friends; principal painter-in-ordinary to the King (1784); read and commended the draft o
f Burke’s Reflections; dominated the British art world in the second half of the eighteenth century: 3, 7, 75 n. a, 83, 84, 94, 95, 113, 114, 124, 133, 134, 143 n. b, 160, 163, 175, 177, 182 and n. a, 194, 198, 199, 200, 201, 203, 208, 219 n. b, 251, 252 and n. c, 253, 254, 255, 269, 282 and n. a, 284, 285, 304, 305, 306, 316, 333, 335, 336, 383, 385, 404,419, 426,436, 447,455, 466 n. b, 479, 480, 504, 521, 539, 553, 562, 563, 567, 571, 621, 627, 648, 659, 664, 666n. a, 688, 691, 692, 695, 696, 699, 700,701, 702,703, 706,709, 713,721, 723,724, 729,731, 733,734, 754, 766, 772, 775 n. b, 778, 780, 793, 804, 806, 807, 811, 812, 816, 817, 818, 837, 838, 853, 854,863, 865, 866, 874,884, 887, 898, 902,918, 920,938, 940,941, 944 andn.b,946, 947, 948, 949, 950, 951, 953, 955,956 andn.a,967, 989n.a, 996, 1000 n. c, 1001
Rich, John (1682?–1761), pantomimist and theatre manager; produced The Beggar’s Opera (1727), the biggest commercial theatrical success of the century; exploited the physicality of the Italian commedia dell’arte; used the funds from his successestofounda theatreatCovent Garden, Rival to Garrick at Drury Lane; founded the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks (1735); left Covent Garden to his son-in-law, John Beard, until sold to Colman and his associates in 1767: 664
Richards, Thomas (1710?–90), lexicographer and Church of England clergyman; chiefly remembered for his Anglo-Welsh dictionary, Antiquae linguae Britanni-cae thesaurus (1753), running to three editions: 106
Richardson, Jonathan (1665–1745), portrait painter and writer; declined two invitations to be court painter; the most important and prolific English writer on art of the first half of the eighteenth century; author of An Essay on the Theory of Painting (1715); friend of Pope and Prior: 74–5 and n. a, 83
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