449. a gentleman: James Bruce.
450. a certain political lady: Catherine Macaulay.
451. The force… no farther go: John Dryden, ‘Lines on Milton’ (1688), l. 5.
452. Bouts rimé s: Rhymed endings.
453. a gentleman… who wrote for the Vase: Captain Constantine Phipps (later Baron Mulgrave).
454. Clarissa: Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (1748–9).
455. another King: George II.
456. bibliopole: A dealer in books, a bookseller (OED).
457. another Italian authour: G. C. Cappaccio.
458. the ballad of Lilliburlero: A popular Whig ballad, composed by Thomas, 1st Marquess of Wharton (1648–1715), which is said to have sung James II out of three kingdoms.
459. One of the company: Bishop Percy.
460. an eminent person: Edmund Burke.
461. May 8: Rather, 8 April.
462. a certain celebrated actor: Spranger Barry.
463. a certain authour: Arthur Murphy.
464. another… actor: David Garrick.
465. Or, driven… pole to pole: Alexander Pope, Imitations of Horace, Epistle II.ii.276–7 (1737).
466. Man… to be blest: Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1732-4), i.96.
467. mediocribus… columnce: ‘For poets to be second-rate is forbidden equally by gods, by men, and by booksellers’ – Horace, Ars Poetica, ll. 372-3. See above, n. 415.
468. as there is… exquisite in its kind: Untraced.
469. a gentleman: James Boswell.
470. a man very low in his profession: Dr W. Duncan.
471. ∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗: Alexander Wedderburne.
472. ∗∗∗∗: John Home, the dramatist.
473. two other gentlemen: Edward Dilly and Sir John Miller.
474. the preacher in the morning: The Revd John Burrows.
475. The preacher in the afternoon: The Revd S. Popham.
476. a distinguished gentleman of our acquaintance: Charles Fox.
477. a Deist: Dr Richard Brocklesby.
478. to communicate: That is to say, to take communion.
479. an acquaintance: Probably James Boswell.
480. Nil admirari: ‘Nothing is to be admired’ – Horace, Epistles, I.vi.i.
481. Amoret’s… sustain: Edmund Waller (1606–87), ‘To Amoret’ (‘Fair! that you may truly know’), ll. 39–46.
482. electuary: A medicinal conserve or paste, consisting of a powder or other ingredient mixed with honey, preserve, or syrup of some kind (OED).
483. bolus: A medicine of round shape adapted for swallowing, larger than an ordinary pill (OED).
484. quid tentasse nocebit: ‘It can do no harm to try.’
485. four of our friends: Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund Burke, Topham Beauclerk (acid), and Bennet Langton (muddy).
486. The Beggar’s Opera: John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera (1728).
487. A very eminent physician: Perhaps Sir John Pringle.
488. labefactation: A shaking, weakening; overthrow, downfall (OED).
489. ‘worthy’… characterises him: James Thomson, ‘Summer’ (1727), l. 1423.
490. a young gentleman… an eminent singer: Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Elizabeth Linley.
491. Hudibras: Samuel Butler, Hudibras (1663–80); an anti-Presbyterian burlesque poem.
492. A gentleman: James Boswell.
493. Sir Roger de Coverley: The embodiment of Tory attitudes in The Spectator.
494. Somebody: Sir Joshua Reynolds.
495. Gaudium… Luctus: Gaudium: a feast or celebration. Luctus: a funeral or act of mourning.
496. Nil dat quod non habet: He who has nothing can give nothing.
497. nemo… non didicit: No one can teach what he has not learned.
498. non numero sed pondere: Not by number but by weight.
499. Bedlam: The Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem, used as an asylum for the reception and cure of mentally deranged persons; originally situated in Bishopsgate, in 1676 rebuilt near London Wall, and in 1815 transferred to Lambeth (OED).
500. an acquaintance of ours: Suggestions include Bishop Percy and Dr Michael Lort (or Lait).
501. another very ingenious gentleman: George Steevens.
502. an old amanuensis: Probably V.J. Peyton, one of Johnson’s assistants on the Dictionary.
503. homo caudatus: Man with a tail.
504. in my heart of hearts: Cf. Hamlet, III.ii. 66.
505. the King and Queen: Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
506. flints of wood: Wooden imitation flintlock muskets.
507. insulated: Johnson is here using ‘insulated’ to mean ‘not contiguous on any side’, or isolated.
508. Nec… laudo: I do not admire it; nor do I much commend it.’
509. D∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗’s: D’Argenson’s.
510. Prince Titi; Bibl. des Fees: Themiseul de Saint-Hyacinthe, Histoire du Prince Titi (1735); Bibl[iotheque]. des Fees probably refers to one of the many reprintings of fairy stories compiled by Charles Perrault (1628–1703).
511. ALn. and Anchises… Nilus: Aeneas was the son of Aphrodite and Anchises, whom he carried from the sack of Troy before going on to found Rome. Nilus is possibly a slip for Nisus, a companion of Aeneas and casualty of the war to conquer the future site of Rome.
512. Austin Nuns: Nuns of the Augustinian order.
513. aqua fortis: Nitric acid.
514. Speculum humance Salvationis: ‘The mirror of human salvation’ – a very rare and early printed book.
515. Mrs. S—’s friend: Mrs Strickland’s friend Captain Killpatrick.
516. the Grand Chartreux: A charterhouse, or charitable hospital.
517. Enfans trouves: Foundlings.
518. Neff: Nave.
519. Madame —: Madame du Bocage.
520. a lAngloise: In the English manner.
521. an Irish gentleman: Probably Captain Killpatrick.
522. a Frenchman of great distinction: Probably the French ambassador.
523. A Madame… trop: To Madame La Contesse de —. [Madame de Bouffiers]… Yes, madame, the moment has come, and I must leave. But why must I go? Am I bored? I will be bored elsewhere. Do I seek some pleasure, or some relief? I seek nothing, I hope for nothing. To go and see what I have seen, to be slightly pleased (rejoue a slip for rejoui?], slightly displeased, to remind myself of the vanity of life, to complain about my lot, to harden myself to externalities: this is all that can be reckoned as the diversions of the year. Madame, may God bestow on you all life’s pleasures, together with a mind which can enjoy them without surrendering to them overmuch.
524. vir… paucarum literarum: A man of very acute intellect, and little literature.’
525. Miss —: Miss Aikin.
526. a little Presbyterian parson: The Revd R. Barbauld.
527. To suckle fools… small-beer: Othello, II.i.162.
528. the Congress: The annual meeting of the Church of England.
529. dilecto familiari nostro: Our beloved kinsman.
530. pro bono… prcestito: For good and faithful service rendered us.
531. an entail: The settlement of the succession of a landed estate so that it cannot be bequeathed at pleasure by any one possessor (OED).
532. sartum tectum: Literally, ‘a restored roof – the technical term in Roman law for a building in good repair.
533. 1773: A slip for 1776.
534. Stirpes: Family, or good birth.
535. the 20th: In fact the 29th.
536. A person: Mr Carter.
537. a respectable dignitary of the church: Dr John Douglas.
538. Dr. ∗∗∗∗∗∗∗: Dr Douglas.
539. Hermippus redivivus: ‘Hermippus restored’. Boswell refers to a work by Johann Heinrich Cohausen, Hermippus Redivivus (Frankfurt, 1742), which was translated by John Campbell as Hermippus Redivivus: or, the Sage’s Triumph (1744). This work argued that long life might be attained by breathing in the exhalations of
young girls (anhelitu puellarum), a theory derived from a Roman inscription which recorded that L. Colodius Hermippus had lived to be 115 by employing this method.
540. the representative… in Scotland: Norman Macleod, twentieth chief of Macleod.
541. a countryman of his and mine: Alexander Wedderburn.
542. debitum justitice: Debt in law.
543. debitum caritatis: Debt of kindness.
544. ∗∗∗∗∗∗∗: Bennet Langton.
545. the Lady Abbess of a convent: Mrs Fermor.
546. One of his friends: James Boswell.
547. one who loved mischief: George Colman.
548. a gentleman of Merton College: Identified in Boswell’s papers as ‘a young gentleman of Gloucestershire’.
549. Atlas: In Greek mythology, Atlas was a Titan who, in punishment for his part in the revolt of the Titans against the gods of Olympus, was made to support the heavens with his head and hands.
550. a Gothick attack: A barbarous attack.
551. an ugly fellow: Traditionally thought to refer to Edward Gibbon.
552. Cicero’s beautiful image of Virtue: In De Officiis, i.5, Cicero insists on the affinity between, on the one hand, Nature and Reason, and, on the other, our human love for beauty, loveliness and harmony.
553. Mallem… sapere: I prefer to be in the wrong with Scaliger than in the right with Clavius’ – a remark uttered in the context of the dispute between Joseph Justus Scaliger and Christopher Clavius concerning corrections to the Gregorian calendar: see W. C. Waterhouse, A Source for Johnson’s “Malim Cum Scaligero Errare’”, Notes and Queries, 248 (2003), pp. 222-3. Johnson also referred to this tag in his ‘Life of Dryden’ (Lives of the Poets, ed. Lonsdale, II, 120).
554. The chaplain of a late Bishop: The Revd John Darby and Bishop Zachary Pearce.
555. not being English: The phrase was objected to as a ‘Scotticism’: Monthly Review (1792), viii, 79.
556. The authour: Edward Gibbon.
557. a man: James Boswell.
558. Tristram Shandy: Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1759–67).
559. a lady who had been much talked of: Mrs Caroline Rudd.
560. The lofty arch… flows: Attributed to Dr Abel Evans (1679–1737).
561. In contradiction… find delight: Sir John Hawkins, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1787), p. 87.
562. Whoe’er… at an inn: William Shenstone (1714–63), ‘Written at an Inn at Henley’, ll. 17–20.
563. Homer’s battle… mice: The Batrachomyomachia, or ‘Battle of the Frogs and Mice’, is a parody of an epic poem attributed in antiquity to Homer, but probably composed later.
564. salatticum: Attic (Athenian) salt (i.e. wit).
565. an ingenious acquaintance… A West-India gentleman… a young woman: James Grainger, Mr Bourryau and Miss Burt.
566. genio loci: To the spirit of the place.
567. The Beaux Stratagem: George Farquhar, The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707).
568. a lady abroad: Isabelle de Zuylen.
569. Sh’ apprens t’etre fif: I am learning to be lively.
570. Hob in the Well: Colley Cibber, Hob; or, The Country Wake (1711).
571. elegans… spectator: ‘A nice judge of the female form’ – Terence, Eunuchus, III. 5.
572. Sir Harry Wildair: A character in two plays by George Farquhar: The Constant Couple (1699) and Sir Harry Wildair (1701).
573. Nemo sibi vivat: ‘Let no man live for himself.’
574. A physician: Dr John Boswell (James Boswell’s uncle).
575. solemn temple: Cf. The Tempest, IV.i.153.
576. Theodosius… The Stratford Jubilee: Nathaniel Lee, Theodosius: or, The Force of Love (1680); Francis Gentleman, The Stratford Jubilee (1769).
577. an acquaintance of mine: Dr John Boswell.
578. a physician: Dr William Butter.
579. an eminent judge: Lord Mansfield.
580. Il Palmerino d’Inghilterra: Apparently an Italian translation of what was originally a sixteenth-century Portuguese romance by Francisco de Moraes. An English translation, Palmerin of England, by Anthony Mun-day, was published in 1602.
581. Imlac: A character in Johnson’s Rasselas (1759) who shares certain attitudes with Johnson himself.
582. a friend: James Hutton.
583. Epicurean… Stoick: Epicurean: a follower of the ancient philosopher Epicurus (341–270 bc), who taught that the proper conduct of life involved trusting to the evidence of the senses and a disbelief in supernatural intervention. Stoic: an adherent of the school of philosophy founded c. 315 bc by Zeno of Citium, of which the central tenet was that of detachment from, and independence of, the outer world. The Stoics and Epicureans were rivals, and held sharply contrasting views of the world and man’s place in it.
584. like Horace: Horace, Satires, I.vi.65–88.
585. a popular gentleman: Charles Fox.
586. stews: Brothels.
587. verbum solenne: Religious word.
588. a gentleman: Joseph Fowke.
589. a lady of my acquaintance: Possibly Jane, Countess of Eglinton.
590. Nunquam… vectorem: I never take on a passenger except when the vessel is full’ – i.e. she has affairs only when pregnant by her husband (and hence will not introduce a spurious child).
591. a man… vicious actions: James Boswell.
592. Leonidas: King of Sparta, who heroically commanded the Greek troops against overwhelming Persian forces at Thermopylae in 480 bc.
593. Nor that… loose reins: Lord Rochester, ‘An Allusion to Horace’ (composed ?1675-6), ll. 34-6.
594. moribundus: Dying.
595. The Memoirs of Gray’s Life: William Mason, ed., The Poems of Mr. Gray. To which are prefixed Memoirs of his life and writings by W. Mason, M.A. (1775).
596. for fear of Smollet: In 1748 Smollett had published a complete history of England, part of which was often reprinted as a continuation of Hume’s history of England.
597. Abel Drugger: A character in Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (1610) – a part in which Garrick was celebrated.
598. Comment… ce Grand Homme: ‘What! I don’t believe it. That isn’t Mr Garrick, that great man.’
599. a nobleman: Lord Shelburne.
600. A gentleman: Pasquale Paoli, the Corsican general.
601. The Spleen: Matthew Green, The Spleen (1737).
602. Socinian: A follower of, or pertaining to, a sect founded by Laslius and Faustus Socinus, two Italian theologians of the sixteenth century, who denied the divinity of Christ (OED).
603. a penurious gentleman: Sir Alexander MacDonald (c. 1745–95).
604. a well-known dramatick authour: Arthur Murphy.
605. by vinegar: Hannibal is said to have split the rocks which barred his way across the Alps by heating them and then sousing them in vinegar (Livy, xxi).
606. dialogue between Iago and Cassio: Othello, II.iii.
607. made his Odes… another man: Richard Cumberland dedicated his Odes (1776) to the then obscure painter George Romney.
608. a person: Edmund Burke.
609. a certain female political writer: Mrs Catherine Macaulay.
610. the father: Bennet Langton senior.
611. A literary lady of large fortune: Mrs Elizabeth Montagu.
612. a lady then at Bath: Miss Peggy Owen.
613. one of our friends: Bennet Langton.
614. experience proved the truth of it: A reference to Mrs Thrale’s later marriage to Gabriel Piozzi, which she undertook in the teeth of opposition from Johnson.
615. A gentleman: James Boswell.
616. Rowley’s Poetry: ‘Thomas Rowley’ was the fictional fifteenth-century poet to whom Thomas Chatterton attributed his fabricated medieval poems, first published in 1777.
617. Oscar: ‘The Death of Oscar’ was the first Ossianic fragment published by James Macpherson in 1759.
618. Respublicce… a bookseller’s work: The Respublicae Elzeviriana
e, a series in either 36 or 62 volumes which gave summary information about different countries. See n. 342.
619. Hutchinson: Francis Hutcheson.
620. a lady who knew Johnson well: Possibly Mrs Thrale.
621. ‘asses of great charge’ introduced: Hamlet, V.ii.44. Johnson glosses the phrase as ‘Asses heavily loaded’; see n. 622.
622. ‘To be, or not to be,’ is disputable: Hamlet, III.i.58–90. Johnson’s note on this soliloquy begins, ‘Of this celebrated soliloquy, which bursting from a man distracted with contrariety of desires, and overwhelmed with the magnitude of his own purposes, is connected rather in the speaker’s mind, than on his tongue, I shall endeavour to discover the train, and shew how one sentiment produces another.’ The quotes come from Johnson’s edition of Shakespeare in eight volumes (1765). The best modern edition of the commentary is probably Selections from Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. B. H. Bronson and J. M. O’Meara (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986); however, the note on ‘asses of great charge’ is not reprinted in this selection.
623. A gentleman: George Steevens.
624. a splendid table: The Earl of Pembroke’s, at Wilton, near Salisbury.
625. a gentleman: James Boswell.
626. one of his political agents: Robert Scotland.
627. pars magna fui: ‘I was a large part’ – Virgil, Aeneid, ii.5.
628. mine own friend and my Father’s friend: Untraced.
629. Jack Ketch: A hangman.
630. patriotick friends: Johnson gave as the primary meaning of ‘patriot’ ‘One whose ruling passion is the love of his country’; but in the fourth edition of his Dictionary he supplemented that primary meaning with a secondary meaning, ‘It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government’, thereby alluding to the way in which, during his lifetime, patriotism had been invoked as the pretext for agitation which Johnson regarded as disaffected and mischievous.
631. indifferent…to go or stay: Joseph Addison, Cato (1713), V.i.40, p. 57 (where however the line reads, ‘Indifferent in his choice to sleep or die’).
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