632. Gretna-Green: The most southerly village in Scotland, and therefore the first place in which fugitives from England might be married according to Scottish law, which did not require parental assent for those who had not yet attained their majority.
633. One of the company: Edward Dilly.
634. A merry Andrew: A person who entertains people with antics and buffoonery; a clown (OED).
635. Scrub: A low comic character in Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem.
636. Each… what they understand: Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711), ll. 66-7.
637. l’esprit du corps: The regard entertained by the members of a body for the honour and interests of the body as a whole, and of each other as belonging to it (OED, 2).
638. making Birnamwood march to Dunsinane: In Macbeth, V.iv-v.
639. The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty: Milton, ‘L’Allegro’, l. 36.
640. Off with his head… Aylesbury: Cf. Colley Cibber, The Tragical History of King Richard III (1735), p. 57.
641. Difficile… dicere: ‘It is difficult to speak of common things in your own way’ – Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 128.
642. Tuque… primus: Ibid., ll. 128–30; for the translation, see below (n. 644).
643. Epistola ad Pisones: An alternative, and technically more correct, way of referring to Horace’s Ars Poetica.
644. Si quid… aut operis lex: ‘If it is an untried theme you entrust to the stage, and if you boldly fashion a fresh character, make it the same at the end as it is at the beginning, and have it self-consistent. It is difficult to speak of common things in your own way; and it is more proper for you to spin into acts a song of Troy than if, for the first time, you were giving the world an unknown and unsung theme. You may acquire private rights in common ground, provided you will neither linger in the one hackneyed and easy round, nor trouble to render word for word, with the fidelity of the translator. Nor by your mode of imitating should you take the “leap into the pit” out of which shame, if not the law of your work, will forbid you to stir hand or foot to escape’ – ibid., ll. 125–35.
645. Communia… occupata: ‘Here Horace means by communia the subject matter of fables which have hitherto been handled by no one; and which thus, when presented to anyone and placed before them squarely, are as it were empty and unoccupied ground.’
646. ignota indictaque: Unknown and unsung.
647. Difficile quidem… (Poet. Prcel. v. ii. p. 164.): ‘It is hard to speak properly about common things: that is to say, we readily submit to the power of common material, known and obvious to all, when altered and embellished so as to seem fresh and the original handiwork of the writer; and this observation is doubtless of great weight. But, all things considered, and allowing for the difficulty and beauty of judgement as opposed to native wit, nevertheless it seems more glorious to form a new fable from deep within yourself, than to display once again an old one, no matter how remodelled’ – Joseph Trapp, Praelectiones Poeticae, 3rd edn, 2 vols. (1736), II, 164.
648. Difficile est… Vet. Schol.: ‘It is hard to speak properly about common things, that is, to narrate common material in well-chosen language, or to impart dignity to humble topics. It is difficult to treat of common things in appropriate language. Old Scholiast.’
649. Proprie… d’Homere: ‘Proprie communia dicere; that is to say, it is not easy to impart particular and moreover probable characteristics to figures one has imagined for oneself. To the extent that one has been able to shape these figures to one’s liking, the less forgivable are the faults one commits in the process. It is for this reason that Horace advises that one should always take known subjects, such as for example those which can be drawn from the poems of Homer.’
650. Apres avoir… au premier occupant: ‘Having pointed out the two qualities one must bestow on characters one has invented, he advises tragic poets to avail themselves sparingly of the freedom they have to invent, because it is very difficult to succeed with invented characters. It is difficult, says Horace, to treat common subjects (that is to say, invented subjects, which have no basis in either history or fable) properly (that is to say appropriately); and he calls these subjects “common” because they are available to everybody, and because everybody has the right to embellish them, and because they are, as one says, open to all.’
651. in meditatione fugte: ‘Meditating flight.’
652. Diabolus Regis: ‘The King’s Devil.’
653. The proper study… Man: Pope, An Essay on Man, ii.2.
654. On each glance… the flash: John Hume, Douglas: A Tragedy (1757), p. 33.
655. rerum civilium sive naturalium: The lines from the rejected version of Goldsmith’s epitaph which Johnson is trying to remember are ‘Rerum, sive naturalium, sive civilium, | elegans, at gravis scriptor’ – ‘an elegant yet weighty writer, whether the subject be natural or civil’.
656. Olivarii Goldsmith… mdcclxxiv : ‘Oliver Goldsmith, Poet, Naturalist, Historian; who touched almost every kind of writing, and touched none that he did not adorn. A powerful but kindly master of the emotions, whether he would move to tears or to laughter. Of genius lofty, lively, versatile; in style great, graceful, and charming. This monument to his memory has been raised by the love of his companions, the fidelity of his friends, the veneration of his readers. He was born at Pallas in County Longford, 29 November 1731, educated at Dublin, and died in London, 4 April 1774.’
657. somebody: Possibly Sir Joshua Reynolds.
658. a faithful transcript: Omitted in this edition.
659. from whom… perfect gift: Cf. James 1:17.
660. Suasorium: Pleading.
661. e cathedra: Literally ‘from the chair’, i.e. in the manner of one speaking from the seat of office or professorial chair, with authority (OED).
662. While Tories… a Tory: Pope, Imitations of Horace, Satire II.i.68 (1733).
663. Betsy: Elizabeth Ball (c.1755–1816), whom Francis Barber had married on 28 January 1773.
664. Temple of Janus: In ancient Rome, a small bronze shrine in the Forum, with doors on its eastern and western sides which stood open in time of war and were closed in time of peace.
665. Foote’s patent: Samuel Foote had obtained in 1766 a patent to operate the Haymarket Theatre in the summer season. In October 1776 Foote leased this patent to George Colman.
666. Saw God in clouds: Pope, An Essay on Man, i.100.
667. Vita… lcetandum: ‘Resolved: to order my life, to read the Bible, to study theology, to serve God with gladness.’
668. De minimis… lex: The law does not concern itself with trifles.
669. Monitoire: Warning.
670. Papadendrion: Father of plantations.
671. sermones… aurei: Golden sermons – nay, more golden than gold.
672. Johnstoni Poemata: Poemata Omnia (1642) by Arthur Johnston, a Scottish Latin poet.
673. magnum nomen: Great name.
674. Timeo… ferentes: ‘I fear the Greeks, even when they bring gifts’ – Virgil, Aeneid, ii.49.
675. the Act of Queen Anne: The Act of 1709 of which the full title is ‘An Act for the encouragement of Learning, by vesting the copies of printed books in the authors or purchasers of such copies during the times therein mentioned’. The purpose of the Act was to provide machinery for the enforcement of copyright.
676. fervour of Loyalty: James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), p. 243 (13 September).
677. July 9, 1777: In fact 9 June.
678. Studious… to deceive: Matthew Prior, ‘Gualterus Danistonus ad Amicos. Imitated’ (1710), l. 1.
679. a Moravian: The Revd Benjamin Latrobe. A Moravian is a member of a Protestant Church founded in 1722 in Saxony by emigrants from Moravia, continuing the tradition of the Unitas Fratrum, a body holding Hussite doctrines (i.e. using a liturgy in the vernacular, and administering Communion to the laity in the forms of both bread and wine) which had its chief seat in Moravia and Bohemia (OED, 2).
680. viaticum: A
supply of money or other necessaries for a journey (OED, 2).
681. to Mr. Edward Dilly: In fact addressed to William Sharp.
682. sedes avitce: Ancestral seat.
683. poor dear —: Bennet Langton.
684. To virtue… breast: The reference is to the concluding line of a sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney included in Sir John Harington’s Ariosto (1591), p. 87.
685. a pituitous defluxion: An excess of phlegm.
686. light afflictions: Cf. 2 Corinthians 4:17.
687. Hockley in the Hole: A bear garden and venue for dog-fights and prize fights in Clerkenwell, which had a reputation for disorder and drunkenness. In The Spectator, 436 (21 July 1712), it was celebrated as ‘a Place of no small Renown for the Gallantry of the lower Order of Britons’. In Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera Mrs Peachum, advising Filch to ‘learn Valour’, includes Hockley in the Hole among ‘the Schools that have bred so many brave Men’ (I.vi). In Fielding’s Jonathan Wild (1743), Jonathan’s mother comes from Hockley in the Hole (bk 1, ch. 2).
688. bottom: Physical resources, ‘staying power’, power of endurance; said especially of pugilists, wrestlers, race-horses, etc. (OED, 14).
689. a gentleman: Littleton Poyntz Meynell.
690. a certain person: George Garrick.
691. What shall I do to be saved: Acts 16:30. And cf. p. 43.
692. Ne sit… amor, &c: ‘Your love for a handmaid need cost you no blushes…’ – Horace, Odes, II.iv.i.
693. See Winter… constrains: William Hamilton, ‘Ode III’, in Poems on Several Occasions (1749), p. 32.
694. a friend of mine: George Dempster.
695. a gentleman of eminence in literature: Thomas Warton the younger.
696. Dos magna parentum virtus: ‘Their ample dowry is their parents’ worth’ – Horace, Odes, III.xxiv.21.
697. Daniel… Nebuchadnezzar’s dream: Daniel 2:1-49.
698. Quce terra… laboris: ‘What land is not yet full of our sorrow?’ – Virgil, Aeneid, i.460.
699. Sands… the year: Edward Young, The Love of Fame (1728), satire vi.194; slightly misquoted.
700. one of his friends: Edmund Burke.
701. vis inertice: The power of inertness.
702. a certain Scotch Lord: Archibald Montgomerie, nth Earl of Eglinton.
703. a person: Ibid.
704. obnubilation: The action of darkening or fact of being darkened with or as with a cloud (OED).
705. De rebus ad eum pertinentibus: ‘On matters that concerned him’.
706. Separatist: One who advocates ecclesiastical separation; one who belongs to a religious community separated from the Church or from a particular Church. In the seventeenth century applied chiefly to the Independents and those who agreed with them in rejecting all ecclesiastical authority outside the individual congregation. In later use an occasional hostile designation for Protestant Dissenters in general (OED).
707. great wit… near allied to madness: Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, l. 163.
708. in the Gospels: Mark 9:17–18; Luke 9:39.
709. dulcedo… natale solum: Sweetness of the native soil.
710. morn of life: Hamlet, I.iii.41. Cf. also Mark Akenside, The Pleasures of the Imagination: A Poem, iii.346, in The Poems (1772), p. 194.
711. Concio pro Tayloro: A sermon for Taylor.
712. an eminent Judge: Probably Lord Auchinleck.
713. a respectable person: Lord Auchinleck.
714. his son: David Boswell.
715. Jemmy: James Fieldhouse.
716. a scoundrel commissary: Robert Paris Taylor.
717. quatenùs: In so far as; in the quality or capacity of (OED).
718. one of our friends: Bennet Langton.
719. a gentleman of our acquaintance: Ibid.
720. a gentleman-farmer: Walter John Fieldhouse.
721. Pursues… the gale: Pope, An Essay on Man, iv.386.
722. Msop at play: Phaedrus, Fables, III.xiv, ‘De Lusu et Severitate’.
723. an old gentleman: Lord Auchinleck.
724. Eheu fugaces: ‘Eheu fugaces… Labuntur anni’ – ‘Ah me… how the fleeting years slip by’ – Horace, Odes, II.xiv.1-2.
725. a friend: Topham Beauclerk.
726. a gentleman: The Honourable Henry Hervey.
727. exordium: The beginning of anything; the introductory part of a discourse, treatise (OED). Johnson defined it as ‘the proemial part of a composition’.
728. maladie du pais: Homesickness.
729. from the mountains of the north: Cf. Judith 16:4. The phrase had become celebrated after being used in a speech in the House by Pitt the elder on 14 January 1766 against the Stamp Act (John Almon, Anecdotes of the life of the Right Hon. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and of the principal events of his time. With his speeches in Parliament, 2 vols. (1792), I, 289).
730. the doom of man: Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes, l. 156.
731. Xerxes wept… afterwards: In 480 bc Xerxes is said to have wept when the massive army he had assembled for the conquest of Greece defiled before him at Abydos (Herodotus, vii.44-6).
732. Stretch’d… chair: Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, iv.342 (1742).
733. Till languor… for this: R. Griffiths, ‘Virtue, an Ethic Epistle’ (1759). The poem is in the British Library, shelf mark 11602 gg.29.
734. a zeal without knowledge: Cf. Romans 10:2.
735. Where did Beckford… learn English: The implication is that both men were American by birth.
736. merely positive: ‘Positive’ here refers to ‘a law or body of laws artificially instituted or imposed by an authority, often as contrasted with natural law rooted in the requirements of justice and right reason’ (OED).
737. Intaminatis… aurce: ‘Virtue, which cannot know the disgrace of rejection, shines bright with stainless honours, and neither takes nor resigns the rods [i.e. the fasces, the Roman symbols of official authority] at the shifting breath of the people’s pleasures’ – Horace, Odes, III.ii.18–20.
738. In bello… errare: ‘In war it is not permitted to make a mistake twice.’
739. the gentleman: Topham Beauclerk.
740. a friend: Possibly John Johnston of Grange.
741. Quamvis… candidus esses: ‘Though he was dark, and you are fair’ – Virgil, Eclogues, ii.16.
742. Ingenuas… artes: ‘A careful study of the liberal arts’ – Ovid, Epistles, II.ix.47.
743. De Animi Tranquillitate: ‘Concerning peace of mind.’
744. Bona res quies: Peace of mind is good.
745. your physical friend: Probably Dr Alexander Wood.
746. ut… amicis: That I may live for my own good, and that of my friends.
747. Ajax: In Homeric legend, a Greek captain whose bravery bordered on folly.
748. to know… the nightly dew: Thomas Parnell, ‘The Hermit’, in Poems on Several Occasions (1722), p. 165.
749. Lord North’s declaration… should be called: On 19 February 1778 Lord North, the prime minister, had introduced into the House what he called his ‘Conciliatory Propositions’ to bring the conflict with the American colonies to an end.
750. in my mind’s ears: Cf. Hamlet, I.ii.184.
751. a friend of ours: Bennet Langton.
752. He mouths… a bone: Churchill, The Rosciad, l. 322. Davies’s career as an actor had been blighted when, catching sight of Churchill in the pit (who had already attacked his enunciation, and who had cast leering eyes upon his attractive wife), he had disrupted the scene, in which Garrick was also acting.
753. now see… face to face: 1 Corinthians 13:12.
754. Be not angry… wish to be: Imitation of Christ, bk i, ch. xvi.
755. incredulus odi: ‘I hate and disbelieve’ – cf. Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 188.
756. Rhedi… divini poetce: ‘Rhedi on the generation of insects’… ‘of the divine poet’.
757. Sempre… vergogna: ‘Always to that truth which has the appearance of a lie a man should close his lips as mu
ch as he can, lest, without sin, he be put to shame’ – Dante, Inferno (c. 1307–1320), xi.124-6.
758. different letters: C = Chemist (Dr George Fordyce); E = Edmund Burke; F = John Fitzpatrick, Lord Upper Ossory; I or J = Infidel (Edward Gibbon); P = Painter (Joshua Reynolds); R = Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
759. bulls… in Ireland: The word ‘bull’ can mean ‘a self-contradictory proposition containing a manifest contradiction in terms or involving a ludicrous inconsistency unperceived by the speaker; often associated with the Irish’ (OED). Johnson defined it in this sense as ‘A blunder; a contradiction’.
760. Quo clamor… faventium: ‘Whither the shouting and the applauding populace call us’ – Horace, Odes, III.xxiv.46.
761. a man: James Boswell.
762. our friend the Dean: Dr Barnard, the dean of Derry; afterwards bishop of Killaloe and Limerick.
763. cavere… caperet: ‘Take care that the State suffer no harm’ – in the Roman republic, the responsibility laid on the man appointed Dictator in an emergency.
764. a respectable person: Lord Auchinleck.
765. Bring me… capacious mouth: John Gay, Acis and Galatea (1718), in Dramatic Works, ed. J. Fuller, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), I, 271.
766. a man of various enquiry: The Revd Thomas Morer.
767. a certain female friend: Mrs Thrale.
768. medii cevi: Of the middle ages.
769. a celebrated gentleman: William Gerard Hamilton.
770. a very eminent physician: Dr Richard Warren.
771. Animal… cornutum: A quadruped which chews the cud and has horns.
772. An eminent friend of ours: Edmund Burke.
773. A Clergyman: The Revd Mr Embry.
774. Poor Tom’s a-cold: King Lear, III.iv.135.
775. Mad Tom… the world again: A line from a popular song, ‘Forth from my dark and dismal cell’ (see The Aviary: or, Magazine of British Melody [London, 1745?], song 337, p. 169).
776. A Spanish writer… dura: ‘Only that which was static disappeared; what is fugitive remains and endures’ – Quevedo y Villegas, El Parnaso Espanol (1659), p. 4.
777. immota… manent: ‘The motionless disappears; what is in constant motion abides’ – Janus Vitalis, De Roma, in Deliciae C.C. Italorum Poetarum (1608), p. 1433.
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