The Life of Samuel Johnson

NOTES

¹. Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763, ed. Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950, and London: Heinemann, 1951), pp. 43-4; 19 November 1762.

². Joseph Addison, Cato (1713), V.i.1-9, p. 56.

³. London Journal, pp. 45-6.

⁴. Ibid., pp. 49–50.

⁵. Ibid., p. 139.

⁶. ‘I should live no more than I can record, as one should not have more corn growing than one can get in’ (journal entry for 17 March 1776: Boswell: The Ominous Years, 1774–76, ed. Charles Ryskamp and Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), p. 265). Boswell slightly reworked this phrasing in his article on diaries in the London Magazine for March 1783: ‘Sometimes it has occurred to me that a man should not live more than he can record, as a farmer should not have a larger crop than he can gather in’ (Margery Bailey, ed., Boswell’s Column (London: William Kimber, 1951), p. 332).

⁷. London Journal, p. 149. Although it is run close by the scene (pp. 142-3) Boswell gives of a salacious conversation between himself, in the rakish character of ‘a valiant man who could gratify a lady’s loving desires five times in a night’, and a lady of fashion whom he calls ‘Lady Mirabel’. The name is an allusion to William Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700), where however it is the male lead who is called Mirabell. The reversal of names is typically Boswellian, in its revealing carelessness. Cf. also Boswell’s imagining himself as Macheath from The Beggar’s Opera (1728) when in a tavern with two whores: pp. 263-4.

⁸. Ibid., p. 260.

⁹. Life of Johnson, below, pp. 207-8.

¹⁰. For Boswell’s occasional backsliding and fitful commitment, from the consequences of which he was largely rescued by the assistance of Edmond Malone (who acted, in the words of Peter Martin, as ‘midwife’ to the Life of Johnson), see Peter Martin, Edmond Malone, Shakespearean Scholar: A Literary Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 144 – 64; Paul Korshin, ‘Johnson’s Conversation’, in Greg Clingham, ed., New Light on Boswell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 186; and Bruce Redford, Designing the Life of Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 24-6. Direct evidence of Malone’s vital assistance can be found in Marshall Waingrow, ed., The Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell Relating to the Making of the Life of Johnson, 2nd edn, corrected and enlarged (Edinburgh, New Haven and London: Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 227, 256, 258, 294 and 462.

¹¹. Sir John Hawkins, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1787); Hester Lynch Thrale, later Piozzi, Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786); Isaac Reed and/or George Steevens, An Account of the Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Including Some Incidents of his Life (1784-5); Thomas Tyers, A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1785); William Cooke, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785); William Shaw, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson (1785); Joseph Towers, An Essay on the Life, Character, and Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1786); James Harrison, The Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1786).

¹². On the broader significance of the introduction of this pictorial detail, see Redford, Designing the Life, pp. 69–70 and 139–41.

¹³. Life of Johnson, below, p. 212.

¹⁴. Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 117.

¹⁵. For a more typical expression of Boswell’s character, see the exchange of letters between Malone and Boswell over Boswell’s addition of the final four, self-praising, paragraphs to the ‘Advertisement’ to the second edition (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., pp. 408-9).

¹⁶. Redford, Designing the Life.

¹⁷. Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 326.

¹⁸. Hamlet, I.ii.140. In Greek mythology Hyperion was either the father of the sun or the sun itself. He was dethroned by Apollo.

¹⁹. For Boswell’s pre-1763 publications, see George Watson, ed., The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, Vol. 2:1660–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 1211.

²⁰. For the sense of moral crisis in mid-century, see particularly John Brown’s celebrated An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (1757), a publishing phenomenon which went through seven editions in two years, and also John Leland’s A View of the Principal Deistical Writers, 3 vols. (1754-6).

²¹. Life of Johnson, below, p. 135. Compare Boswell’s delightfully un-self-aware comments on Johnson’s early friendship with Savage, ‘a man, of whom it is difficult to speak impartially, without wondering that he was for some time the intimate companion of Johnson; for his character was marked by profligacy, insolence, and ingratitude’ (Life of Johnson, below, p. 93).

²². Ibid., p. 918.

²³. Michel de Montaigne, ‘De l’amitie’ (‘On affectionate relationships’), Essais, i.28, in (Euvres completes, eds. Albert Thibaudet and Maurice Rat, ‘Bibliotheque de la Pleiade’ (Paris: Gallimard, 1962), pp. 181–93; The Complete Essays, trans. M. A. Screech (London: Penguin, 1987), pp. 205–19.

²⁴. Life of Johnson, below, p. 247.

²⁵. In respect of Johnson, consider Boswell’s concluding estimate of him: ‘He was afflicted with a bodily disease, which made him often restless and fretful; and with a constitutional melancholy, the clouds of which darkened the brightness of his fancy, and gave a gloomy cast to his whole course of thinking’ (Life of Johnson, below, p. 1004). Boswell himself of course was, in the words of David Daiches, ‘subject to periodic bouts of disabling melancholy’ (Clingham, ed., New Light on Boswell, p. 6). The correspondence which survives from the period of composition of the Life frequently alludes to Boswell’s labouring under ‘a sad mental cloud’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 256: cf. also pp. 216 and 219).

²⁶. Boswell in Holland, 1763–1764, ed. Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw Hill, and London: Heinemann, 1952), pp. 140 and 196.

²⁷. Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 368.

²⁸. Essays collected as Boswell’s Column, ed. Margery Bailey (London: William Kimber, 1951). Quotations on pp. 23 and 25, from ‘On Periodical Papers’, London Magazine, 1 November 1777.

²⁹. Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., pp. 77 and 28. The reference is to Plutarch’s Moralia.

³⁰. Ibid., p. 196.

³¹. Ibid., p. 136.

³². Rambler, 24 (1750); Life of Johnson, below, p. 84 – cf. also Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 97.

³³. Life of Johnson, below, p. 500.

³⁴. Although note the conclusion of the letter Johnson wrote Boswell on 27 August 1775, with its touching quotation from Hamlet, III.ii. 73 (Life of Johnson, below, p. 465).

³⁵. Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., pp. 35 and 55.

³⁶. In July 1773, when Johnson had already known Boswell for over ten years; Piozzi, Anecdotes, pp. 31-2.

³⁷. Tibullus, I.i.60; cf. Adventurer 58 (1753), where Johnson discusses the graceful reworking of this line by Ovid in his elegy on the death of Tibullus. For Johnson, this line of Tibullus was not just about companionship; as a site of repeated allusion, both by Johnson and by others, it itself nurtured and enacted a form of companionship. Life of Johnson, below, p. 992.

³⁸. Ibid, p. 768, and Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 280.

³⁹. Life of Johnson, below, pp. 552–61. See Sven Molin, ‘Boswell’s Account of the Johnson-Wilkes Meeting’, Studies in English Literature, 3 (1963), pp. 307–22; and, more recently, the sensitive account in Redford, Designing the Life, pp. 103–10.

⁴⁰. Life of Johnson, below, p. 668. The ‘gentleman’ was in fact Boswell, as we know from his journal, and the suppression of the fact in the text of the Life is an interesting example of how Boswell’s personal vanity could come into conflict with his literary ambition to make the work as full and detailed as possible. In 1786, however, Boswell could be candid in a letter to Malone that his practice with Johnson was sometimes to ‘[tease] him long, to bring out all I could’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 114).

⁴¹. ‘Peter Pindar’ (i.e. John Wolcot) published in 1786 A Poetical and Congratulatory Epistle to James Boswell which however reported Johnson’s indignation and incredulity at the idea that Boswell might be his biographer: ‘Boswell write my life! why the fellow possesses not abilities for writing the life of an ephemeron’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 112, n. 4).

⁴². Life of Johnson, below, p. 731.

⁴³. Ibid., p. 633.

⁴⁴. When compiling the Life Boswell was advised by correspondents such as Anna Seward that he should not pass over in silence subjects where Johnson may have been in error: ‘The genuine lovers of the poetic science look with anxious eyes to Mr. Boswell, desiring that every merit of the stupendous mortal may be shewn in its fairest light; but expecting also, that impartial justice, so worthy of a generous mind, which the popular cry cannot influence to flatter the object of discrimination, nor yet the yearnings of remembered amity induce, to invest that object with unreal perfection, injurious, from the severity of his censures, to the rights of others’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 65).

⁴⁵. For an estimation of the number of days Boswell and Johnson could have spent together – a surprisingly small number, as it turns out – see P. A. W. Collins, ‘Boswell’s Contact with Johnson’, Notes and Queries, 201 (1956), pp. 163-6.

⁴⁶. Life of Johnson, below, pp. 262, 285, 320, 706, 975.

⁴⁷. Ibid., p. 736.

⁴⁸. Ibid., p. 758.

⁴⁹. Ibid., p. 975.

⁵⁰. Ibid., p. 706.

⁵¹. Ibid., p. 212.

⁵². Ibid., p. 296.

⁵³. Ibid., p. 311. Cf. Reynolds and Boswell on Johnson’s unceremonious alacrity of riposte: ‘Sir Joshua observed to me the extraordinary promptitude with which Johnson flew upon an argument. “Yes, (said I,) he has no formal preparation, no flourishing with his sword; he is through your body in an instant”’ (ibid., p. 456.). Cf. also William Hamilton on the two modes of Johnsonian conversation (ibid., pp. 824-5).

⁵⁴. Ibid., p. 235, 743.

⁵⁵. Ibid., p. 232.

⁵⁶. Ibid., p. 531. Cf. ‘Johnson could not brook appearing to be worsted in argument, even when he had taken the wrong side, to shew the force and dexterity of his talents’ (ibid., p. 824).

⁵⁷. Ibid., p. 1006.

⁵⁸. Ibid., p. 383.

⁵⁹. Ibid., p. 866.

⁶⁰. Ibid., p. 769.

⁶¹. Ibid., p. 918.

⁶². Ibid., pp. 142-3. For an excellent reading of this letter, see Redford, Designing the Life, pp. 141-2.

⁶³. Ibid., p. 504.

⁶⁴. Ibid., p. 442.

⁶⁵. Ibid., p. 480.

⁶⁶. This is the useful phrase of Daniel Astle writing to Boswell in December 1786 (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 144).

⁶⁷. Life of Johnson, below, p. 248.

⁶⁸. In his essay ‘On Ridicule’, published in November 1782, Boswell had approvingly quoted Brown’s dismissal of those ‘coxcombs’ who ‘vanquish Berkeley with a grin’ (Bailey, ed., Boswell’s Column, p. 315).

⁶⁹. For the virtue of chastisement in education, see Life of Johnson, below, pp. 29–30. For Johnson’s dwelling upon religious punishments rather than redemption, see the quoted comments of Anna Seward (ibid., pp. 27-8).

⁷⁰. Ibid., p. 472.

⁷¹. Ibid., p. 342.

⁷². ‘… in all societies there exists an instinct of growth, a certain collective, unconscious good sense working progressively to desynonymize those words originally of the same meaning, which the conflux of dialects had supplied to the more homogeneous languages…’ (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), ch. 4, I, 82-3).

⁷³. Life of Johnson, below, p. 120.

⁷⁴. Ibid., p. 218.

⁷⁵. Ibid., p. 315. It was an image which attracted the Admiration and even envy of Samuel Parr (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 352).

⁷⁶. Life of Johnson, below, p. 56.

⁷⁷. Ibid., p. 61.

⁷⁸. Ibid., p. 688.

⁷⁹. Ibid., p. 804. Cf. ‘Sir, I have no objection to a man’s drinking wine, if he can do it in moderation. I found myself apt to go to excess in it, and therefore, after having been for some time without it, on account of illness, I thought it better not to return to it’ and ‘But it must be owned, that Johnson, though he could be rigidly abstemious, was not a temperate man either in eating or drinking’ (ibid., pp. 498, 246). Macaulay connected the exorbitancy of Johnson’s appetite to the reduced circumstances in which he found himself when he arrived in London to pursue a literary career: ‘He ate as it was natural that a man should eat, who, during a great part of his life, had passed the morning in doubt whether he should have food for the afternoon. The habits of his early life had accustomed him to bear privation with fortitude, but not to taste pleasure with moderation. He could fast; but, when he did not fast, he tore his dinner like a famished wolf, with the veins swelling on his forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks. He scarcely ever took wine. But when he drank it, he drank it greedily and in large tumblers. These were, in fact, mitigated symptoms of that same moral disease which raged with such deadly malignity in his friends Savage and Boyse’ (Macaulay, review of Croker’s edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson, reprinted in Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1877), p. 182.

⁸⁰. Life of Johnson, below, p. 700.

⁸¹. Ibid., p. 656. Cf. the information about Johnson’s drinking supplied to Boswell in November 1787 by William Bowles: ‘He had formerly drank a good deal (often two bottles at a sitting) and had often stayed in company till he was unable to walk out of it but he never found liquor affect his powers of thinking it affected only his limbs’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., pp. 192-3). James Abercrombie also recollected Johnson’s animation on the subject of drinking (ibid., p. 411).

⁸². ‘It is so much better for a man to be sure that he is never to be intoxicated, never to lose the power over himself (Life of Johnson, below, p. 656).

⁸³. ‘When I drank wine, I scorned to drink it when in company. I have drunk many a bottle by myself; in the first place, because I had need of it to raise my spirits; in the second place, because I would have nobody to witness its effects upon me’ (ibid., p. 540); ‘Drinking may be practised with great prudence; a man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk… I used to slink home, when I had drunk too much’ (ibid., p. 733).

⁸⁴. Richard B. Schwartz, ‘Boswell and Hume: The Deathbed Interview’, in Clingham, ed., New Light on Boswell, pp. 115–25. For an account of the function of the figure of Hume in the Life, see Greg Clingham, James Boswell: The Life of Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 97–103. Another such antagonism would be that with Jonathan Swift, whom Johnson attacked ‘upon all occasions’ (Life of Johnson, below, p. 433), and who he felt enjoyed ‘a higher reputation than he deserves’ (ibid., p. 238); on this see Claude Rawson, ‘The Character of Swift’s Satire: Reflections on Swift, Johnson, and Human Restlessness’, in Order From Confusion Sprung: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature from Swift to Cowper (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1985), pp. 3-67. Compare also Dalrymple’s contrasting of the characters of Swift and Johnson (Life of Johnson, below, p. 229).

⁸⁵. Life of Johnson, below, p. 234.

⁸⁶. Ibid. The reference is presumably to that period of his life when Johnson was ‘a sort of lax talker against religion’, before he read William Law’s Serious Call (ibid., p. 43).

⁸⁷. Ibid., p. 870.

⁸⁸. Ibid., p. 348; cf. p. 857 and David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), sect. V, ‘Why Utility Pleases’.

⁸⁹. Life of Johnson, below, pp. 350, 376, 546, 676; cf. David Hume, ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’ (1754).

⁹⁰. Life of Johnson, below, p. 883; cf. David Hume, ‘Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations’ (1752).

⁹¹. Life of Johnson, below, p. 292, 742; cf. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, sect. IV, ‘Of Political Society’.

⁹². Life of Johnson, below, p. 605. Compare the three papers on death which Boswell wrote for the London Magazine between November 1778 and January 1779, which were also informed by the experience of visiting Hume on his deathbed (Bailey, ed., Boswell’s Column, pp. 83–98).

⁹³. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), sect. X, ‘Of Miracles’, Part I: ‘When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.’ Boswell himself noted that Johnson sometimes approached this argument of Hume’s: ‘Talking of Dr. Johnson’s unwillingness to believe extraordinary things, I ventured to say, “Sir, you come near Hume’s argument against miracles, ‘That it is more probable witnesses should lie, or be mistaken, than that they should happen.”’ JOHNSON. “Why, Sir, Hume, taking the proposition simply, is right”’ (Life of Johnson, below, pp. 624-5.

⁹⁴. The ambivalence in Johnson’s attitude towards Hume which is smothered by his avowals of disdain is detectable also in his attitude towards other notorious literary figures of the eighteenth century. As Boswell points out, in the Dictionary Johnson quotes ‘no authour whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and morality’ (Life of Johnson, below, p. 107; on the subject of the principles of citation in the Dictionary, see now Allen Reddick, The Making of Johnson’s Dictionary, 1746–1773 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), especially ch. 7). Nevertheless, we find Johnson echoing Bolingbroke on the character of a patriot king (Life of Johnson, below, p. 321), praising Mandeville for opening his ‘views into real life very much’ (ibid., p. 682), and befriending Fox (ibid., p. 926).

⁹⁵. The recent and occasionally tempestuous debate on Johnson’s politics can be traced in the following: Howard Erskine-Hill, ‘The Political Character of Samuel Johnson’, in Isobel Grundy, ed., Samuel Johnson: New Critical Essays (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1984), pp. 107–36; J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1688–1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), esp. pp. 186-9; Donald Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, 2nd edn (Athens, Ga., and London: University of Georgia Press, 1990), ‘Introduction’, pp. ix-lxv; J. C. D. Clark, Samuel Johnson: Literature, Religion and English Cultural Politics from the Restoration to Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); The Age of Johnson, vols. 7 and 8 (1996 and 1997); Jonathan Clark and Howard Erskine-Hill (eds.), Samuel Johnson in Historical Context (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002). There are wise words on this debate to be found in Redford, Designing the Life, pp. 158–60.

⁹⁶. A letter to Boswell from an anonymous reader of the Life in 1792 comments on the political complexion of the west Midlands in the eighteenth century: ‘I will venture to say that if you will take a Journey into the Parts of Wales, contiguous to Shropshire and Cheshire you will meet with Anecdotes very much to your Taste from many of the Gentlemen, resident in those parts, who are very little removed from Jacobitism’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 389).

⁹⁷. Life of Johnson, below, p. 25. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (see n. 109) a number of state oaths were imposed on office-holders in Church and state, which required them to swear allegiance and supremacy, i.e. an acknowledgement that the sovereign was supreme governor of England in spiritual and temporal matters (OED, 1), and (after the Hanoverian succession in 1714) to abjure the House of Stuart. For Johnson on subscription, see ibid., p. 341 – a comment which takes on relevance, given the importance which has been attached to whether or not Johnson himself subscribed the oaths. Elsewhere Johnson condemned a refusal to subscribe as ‘perverseness of integrity’ (ibid., p. 434).

⁹⁸. Ibid., p. 26. On Sacheverell, see Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Dr Sacheverell (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973). On Jacobitism and its geographical distribution, see Paul Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

⁹⁹. For instance, in 1740, before William Hogarth: Life of Johnson, below, p. 85.

¹⁰⁰. Ibid., p. 293. For typically contemptuous comments on liberty, and on the human appetite for it, consider Johnson’s pamphlet against the American colonists, Taxation No Tyranny (1775): ‘We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties: an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?’ (Donald J. Greene, ed., Samuel Johnson: Political Writings, The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. X (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 454. The Lives of the Poets also presented Johnson with opportunities to condemn the English enthusiasm for liberty: ‘At this time a long course of opposition to Sir Robert Walpole had filled the nation with clamours for liberty, of which no man felt the want, and with care for liberty, which was not in danger. Thomson, in his travels on the continent, found or fancied so many evils arising from the tyranny of other governments, that he resolved to write a very long poem, in five parts, upon Liberty’; ‘It has been observed that they who most boldly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it’ (G. Birkbeck Hill, ed., Lives of the English Poets by Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), III, 289 (‘Life of Thomson’) and I, 157 (‘Life of Milton’)).

¹⁰¹. Life of Johnson, below, p. 233. There was of course no necessary conflict between a prizing of subordination (‘the condition of being subordinate, inferior, or dependent; subjection, subservience’ –OED, 2) and Whiggism.

¹⁰². Ibid., pp. 277-8.

¹⁰³. Ibid., p. 101. Cf. also Johnson’s whispered conversation with Oliver Goldsmith before Temple Bar (ibid., p. 386). Johnson was clear that the ‘45 was illegal, citing in 1770 the Highlanders’ greatest want as ‘the want of law’ (ibid., p. 326).

¹⁰⁴. Ibid., p. 76.

¹⁰⁵. Ibid., pp. 434, 922. Nonjurors were beneficed clergymen who refused to take an oath of allegiance in 1689 to William and Mary and their successors (OED, 1).

¹⁰⁶. Ibid., p. 827: my emphasis. The comment was made in 1781, the pension granted nineteen years earlier in 1762 (ibid., p. 199–200). Note also William Strahan’s testimonial to Johnson’s ‘perfect good affection’ for George III in 1771 (ibid., p. 332). The famous interview between Johnson and George III corroborates Strahan’s opinion (ibid., p. 281-5).

¹⁰⁷. Ibid., p. 377. Compare Edward Gibbon on the positive effects of the establishment of a militia in the mid eighteenth century: ‘The most beneficial effect of this institution was to eradicate among the Country gentlemen the relicks of Tory, or rather of Jacobite prejudice. The accession of a British king [George III] reconciled them to the government, and even to the court; but they have been since accused of transferring their passive loyalty from the Stuarts to the family of Brunswick; and I have heard Mr. Burke exclaim in the house of Commons, “They have changed the Idol, but they have preserved the Idolatry”’ (The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon, ed. John Murray (London: John Murray, 1896), p. 182 (draft ‘B’)). Johnson’s Whiggish friend Dr Taylor elicited from him on the subject of monarchical title the acknowledgement that ‘Possession is sufficient, where no better right can be shown… for as to the first beginning of the right, we are in the dark’ (Life of Johnson, below, p. 607).

¹⁰⁸. Life of Johnson, below, p. 396.

¹⁰⁹. Ibid., p. 859. The Glorious Revolution – sometimes referred to simply as 1688 – refers to the invasion of Britain that year by William of Orange, who had been invited to defend the English from encroachments on their religion and property by his father-in-law, James II, and who became king as William III. 1688 was ‘necessary’ for Johnson presumably because in no other way could the Church of England be maintained (ibid.). The pre-eminence of religion over politics in Johnson’s thought which this reveals is helpful in trying to understand the movements in his political sympathies, and their perpetually conflicted nature: for him, religious truth and political right were never aligned.

¹¹⁰. Ibid., p. 351. Johnson’s position here is close to that of Swift, who in The Examiner 33 (22 March 1710) had contrasted the true, Tory, idea of passive obedience with its Whig caricature, and had insisted that the true idea of passive obedience included an ultimate safeguard to the people: ‘The Crown may be sued as well as a private Person; and if an arbitrary King of England should send his Officers to seize my Lands or Goods against Law; I can lawfully resist them. The Ministers by whom he acts are liable to Prosecution and Impeachment, although his own Person be Sacred. But, if he interpose his Royal Authority to support their Insolence, I see no Remedy, until it grows a general Grievance, or untill the Body of the People have Reason to apprehend it will be so; after which it becomes a Case of Necessity; and then I suppose, a free People may assert their own Rights, yet without any Violation to the Person or lawful Power of the Prince’ (Jonathan Swift, The Examiner and Other Pieces Written in 1710–11, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Shakespeare Head, 1941), p. 114). Consider also Swift’s comment in his sermon ‘Upon the Martyrdom of King Charles I’: ‘When oppressions grow too great and universal to be borne, nature or necessity may find a remedy’ (Jonathan Swift, Irish Tracts 1720–1723 and Sermons, ed. Louis Landa (Oxford: Shakespeare Head, 1948), p. 229).

¹¹¹. Section 209, in John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 404–5.

¹¹². Life of Johnson, below, p. 321. Boswell also underlined Johnson’s fervour for ‘constitutional liberty’, in contrast to his reputation for being ‘abjectly submissive to power’ (ibid., p. 167); cf. also Johnson’s aversion to the destruction of liberty (ibid., p. 645). For Johnson on the decline of party in the eighteenth century, see ibid., p. 75. Maxwell derided Johnson’s reputation for supporting ‘slavish and arbitrary principles of government’ by reference to his indomitableness of character, for he was ‘extremely jealous of his personal liberty and independence, and could not brook the smallest appearance of neglect or insult, even from the highest personages’ (ibid., p. 322). It was this disposition of character which also led Johnson to reflect critically on Burke’s arguments for party discipline, presumably in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, which had been published three years earlier in 1770: ibid., p. 378.

¹¹³. Ibid., p. 341.

¹¹⁴. Ibid., pp. 227-8. Boswell supposes the ‘violent Whig’ to have been Gilbert Walmsley (1680–1751). Consider too Johnson’s dictum that ‘A wise Tory and a wise Whig, I believe, will agree’ (ibid., p. 828) – an opinion which seems to have made a deep impression on that notable Whig Samuel Parr (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 353).

¹¹⁵. Life of Johnson, below, p. 730.

¹¹⁶. Ibid., pp. 606-7.

¹¹⁷. Ibid., p. 606.

¹¹⁸. Ibid., p. 1141.

¹¹⁹. Ibid., pp. 57, 42. Boswell records Johnson’s belief that he inherited this melancholic disposition from his father, Michael Johnson, and that in consequence he was ‘mad all his life, at least not sober’ (ibid., p. 25); cf. also p. 235.

¹²⁰. As it was in the mental world, so it was for Johnson in the physical: ‘for though indolence and procrastination were inherent in his constitution, whenever he made an exertion he did more than any one else’ (ibid., p. 30).

¹²¹. Ibid., p. 43. Cf. Johnson’s reply to William Seward’s surprise that irreligious people existed: ‘Sir, you need not wonder at this, when you consider how large a proportion of almost every man’s life is passed without thinking of it. I myself was for some years totally regardless of religion. It had dropped out of my mind. It was at an early part of my life. Sickness brought it back, and I hope I have never lost it since’ (ibid., p. 882).

¹²². Ibid., p. 929; cf. also pp. 313–14.

¹²³. Ibid., p. 215; cf. ‘There are few people to whom I take so much to as you’ (p. 237).

¹²⁴. Doctrine of the Trinity: ibid., pp. 396-7. Predestination and theodicy: ibid., p. 313. Roman Catholicism: ibid., p. 314; though note the strongly Protestant character of his deathbed comments on religion (ibid., p. 997).

¹²⁵. On Johnson’s informal legal education, see ibid., p. 530. For his attempt to follow a legal career, see ibid., p. 78. For his irritation in later life at being told (‘when it is too late’) that he might have been a great lawyer, see ibid., pp. 690–91. Johnson employed his legal knowledge when he collaborated with the Vinerian Professor of English Law at Oxford, Sir Robert Chambers, on the latter’s A Course of Lectures on the English Law (delivered 1767–73; first published 1986): see Thomas M. Curley, Sir Robert Chambers: Law, Literature, and Empire in the Age of Johnson (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), pp. 42–127. For evidence of the accuracy of Johnson’s legal knowledge, see for example Life of Johnson, below, pp. 224-5 (a correct explanation of the principle that the king can do no wrong), and ibid., pp. 364-7 (a discussion of a point of Scottish law). Cf. also Johnson’s correction of Charles I’s opinion on why he could not be a lawyer, which throws a keen sidelight on the attractions of legal pleading for Johnson (ibid., p. 374).

¹²⁶. For accounts of the history of the Boswell papers and of the drama of their discovery, see David Buchanan, The Treasure of Auchinleck: The Story of the Boswell Papers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974) and Frederick Pottle, Pride and Negligence: The History of the Boswell Papers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982).

¹²⁷. Waingrow’s edition of the Correspondence includes a ‘Chronology of the Making of the Life’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., pp. xlix-lxix).

¹²⁸. Ibid., p. 61.

¹²⁹. Boswell on the Grand Tour: Italy, Corsica and France, 1765–1766, ed. F. Brady and Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955), p. 106. In 1768 Boswell suggested to Johnson the possibility of publishing his letters after his death (Life of Johnson, below, p. 293).

¹³⁰. Life of Johnson, below, p. 19.

¹³¹. Boswell for the Defence, 1769—1774, ed. W. K. Wimsatt and Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), p. 86. Note also the comment in a letter to Garrick of 10 September 1772: ‘If I survive Mr. Johnson, I shall publish a Life of him, for which I have a store of materials’ (The Correspondence of James Boswell with David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and Edmond Malone, ed. P. S. Baker et al. (London: Heinemann, 1986), p. 45.

¹³². Life of Johnson, below, p. 349. Cf. the later, similar comment for 11 April 1773: ‘I again solicited him to communicate to me the particulars of his early life. He said, “You shall have them all for twopence. I hope you shall know a great deal more of me before you write my Life.” He mentioned to me this day many circumstances, which I wrote down when I went home, and have interwoven in the former part of this narrative’ (ibid., p. 375).

¹³³. Boswell’s Journal of A Tour to the Hebrides, ed. F. A. Pottle and C. H. Bennett (London: William Heinemann, 1936), p. 300. The Life of Johnson was not Boswell’s sole biographical project even after 1773. In 1778 he expressed to Lord Kames his ‘determination’ to write Kames’s life, and to assume the literary character of Plutarch (The Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle, ed. Geoffrey Scott et al., 18 vols. (Mount Vernon, NY: W. E. Rudge, 1928–34), XV, 267). Biography was to some extent therapy for Boswell, as his essay ‘On Hypochondria’ suggests: ‘I have generally found the reading of lives do me most good, by withdrawing my attention from myself to others, and entertaining me in the most satisfactory manner with real incidents in the varied course of human existence. I look upon the Biographia Britannica with that kind of grateful regard with which one who has been recovered from painful indisposition by their medicinal springs beholds Bath, Bristol, or Tunbridge’ (Bailey, ed., Boswell’s Column, p. 51).

¹³⁴. Boswell’s Journal of A Tour, p. 300, n. 8.

¹³⁵. Piozzi, Anecdotes, pp. 31-3.

¹³⁶. Boswell, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), p. 525.

¹³⁷. Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 358.

¹³⁸. Life of Johnson, below, pp. 222–3. Note the Johnsonian principle, as expressed in a letter of 27 June 1758 to Bennet Langton: ‘It is a rule never to be forgotten, that whatever strikes strongly, should be described while thefirst impression remains fresh upon the mind’ (ibid., p. 180). However, note that when Johnson tested Boswell’s ‘way of taking notes’ by reading ‘slowly and distinctly’ a passage from Robertson’s History of America, it emerged that Boswell had recorded the passage ‘very imperfectly’ (ibid., pp. 668–9). On Boswell’s method, see Geoffrey Scott, ‘The Making of the Life of Johnson as Shown in Boswell’s First Notes’, in James L. Clifford, ed., Boswell’s Life of Johnson: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), pp. 27–39.

¹³⁹. Fanny Burney, Memoirs of Dr. Burney, 3 vols. (London: Edward Moxon, 1832), II, 194.

¹⁴⁰. Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 115, n. 5. To this Boswell replied that Johnson ‘was at all times flattered by my preserving what fell from his mind when shaken by conversation’ – a metaphor also present in the passage in the Life where Boswell records Johnson’s pleasure, on looking at Boswell’s journal, at finding there ‘so much of the fruit of his mind preserved’ (ibid., p. 114; Life of Johnson, below, p. 664).

¹⁴¹. Boswell for the Defence, p. 179.

¹⁴². Life of Johnson, below, pp. 373–4.

¹⁴³. A recurrent subject in the Life is that of literary forgery: cf. ibid., pp. 87, 192–3. As well as reflecting light on the process which produced the Life itself, literary forgery brings together the eighteenth-century fondness for imposture and the contemporary patchiness of solid knowledge which gave that imposture scope to operate – on both of which Johnson comments in the Life (ibid., p. 220 (fondness for imposture) and 307 (patchiness of knowledge)). On the general subject of literary forgery in the eighteenth century, see Paul Baines, The House of Forgery in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999).

¹⁴⁴. On the embroidery of memory in Boswell, consider F. A. Pottle’s judgement: ‘One also frequently finds Boswell adding sentences and paragraphs to portions of fully written journal. Some of these additions seem to be authentic but undated recollections for which he had to find plausible points of attachment; others, I have no doubt, are a second crop of memory, gathered as he relived the matter he had copied’ (F. A. Pottle, ‘The Life of Johnson: Art and Authenticity’, in James L. Clifford, ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of Boswell’s Life of Johnson (Engle-wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 69.

¹⁴⁵. Life of Johnson, below, p. 244.

¹⁴⁶. Ibid., p. 539.

¹⁴⁷. Ibid., pp. 346–7.

¹⁴⁸. Ibid., p. 5.

¹⁴⁹. Ibid., p. 9.

¹⁵⁰. Ibid., p. 892. Compare also the inclusion of Steevens’s reminiscences: ibid., pp. 942–3.

¹⁵¹. Ibid., pp. 763–81, 320–31. For the influx of new material into the Life after the publication of the first edition, see Malone’s comments at the beginning of the ‘Advertisement’ to the third edition: ibid., p. 9.

¹⁵². ‘… there is here an accumulation of intelligence from various points, by which his character is more fully understood and illustrated’ (ibid., p. 21).

¹⁵³. Ibid., p. 818.

¹⁵⁴. For an example of how densely juxtaposed these different forms of writing can be in the Life, see ibid., p. 268. The best account of Boswell’s artistry of incorporation, particularly in respect of the inclusion of letters, which has provoked some scholarly and critical controversy, is to be found in Redford, Designing the Life, pp. 113–36.

¹⁵⁵. ‘Had his other friends been as diligent and ardent as I was, he might have been almost entirely preserved. As it is, I will venture to say that he will be seen in this work more completely than any man who has ever yet lived’ (Life of Johnson, below, p. 21).

¹⁵⁶. Ibid., p. 19.

¹⁵⁷. The Oxford English Dictionary finds the earliest occurrence of the word ‘autobiography’ in the Monthly Review for 1797.

¹⁵⁸. Samuel Johnson, The Idler and The Adventurer, ed. W. Jackson Bate et al. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1963), p. 262. Rambler 60 (1750), Johnson’s other important statement about the principles and practice of biography, concludes with compatible thoughts about the temptation to falsehood in lives written by someone other than the subject. Contrast, however, another of Johnson’s opinions about who might best write a man’s life, delivered in conversation with Thomas Warton in 1776: ‘It [biography] is rarely well executed. They only who live with a man can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination; and few people who have lived with a man know what to remark about him’ (Life of Johnson, below, p. 502).

¹⁵⁹. The subject of ghosts is an important and recurrent one in the Life: cf. Life of Johnson, below, pp. 712–13 (the ghost of Ford), 683-4 and 736 (a ghost at Newcastle), 216 and 667 (the Cock-Lane Ghost). Boswell attributed Johnson’s preparedness to entertain the possibility of ghosts to his ‘opposition to the groveling belief of materialism’ which ‘led him to a love of such mysterious dispositions’ (ibid., p. 340). But biography itself makes a revenant of its subject.

¹⁶⁰. The Poems of Mr. Gray, with Memoirs Prefixed, ed. William Mason (1775). For the misleadingness of this Boswellian identification of his model, see Redford, Designing the Life, pp. 115–16. Nevertheless, Boswell praised Mason to his friend Temple in February 1788: ‘Mason’s Life of Gray is excellent, because it is interspersed with Letters which shew us the Man’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 208).

¹⁶¹. Life of Johnson, below, p. 21. The quotation is taken from Alexander Pope’s ‘Prologue’ to Addison’s Cato (1713). The notion of writing Johnson’s life ‘in scenes’ seems first to have occurred to Boswell in 1780, and to have been touched on again in a letter to Thomas Percy of 1788: see Redford, Designing the Life, p. 84. The theatrical template for the Life shows the preferences of the biographer triumphing over those of the subject. Johnson’s distaste for the theatre is evident in his remark to Daniel Astle that ‘it would afford him more entertainment to sit up to the chin in water for an hour than be obliged to listen to the whining, daggle-tail Cibber, during the tedious representation of a fulsome tragedy’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 143). Boswell’s contrasting enthusiasm for the theatre is clear from his journal, and also from the three essays ‘On the Profession of a Player’ which he contributed to the London Magazine in 1770 (On the Profession of a Player: Three Essays by James Boswell, Reprinted from ‘The London Magazine’ for August, September, October, 1770 (London: Elkin Mathews and Marrot, 1929)).

¹⁶². Life of Johnson, below, p. 23.

¹⁶³. ‘Si j’etais ecrivain, et mort, comme j’aimerais que ma vie se reduisit, par les soins d’un biographe amical et desinvolte, à quelques details, à quelques gouts, à quelques inflexions, disons: des “biographemes”…’ Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Paris: Tel Quel, 1971), p. 14.

¹⁶⁴. Life of Johnson, below, p. 25.

¹⁶⁵. Ibid., p. 230. This Johnsonian enthusiasm for chemistry was noted also by William Bowles (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 195).

¹⁶⁶. Life of Johnson, below, p. 269.

¹⁶⁷. Ibid., pp. 439, 876. Might he have used it to light fires (a purpose for which dried orange peel is well suited)?

¹⁶⁸. Ibid., p. 530. Note, in this connection, William Adams’s recollection that Johnson at one stage in his life considered ‘becoming an Advocate in Doctor’s Commons’ (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 136).

¹⁶⁹. Life of Johnson, below, p. 657.

¹⁷⁰. Ibid., pp. 986-8.

¹⁷¹. Ibid., pp. 628, 617, 784, 892, 872, 994, 976-9, 992.

¹⁷². Ibid., p. 29.

Appendix 2

1. For the discovery of the manuscript, see David Buchanan, The Treasure of Auchinleck: The Story of the Boswell Papers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974) and Frederick Pottle, Pride and Negligence: The History of the Boswell Papers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982).

2. James Boswell’s Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript. In Four Volumes. Volume I: 1709—1765, ed. Marshall Waingrow (Edinburgh, New Haven and London: Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press, 1994). James Boswell’s Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript. In Four Volumes. Volume II: 1766–1776, ed. Bruce Redford with Elizabeth Goldring (Edinburgh, New Haven and London: Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press, 1998).

Notes to Text

Shakespeare references are to the Oxford/Norton edition.

1. noctes ccenceque Deum: ‘Nights and suppers of the gods’ – Horace, Satires, II.vii.85.

2. finibus Atticis… Sic te Diva potens Cypri: ‘To the Attic shore’… ‘So guide thee the goddess queen of Cyprus’ (i.e. Venus) – Horace, Odes, I.iii.5, 1.

3. Quid virtus… Ulyssen: ‘Of the power of virtue and of wisdom he has given us a profitable example in Ulysses’ – Horace, Epistles, I.ii.17.

4. out of the abundance of the heart: Matthew 12:34; and cf. Luke 6:45.

5. An honourable and reverend friend: Probably William Stuart.

6. crotchets: Square brackets.

7. the Militia Bill: The initial success of the Jacobite forces in 1745 and the need to employ Hessian and Hanoverian mercenaries in 1756 had resulted in popular agitation for a militia. On 12 March 1756 a bill to establish a militia was introduced into and passed the Commons, but on 24 May it was rejected by the Lords after an impressive speech by Lord Hardwicke. In 1757, when a French invasion was seriously apprehended, a militia was established, and it remained in existence until 23 December 1762.

8. Treaties with… the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel: The evident inadequacy of British ground troops had resulted in a series of agreements with Russia and Hesse for the supply of troops. On 11 December 1742 a treaty of mutual assistance had been agreed with Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia, whereby Russia agreed to supply 12,000 troops for the protection of Hanover; on 18 June 1755 the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel had agreed to supply 8,000 troops in return for a payment of £54,000; and in September 1755 a new treaty had been signed with Russia, whereby 40,000 Russian troops were to be held in readiness to protect Hanover, in return for a payment of £100,000. These measures were violently attacked in the House of Commons by Pitt, and in the House of Lords by his ally, and brother-in-law, Richard Grenville, Lord Temple.

9. Admiral Byng: John Byng (1704–57), Admiral of the Red, was court-martialled and executed by firing squad on 14 March for not doing his utmost to relieve the besieged British garrison in Port Mahon in Minorca. His trial and its revelations dominated public opinion in the closing weeks of 1756 and the early months of 1757. In Candide (1759) Voltaire famously said that Byng had been executed ‘pour encourager les autres’ (‘to put heart in the others’) (ch. 23).

10. Expedition to Rochefort: In September 1757 Sir Edward Hawke had led an expedition against the important French arms depot of Rochefort, on the western coast. The nearby island of Aix was temporarily occupied, but the expedition returned home without having made an attempt on its principal target, to be greeted with derision and indignation.

11. Blackfriars Bridge: The project for the construction of a bridge at Black-friars had been discussed for many years by the City of London, a plan finally being accepted in 1760 (Nicolas Tindal, The Continuation of Mr. Rapin’s History of England, vol. XXI (1759), p. 581; Tobias Smollett, Continuation of the Complete History of England, vol. III (1765), p. 387). Construction of the first pier beganinJune 1761, thefirst stonehavingbeen laid by Sir Robert Ladbrooke on 23 May (General Magazine of Arts and Sciences, xii (1764), 682). The stonework of the sixth pier was completed inSeptember 1765(TheAnnual Register for the Year1765(1766), p.127), and the great arch was finally openedon1October 1765 (Thomas Salmon, A New Geographical and Historical Grammar (1766), p. 356).

12. the French Prisoners: These French soldiers had been taken prisoner in the course of the Seven Years War (1756–63), and were being held at Knowle, near Bristol, where their plight had stimulated widespread concern. The common people made generous contributions of money and clothing to relieve them.

13. the Cock-Lane Ghost: A celebrated imposture which in 1762 was widely believed in London. A man named Parsons had persuaded his daughter to act the part of a ghost in order to persecute a man who had sued him for debt. See the London Magazine, xxxi (1762), 50–52, 103, 112, 151– 3, 258–9, 395 and xxxii (1763), 102 and 164. Johnson’s detection of the fraud was published in the Gentleman’s Magazine, xxxii (1762), 81; cf. also xxxii, 43 and xxxiii (1763), 144.

14. Falkland’s Islands: In June 1770 the Falkland Islands, a small archipelago off the south-eastern coast of Argentina, were seized by the Spanish, in retaliation for British operations against their settlements in Havana and Manila during the Seven Years War. After firm diplomatic representations from Britain the Spanish eventually withdrew. Johnson wrote in support of the diplomatic line taken by Lord North, and against those who clamoured for a military response, whom he bitterly reproached as men without honour hoping to profit from the dangers and hardships suffered by others.

15. Resolutions… of the American Congress: The first session of the American Continental Congress had convened in Philadelphia on 5 September 1774, and had set itself to formulate the principles on which the thirteen colonies would take their stand against the measures for their government proposed by George III and his prime minister Lord North. It was to these so-called ‘Declarations of Rights’ that Johnson was invited by Lord North’s ministry to compose a reply, published in 1775 as Taxation No Tyranny.

16. After my death… Griffith: Henry VIII, IV.ii.69–72.

17. a lady… with him: Mrs Thrale.

18. a superannuated lord and lady: William, 3rd Earl of Jersey, and his wife.

19. N.S., 1709: N.S. stands for ‘New Style’, and refers to the consequences of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. In England and Scotland the Gregorian calendar was established by the Act 24 Geo. II. c. 23 (1751), which provided that the year 1752 and all future years should begin on 1 January instead of 25 March, that the day after 2 September 1752 should be reckoned as 14 September, and that the reformed rule for leap year should in future be adopted. Ireland followed in 1788.

20. the unfortunate house of Stuart: The Stuarts were ‘unfortunate’ because James II had either abdicated or (depending on your point of view) been driven from the throne in 1688.

21. kennel: The surface drain of a street; a gutter (OED).

22. scrophula, or king’s evil: Scrophula, or scrofula, is a constitutional disease characterized by chronic enlargement and degeneration of the lymphatic glands. In England and France it was formerly supposed to be curable by the king’s (or queen’s) touch. The practice of touching for the ‘king’s evil’ (as it was also known) continued from the time of Edward the Confessor to the death of Queen Anne in 1714. The office for the ceremony has not been printed in the Prayer Book since 1719 (OED).

23. Rod… thy duty: Cf. 2 Henry VI, IV.ix.64: ‘Sword, I will hallow thee for this thy deed.’

24. Pastoral I: Virgil, Eclogues, i (Virgil’s Eclogues were commonly referred to as ‘Pastorals’ in the eighteenth century).

25. The Distressed Mother: The Distressed Mother (1712), by Ambrose Philips, is modelled very closely on Racine’s Andromaque. It was a great success when first performed, and was lavishly praised by Steele in The Spectator, 290 (1 February 1712).

26. that gentleman: Probably Andrew Corbet.

27. Ex alieno… versificator: ‘A poet by another’s genius, merely a versifier by his own’ – J. C. Scaliger, Poetices, bk VI, ch. 4 (1561), p. 308.

28. the tuneful Nine: The nine Muses, in Greek mythology the daughters of Mnemosyne, and goddesses of literature and the arts.

29. one of the chapters of his Rasselas: Chapter 44, ‘The Dangerous Prevalence of Imagination’.

30. Igneus… origo: ‘To these seeds a flame-like vigour belongs, and a divine origin’ – Virgil, Aeneid, vi.730.

31. ‘The Whole Duty of Man’: Richard Allestree, The Whole Duty of Man (1658), an enormously popular work of practical morality and religion, many times reprinted for over a century after its first publication.

32. De veritate Religionis: ‘Of the Truth of Religion’; books so entitled were composed by Hugo Grotius (Leyden, 1627), Philip van Limborch (Gouda, 1687), and Philippe du Plessis Mornay (Antwerp, 1583).

33. Stet pro ratione voluntas: ‘Let my desires be reason enough’ – Juvenal, Satires, vi.223.

34. what… to be saved: Cf. Acts 16:30.

35. somebody: Possibly William Vyse.

36. res angusta domi: ‘Financial constraint at home’ – Juvenal, Satires, iii.164.

37. petites morales: Minor social conventions or morals; the ethics of everyday life (OED).

38. My time… happily spent: The opening line of ‘A Pastoral’ by John Byrom (1692–1763).

39. usher: An assistant to a schoolmaster or head teacher; an under-master, assistant master (OED, 4).

40. Julii 16… petii: ‘July 16. I betook myself to Bosworth on foot.’

41. his admirable philosophical tale: The History of Rasselas (1759).

42. in quo Natura… compensavit: ‘In whom, as formerly in Angelo Polit-iano, nature compensated for bodily ugliness with great intellectual eminence’.

43. first… in the Gent. Mag.: Gentleman’s Magazine, lv (1785), 3-8.

44. multos et felices annos: Many years, and happy ones.

45. Delightful task… toshoot: James Thomson, ‘Spring’ (1728), ll.1152-3.

46. Utpueris… discere prima: ‘As teachers sometimes give little boys cakes to coax them into learning their letters’ – Horace, Satires, I.i.25-6.

47. a relation: The Revd Samuel Ford (1717–93), Johnson’s cousin.

48. the Turkish History: Richard Knolles, The Generall Historie of the Turkes (1603). Johnson admired this work immoderately, and drew from it the plot of his unsuccessful play Irene (composed 1736, first performed 1749).

49. porter’s knot: A kind of double shoulder pad, with a loop passing round the forehead, the whole roughly resembling a horse collar, used by London market porters for carrying their burdens (OED, ‘knot’, 5).

50. His Ofellus… an Irish painter: Ofellus is the wise peasant in Horace’s Satires II.ii, who is able to teach the art of frugal living. The Irish painter was possibly Michael Ford.

51. disjecta membra: ‘Dismembered limbs’ – Horace, Satires, I.iv.62.

52. gave the wall: Yielded passage (the side of the pavement nearest the wall being cleaner and safer).

53. Iris: In Greek mythology, the goddess of the rainbow.

54. Lewis le Grand: That is, Louis XIV (1638–1715), king of France.

55. Will no… happy Muse: Samuel Derrick, ‘Fortune, a rhapsody’, Gentleman’s Magazine, xxi (1751), 527.

56. May I… a Paul: Charles Churchill, The Conference (1763), p. 13.

57. deterre: Unearthed, or dug up.

58. ne ullius… moraretur: That no election of a teacher be delayed more than three months.

59. impransus: Not having dined.

60. Elisje Carters… 1738: Dr Thomas Birch to Elizabeth Carter. I have now read your translation of Crousaz’s Examen, with admiration of the consummate elegance of your style and of its fitness to a very difficult subject. Written 27 November 1738.

61. Pica: A size of type, now standardized as 12 point (OED, ia).

62. the Brunswick succession… upon it: The Brunswick succession refers to the accession of the House of Hanover to the throne of Great Britain with George I in 1714, a dynastic change which cemented the exclusion of the House of Stuart; ‘measures of government’ refers to the management of the House of Commons by Sir Robert Walpole which secured majorities for the King’s business, and which in the eyes of the disaffected was tantamount to corruption.

63. telum imbelle: ‘Unwarlike [i.e. harmless] spear’ – Virgil, Aeneid, ii.544.

64. Emptoris sit eligere: The purchaser has the right of choice.

65. Great Primer: A size of type approximately equal to 18 point, formerly much used in Bibles (OED, ‘primer’, 3b).

66. Angliacas… Dece: ‘Laura, prettiest girl in England, you will soon be rid of your grievous burden. May Lucina be kind to you in your pains; may you not suffer for having excelled a goddess.’ Lucina in Roman religion was a name associated with Juno as goddess of childbirth – ‘parituram’ in the epigram’s title means ‘about to give birth’.

67. a noble Lord: Lord Tyrconnel.

68. Ad Ricardum Savage… genus: ‘To Richard Savage. May the human race cherish him, in whose breast burns the love of human kind.’

69. Respicere… jubebo: ‘I advise him to take as his model real life and manners’ – Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 317.

70. falsum… omnibus: ‘False in one respect, false in all.’

71. his great philological work: That is his Dictionary of the English Language (1755).

72. one of the best criticks of our age: Probably Edmond Malone.

73. Dulce et decorum… mori: ‘It is sweet and becoming to die for one’s homeland’ – Horace, Odes, III.ii.13.

74. Cur… putat: ‘Why should I say that I cannot do what he thinks I am capable of?’ – Ausonius, Epigrams, i.12.

75. a noble Lord: Possibly William, 3rd Earl of Jersey.

76. Sed hie sunt nugce: ‘But they are trifles.’

77. the Charterhouse: A charitable institution or ‘hospital’ founded in London, in 1611, upon the site of the Carthusian monastery (OED, ‘Charterhouse’, 2).

78. the Monument: The column erected in the City of London to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666, and imputing the guilt of that disaster to the actions of Roman Catholics – cf. Alexander Pope, ‘Epistle to Bathurst’ (1733), ll. 339–40.

79. genus irritabile: ‘Fretful tribe [of poets]’ – Horace, Epistles, II.ii.102.

80. notanda: Things to be noted.

81. Dial… conspicimus: ‘The sly shadow steals away upon the dial, and the quickest eye can discover no more than that it is gone’ – Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis scientifica (1664), xi.6o. Quoted in Johnson’s Dictionary.

82. Bruy: Jean de la Bruyere (1645–96), French satirist and moralist.

83. Scribebamus, &c. Mart.: ‘Scribebamus epos; coepisti scribere: cessi, | aemula ne starent carmina nostra tuis. | transtulit ad tragicos se nostra Thalia cothurnos: | aptasti longum tu quoque syrma tibi. | fila lyrae movi Calabris exculta Camenis: | plectra rapis nobis, ambitiose, nova. | audemus saturas: Lucilius esse laboras. | ludo levis elegos: tu quoque ludis idem. | quid minus esse potest? epigrammata fingere coepi: | huic etiam petitur iam mea palma tibi. | elige quid nolis – quis enim pudor omnia velle? – | et si quid non vis, Tucca, relinque mihi’ – ‘I was writing an epic; you started to write one. I gave up, so that my poetry should not stand in comparison with yours. My Thalia [the muse of comedy] transferred herself to tragic buskins; you too fitted the long train on yourself. I stirred the lyre strings, as practised by Calabrian Muses; eager to show off, you snatch my new quill away from me. I try my hand at satire; you labour to be Lucilius. I play with light elegy; you play with it too. What can be humbler? I start shaping epigrams; here again you too are already after my trophy. Choose what you don’t want (modesty forbids us to want everything), and if there’s anything you don’t want, Tucca, leave it for me’: Martial, Epigrams, xii.94.

84. Oι ΦιγOι ΦιγOζ: ‘He had friends, but no friend’ – Diogenes Laertius, V.i.

85. Principum amicitias: ‘The [deadly] friendships of princes’ – Horace, Odes, II.i.4.

86. fami non famce scribere: To write for food, not fame.

87. Degoute… d’argent: Disgusted with fame, and starving for money.

88. bark and steel for the mind: Bark was used in tanning and preserving leather; so ‘bark and steel’ suggests that Johnson’s prose preserves and strengthens the mind.

89. No. 88: In fact no. 98.

90. A GREAT PERSONAGE: George III.

91. Cum tabulis… divite lingua: ‘When he takes his tablets to write he will take also the spirit of an honest censor. Any words that he shall find lacking in dignity, or without proper weight, or that are held unworthy of the rank, he will have heart of courage to degrade from their position, however unwilling they may be to retire, and bent still on haunting the precincts of Vesta [in Roman religion, the goddess of the blazing hearth, who was worshipped in every household]. Phrases of beauty that have been lost to popular view he will kindly disinter and bring into the light – phrases which, though they were on the lips of a Cato and a Cethegus of old time, now lie uncouth because out of fashion and disused because old. He will admit to the franchise new phrases which use has fathered and given to the world. In strength and clearness, like a crystal stream, he will pour his wealth along, and bless Latium with a richer tongue.’

92. Si forte… nomen: ‘If so there be abstruse things which absolutely require new terms to make them clear, it will be in your power to frame words which never sounded in the ears of a cinctured Cethegus, and free pardon will be granted if the licence be used modestly. New words and words of yesterday’s framing will find acceptance if the source from which they flow be Greek, and if the stream be turned on sparingly. Think you that there is any licence which the Romans will grant to Caecilius and Plautus, and then refuse to Virgil and Varius? Why should you grudge even such a one as myself the right of adding, if I can, something to the store, when the tongue of Cato and of Ennius has been permitted to enrich our mother speech by giving to the world new names for things? Each generation has been allowed, and will be allowed still, to issue words that bear the mint mark of the day’ – Horace, Ars Poetica, ll. 48–59.

93. Camdeo’s sports: Camdeo, the Hindu god of love, was the subject of Sir William Jones’s ‘A Hymn to Camdeo’ (1784).

94. Lethe: David Garrick, Lethe, a dramatic satire (1749).

95. O.S.: Old Style. See n. 19.

96. intenerate: Make tender, soften (Johnson).

97. Eheu… 1752: ‘Ah! Elizabeth Johnson, wedded 9 July 1736, died (alas) 17 March 1752.’

98. the expedition against the Havannah: On 12 August 1762 English forces under the command of the 3rd Earl of Albemarle launched a successful assault on Havana, then occupied by the Spanish.

99. Vix Priamus… fuit: ‘The death of Priam and the capture of Troy were hardly worth the cost’ – Ovid, Heroides, i.4.

100. dulce decus: ‘Dear dignity’ – Horace, Odes, I.i.2.

101. Thy love of folly, and thy scorn of fools: More accurately, ‘Your Taste of Follies, with our Scorn of Fools’ – ‘Epistle to a Lady’ (1735), in Alexander Pope, Moral Essays, ii.276.

102. I hope… gentleman: Having survived the battle of Shrewsbury, Falstaff resolves to ‘purge, and leave sack, and live cleanly as a nobleman should do’ (1 Henry IV, V.iv.156-7).

103. an authouress: Either Catherine Talbot or Elizabeth Carter.

104. my particular friends: John Hawkesworth and (probably) Elizabeth Carter.

105. Esau sold his birth-right: See Genesis 25:29–34.

106. the Tarpeian maid… ornaments: During a siege of Rome by the Sabines, Tarpeia, the daughter of the commanding officer, betrayed the citadel in return for what the Sabines bore on their left arms (i.e. golden bracelets). Having taken the city, however, the Sabines crushed her under their shields.

107. Le vainqueur… dela terre: The conqueror of the conqueror of the world.

108. The shepherd… the rocks: An allusion to Virgil, Eclogue viii.43-5: ‘Now I know what love is. On flinty crags Tmarus bore him, or Rhodope, or the farthest Garamantes – a child not of our race or blood.’

109. one of the vices… of society: That is, adultery.

110. no. a late noble Lord: George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield.

111. Lost in. Lost in… gloom: Alexander Pope, ‘Eloisa to Abelard’ (1717), l. 38.

112. Vallis… nubes: ‘See spicy clouds from lowly Saron rise’ – Alexander Pope, Messiah (1712), l. 27.

113. one other Fellow… now resident: John Collins.

114. the Titans: In Greek mythology the Titans were the children of the primeval couple, Uranus and Ge. There were twelve of them – six of each sex.

115. a learned Swede: Possibly Peter Chriström.

116. Oιμμ… ππóΦαμν: ‘Alas – but wherefore alas? We have suffered the fate of men’ – Euripides, fragment.

117. Calypso… Polypheme… resist: In Greek mythology Calypso was the daughter of Atlas; she detained Odysseus seven years on the island of Ogygia (Homer, Odyssey, V). Polyphemus was a cyclops (a one-eyed giant), and the son of Poseidon. Odysseus escaped from him by blinding him with a stake (Odyssey, IX).

118. Crescimbeni: A reference to recent works of Italian literary history by Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni – probably the Istoria della volgar poesia (1698) and the Commentarii (1702-n).

119. Term. S^cti.… munitum: ‘Hilary Term 1755. The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford, to all who may read this, greetings. Whereas our ancestors instituted academic degrees to the end that men of outstanding genius and learning might be distinguished by titles also; and whereas the learned Samuel Johnson of Pembroke College has long been known to the world of letters by writings that have shaped the manners of his countrymen and is even now labouring at a work of the greatest usefulness in adorning and fixing our native tongue (he is about to publish an English Dictionary, compiled with the greatest diligence and judgement); therefore we, the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars, have unanimously made the said Samuel Johnson a Master of Arts, and we wish him joy of all the rights and privileges that belong to that degree. In evidence of this we have affixed the seal of the University of Oxford. Given in the Convocation House 20 February 1755. The diploma written above was read out by the Registrar, and was confirmed by the decree of Convocation and with the seal of the University.’

120. Dom. Doctori Huddesford… existimo: ‘To Dr Huddesford, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Both you and I would think me ungrateful if I failed to express in a letter (the most trifling form of acknowledgement) the pleasure I feel in the honour which (I imagine at your instigation) the Senatus Academicus has done me. I should be equally ungrateful if I did not acknowledge the kindness of the excellent man who has put into my hands the proof of your regard. My pleasure is enhanced by this, that I am enrolled in your ranks at a time when cunning but foolish men are straining every nerve to lessen your authority and to injure the good name of Oxford. I have always opposed them in so far as an obscure scholar can, and always shall. Whoever, in these days of trouble, fails in his duty to you and the University I regard as failing in his duty to virtue and learning, to himself and posterity.’ The reference to attempts to injure the good name of Oxford invites the reader to recall the events of the Oxfordshire election of 1754-5, which had been bitterly fought, and in which a politically polarized University had been besmirched once more with allegations of Jacobitism, notoriously by Pitt the elder in the House of Commons on 26 November 1754. See The History of the University of Oxford, vol. V, ‘The Eighteenth Century’, ed. L. S. Sutherland and L. G. Mitchell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), pp. 129–42.

121. vasta mole superbus: ‘Proud in its vast bulk’ – cf. Virgil, Aeneid, iii.656.

122. a Bibliotheque: That is to say, a review or literary journal.

123. in luminis oras: ‘Into the bright coasts of light’ – Lucretius, i.23.

124. De tristitia… ante captionem ejus: Of the passion, weariness, fear, and prayer of Christ before his arrest.

125. De resignatione… Morum: Of Sir Thomas More’s resignation of the Great Seal into the King’s hands.

126. Mori Defensio Morice: More’s Defence of Folly.

127. His definition of Network: ‘Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections’.

128. his Tory… Oats: Tory: ‘One who adheres to the antient constitution of the state, and the apostolical hierarchy of the church of England, opposed to a whig’. Whig: ‘The name of a faction’. Pension: ‘An allowance made to any one without an equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country.’ Oats: ‘A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people’.

129. the great parliamentary reward: In 1714 Parliament offered a reward of £20,000 for the discovery of a reliable method of determining the precise longitude at sea, essential for reliable navigation. The problem was eventually solved in 1759, when John Harrison (1693–1776) invented the marine chronometer.

130. making provision… over him: In the Preface to his Dictionary, Johnson wrote, ‘much of my life has been lost under the pressure of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me’ (2nd edn, 2 vols. (1755-6), I, sig. b/}^v).

131. the Militia Bill: See n. 7.

132. Treaties with… the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel: See n. 8.

133. Admiral Byng: See n. 9.

134. con amore: With love, zeal or delight (OED).

135. Iste tulit… feretur: ‘Losing he wins, because his name will be | Ennobled by defeat who durst contend with me’ – Ovid, Metamorphoses, xiii.19–20.

136. pour encourager les autres: To put heart in the others.

137. Antigallican: Opposed to what is French (OED).

138. expedition to Rochfort: See n. 10.

139. honores mutant mores: ‘Honours change manners’ – cf. Suetonius, ‘Tiberius’, lxvii.4.

140. Thee… I woo: John Milton, ‘Il Penseroso’ (composed? i63i, first published 1645), ll. 63-4.

141. Quamvis… Sibylles: ‘Though I regret the departure of my old friend, I commend his resolve to settle at Cumae, and to present one citizen to the Sibyl’ – Juvenal, Satires, iii.1-3.

142. Sibyl: The name given by the Greeks and Romans to a prophetess inspired by a deity.

143. a poem by Blacklock: Thomas Blacklock (1721–91), ‘On Punch: An Epigram’.

144. a very accomplished lady: Possibly Mrs Boswell.

145. a Turkish lady: Mlle Emetulla.

146. Ma foi… circule: ‘Believe me, monsieur, our happiness depends on how our blood is flowing.’

147. Apres tout… passable: ‘When all is said and done, it’s a satisfactory world.’ Cf. the conclusion of Voltaire’s Le Monde comme il va (1748), where Ituriel resolves ‘de laisser aller le monde comme il va “car, dit-il, si tout n’est pas bien, tout est passable” ‘(‘to let the world alone, “for, he said, even though everything isn’t good, everything is fairly good”’).

148. Where ignorance… wise: Thomas Gray, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (ij^j), ll. 99–100.

149. la theorie des sensations agreables: Boswell alludes to Louis Jean Levesque de Pouilly’s Theorie des sentimens agreables (1743), which was translated into English anonymously as The Theory of Agreeable Sensations (1749).

150. ∗∗∗: perhaps ‘Van’ – i.e. Robert Vansittart.

151. manes: In Roman religion, the deified soul of the dead.

152. cater-cousins: Good friends (OED).

153. Blackfriars-bridge: Seen. 11.

154. sesquioctave… sesquinonal: Ratios of respectively one and a half to eight, and one and a half to nine.

155. placido lumine: ‘With kindly glance’ – Horace, Odes, IV.iii.2

156. Quicquid agunt homines: Whatever men do.

157. the French Prisoners: See n. 12.

158. a learned divine: Dr Archibald Maclaine.

159. the unfortunate battle of Fontenoy: A battle fought on 11 May 1745 between French forces under the Count de Saxe, and allied forces drawn from England, Hanover, Holland and Austria under the Duke of Cumberland. It resulted in a famous victory for the French, who went on to conquer Flanders.

160. Apollo: In Greek mythology Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto, and was the god of medicine, music, archery, prophecy and the sun.

161. the Aonian fount: The seat of the nine Muses (see n. 28).

162. But Shakspeare’s magick… but he: John Dryden, ‘Prologue’ to The Tempest: or, The Enchanted Island (1670), ll. 19–20.

163. The Jealous Wife: George Colman the elder, The Jealous Wife (1761).

164. the Peruvian bark: Quinine, used medicinally to reduce fever, as a tonic and to prevent the periodic recurrence of diseases or symptoms.

165. Charlotte: Charlotte Cotterell, married to Dean Lewis.

166. pensioners: Johnson defined ‘pensioner’ as ‘One who is supported by an allowance paid at the will of another; a dependant’.

167. The Commissioner of the Dock-yard: Sir Frederick Rogers.

168. native wood-note wild: John Milton, ‘L’Allegro’ (composed? i63i, first published 1645), l. 134.

169. Nam vos mutastis: ‘For you have wrought the change’ – Ovid, Metamorphoses, i.2.

170. a man who disliked him: James Macpherson.

171. The Elements of Criticism: Henry Home, Lord Kames, The Elements of Criticism (1762).

172. one who… family: John Wilkes.

173. tcedium vitce: The irksomeness of life.

174. Verily… reward: Matthew 6:2, 5 and 16.

175. reasoning à priori: Reasoning or arguing from causes to effects, from abstract notions to their conditions or consequences, from propositions or assumed axioms (and not from experience) (OED).

176. Dr. Pearson: In fact Bishop Zachary Pearce.

177. Ham, who was cursed: Ham was one of the three sons of Noah, and was cursed by Noah because he saw Noah naked when drunk – Genesis 9:20–27.

178. fabulous tale… linnet: In a classical fable a wren conceals itself on the back of an eagle, and then claims to have flown higher than the eagle.

179. Ruin seize thee… wait: Thomas Gray, ‘The Bard’ (1757), ll. 1-2.

180. a Ghost in Cock-lane. See n. 13.

181. the ‘Change of London: The Royal Exchange.

182. The subject of this beautiful poem: In Greek mythology, Telemachus was the son of Odysseus and Penelope. The conflict which Telemachus suffers in Graham’s masque (1763 and based on book seven of Fenelon’s Les Aventures de Telemaque (1699)) is that between his duty to continue searching for his father Odysseus and the erotic pleasure which surrounds him when he finds himself shipwrecked on the island of Ogygia, the home of the goddess Calypso, where Odysseus himself was detained for seven years (Homer, Odyssey, v).

183. Nihil… ornavit: ‘He touched nothing that he did not adorn.’

184. un etourdi: A scatterbrain; a distracted person.

185. Fantoccini: A drama performed by puppets.

186. a Dignitary of the Church: Probably Bishop Percy.

187. assafoetida: A concreted resinous gum, with a strong garlic and onion odour, used in medicine as an antispasmodic, and as a flavouring in made dishes (OED).

188. an impudent fellow from Scotland: James Macpherson.

189. Ita feri… emori: ‘Strike so that he can feel himself dying’ – Suetonius, Caligula, xxx.1.

190. July 18: It was in fact the 19th.

191. Jargonnant… barbare: Babbling barbaric French.

192. cceteris paribus: Other things being equal.

193. a gentleman who was mentioned: George Dempster.

194. a noted infidel writer: David Hume.

195. plenum: A space completely filled with matter (OED).

196. a certain authour: William Robertson.

197. A writer of deserved eminence: Thomas Warton the elder.

198. The Tale of a Tub: Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub (1704); now securely attributed to Swift.

199. —: Edmund Burke.

200. a young man: James Boswell.

201. Eblana… light of day: ‘An Ode to Eblana, on entering the Harbour of Dublin, after a long Absence’, in Samuel Derrick, A Collection of Original Poems (1755), p. 153.

202. bulk: A part of a building jutting out (Johnson).

203. Orpheus… the Argonauts: In Greek mythology Orpheus was a legendary poet, whose playing on the lyre could hold wild beasts spellbound. He accompanied Jason and the Argonauts on their quest for the Golden Fleece, and by his song he enabled them to resist the lure of the Sirens.

204. Formosam… silvas: ‘And the woods resound with the name of Amaryllis’ – Virgil, Eclogues, i.5.

205. a certain friend of his: Possibly Edmund Burke.

206. the Convocation: The principal provincial synod or assembly of the clergy of the Church of England, constituted by statute and called together to deliberate on ecclesiastical matters. The bitter controversy which attended the repeal of the Schism Act (1714) in 1719 caused Convocation to be adjourned indefinitely, and it did not meet again until 1854: see J. P. Kenyon, Revolution Principles: The Politics of Party 1689–1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 196.

207. Jean Bull philosophe: John Bull the philosopher. John Bull was the embodiment of Englishness, popularized in a series of pamphlets by John Arbuthnot published in 1712 in opposition to English involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession.

208. gulosity: Gluttony, greediness, voracity (OED).

209. a nobleman’s French cook: The nobleman was possibly Lord Elibank.

210. a lady: Probably Mrs Boswell.

211. turned him… aside: A misquotation of ll. 5-6 of Alexander Pope’s The Second Satire of the Second Book of Horace Paraphrased (1734): ‘Not when a gilt Buffet’s reflected pride | Turns you from sound Philosophy aside’. The reference is to Edmund Burke.

212. Who born… mankind: Oliver Goldsmith, Retaliation: A Poem (1774), ll. 31-2.

213. the Frisick language: The language of Friesland, or the northern Netherlands.

214. Unelbow’d… player: Pope, ‘Epistle to Bathurst’, l. 242.

215. That Davies… wife: Charles Churchill, The Rosciad, 2nd edn (1761), p. 10, l. 222.

216. poor Mrs. Macaulay: Catherine Macaulay (1731–91) had begun to publish her Whiggish History of England in 1763.

217. OMNIBUS… Kearney: To all who may read this, greeting. We, the Provost and senior fellows of Queen Elizabeth’s College of the holy and undivided Trinity at Dublin, declare that Samuel Johnson, gentleman, in recognition of the outstanding elegance and usefulness of his writings, was admitted to the degree of Doctor of Laws this eighth day of July 1765. In evidence thereof we attach the following signatures and the common seal; given on the twenty-third day of July 1765. William Clement Francis Andrews R. Murray Thomas Wilson Provost Robert Law Thomas Leland Michael Kearney

218. The Conscious Lovers: Richard Steele, The Conscious Lovers (first performed 1722).

219. Un gentilhomme… gentilhomme: ‘A gentleman is always a gentleman.’

220. Damien’s bed of steel: Robert-Francois Damiens (1715–57) attempted to assassinate Louis XV on 5 January 1757, and was executed on 2 March in a protracted ceremony full of symbolic violence. It is described by Michel Foucault in the first chapter of Surveiller et punir: naissance de la prison (Paris, 1975; trans. as Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 1977).

221. a foreign friend of his: Giuseppe Baretti.

222. a gay friend: John Wilkes.

223. Profession… Vicaire Savoyard: ‘A Savoyard Vicar’s Profession of Faith’, in Emile (1762).

224. multorum… urbes: ‘The cities and the customs of many men’ – Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 142.

225. a young gentleman: James Boswell.

226. The passage omitted… transaction: Boswell’s copy at Yale supplies the missing information. Johnson had asked Boswell why he had dedicated the work to Lord Mountstuart, a man for whom he had no regard.

227. V7.ro NOBiLissiMO… JACOBUS BOSWELL: ‘James Boswell dedicates the first fruits of his legal studies, as a token of devoted friendship and respect, to the honoured companion of his Italian travels, to the most noble John, Viscount Mountstuart, of kingly line, the second hope of the noble family of Bute: a man ever mindful of his ancient and illustrious blood in a degenerate age, when men of no origin strive to level birth with riches; who by his virtues enhances the splendour of his birthright; already a member of the House of Commons, but destined by hereditary right to the House of Lords; with an education that promotes his native talent, but does not display itself; of ancient faith, liberal understanding, and elegance of manners.’

228. Jurisprudentije… solemus: ‘No study is richer or more noble than jurisprudence; for in discussing laws we consider both the manners of peoples and the vicissitudes from which laws derive.’

229. Hcec sunt… age: ‘Such are the warnings I am able to give you. Go, then’ – Virgil, Aeneid, iii.461-2 (slightly misquoted).

230. modo… reliquit: ‘She dropped twin kids, hope of my flock, on the naked flint.’

231. Spemque… simul: ‘At once the hope and the flock.’

232. prcesidium: Defence or protection. Cf. Horace, Odes, I.i.2.

233. Spes tu nunc una… Te penes: ‘You are now our only hope – the honour and sovereignty of Latinus are in your hands.’

234. Excelsce familice de Bute spes prima… spes altera: The first hope of the lofty family of Bute… the second hope.

235. Et juxta… RomiS: ‘And beside him Ascanius, the second hope of great Rome.’

236. Juris Civilis Fontes: The Sources of the Civil Law.

237. Nam huic… nescio: ‘I don’t know where this other girl comes from.’

238. hoc ipsa… audivi: ‘By chance I heard her tell that on the way to the other girl.’

239. xατ’ Σoχην: ‘Par excellence.’

240. Et genus… alga est: ‘Without substance, blood and valour are less than seaweed.’

241. Et genus… donat: ‘Even birth and beauty can be bestowed by Queen Money.’

242. Nam genus… voco: ‘For birth and lineage, and whatever we ourselves have not created, can hardly be called our own.’

243. Nascetur… Ccesar: ‘A Caesar will be born from the fair line of Troy.’

244. Ille tamen… nomen: ‘And yet his name is drawn from our lineage.’

245. a garreteer: One who lives in a garret; an impecunious author or literary hack (OED) – in this case William Horsley.

246. False Delicacy: Hugh Kelly, False Delicacy (1768).

247. The Provoked Husband: Sir John Vanbrugh and Colley Cibber, The Provok’d Husband: or, A Journey to London (1728).

248. Sir Francis Wronghead: A character in The Provok’d Husband.

249. The Suspicious Husband: Benjamin Hoadly, The Suspicious Husband (1747).

250. The great Douglas Cause: A dispute over the Douglas family estates between Archibald Douglas (thought by some not to be the son of Lady Jane Douglas) and the Duke of Hamilton, who would inherit if Archibald Douglas’s claim were to be dismissed. The Judges of the Court of Session gave judgement in favour of the Duke of Hamilton on a casting vote, which was then overturned by the House of Lords.

251. a gentleman who… speculation: James Boswell.

252. esprits forts: ‘Strongminded’ persons; usually, ones who profess superiority to current prejudices, especially ‘freethinkers’ in religion (OED).

253. Maupertuis… peu de chose: ‘Maupertuis, dear Maupertuis, what a paltry thing is life!’ – ‘Ode VIII. A Maupertuis. La vie est un songe’, in Frederick II, Oeuvres du philosophe de Sans-Souci, 2 vols. (Potsdam, 1760), I, 35.

254. a gentleman… a lady: James Boswell; the woman was Isabelle de Zuylen. Boswell eventually married Margaret Montgomerie, on 25 November 1769.

255. an oppressed nation… free: A reference to the ultimately unavailing Corsican struggle for independence from Genoa and subsequently France, led by the charismatic Corsican general Pasquale Paoli, whom Boswell had visited in 1765. Boswell’s An Account of Corsica was published in 1768.

256. Wicked Will Whiston and good Mr. Ditton: The allusion is to a poem once attributed to Swift, the ‘Ode for Music, on the Longitude’, which contains the lines: ‘The longitude miss’d on | By wicked Will Whiston; | And not better hit on | By good master Ditton’. See n. 129.

257. Hunc librum… vacaret: ‘This book is the gift of Samuel Johnson, who from time to time was at leisure to study here.’

258. the question… of general warrants: John Wilkes, the author of issue No. 45 of the North Briton, which in April 1763 had denounced the King’s Speech, was arrested for libel on a general warrant (i.e. a warrant which neither named nor described the persons to be apprehended with any certainty), which Lord Chief Justice Pratt later declared to be unlawful.

259. the gentleman… night-cap: The Spectator, 576 (4 August 1714).

260. Artemisias: Artemisia was a poetic name for a learned woman or bluestocking: cf. Alexander Pope, Imitations of English Poets, ‘E. of Dorset’ (1727), ‘Artimesia’, ll. 1-6. It derived originally perhaps from the Artemisia who was queen of Halicarnassus and who fought manfully at the Battle of Salamis (Herodotus, viii.87-8).

261. a gentleman of my acquaintance: Lord Auchinleck (Boswell’s father).

262. one of our common friends: Bennet Langton.

263. vails: A vail is a gratuity given to a servant or attendant; a tip; one of those given by a visitor on his departure to the servants of the house in which he has been a guest (OED, 5).

264. foenum habet in cornu: ‘He carries hay on his horns’ – Horace, Satires, I.iv.34.

265. J’ai lu… de la campagne: ‘In the geography of Lucas de Linda I have read a paternoster written in a language completely different from Italian, and from all other languages which derive from Latin. The author calls it “the rustic language of Corsica”; perhaps it has gradually died out; but in the past it was certainly prevalent in the hills and countryside. The same author says the same thing when speaking of Sardinia: that there are two languages on the island, one urban, the other rural.’

266. lingua rustica: Country language or dialect.

267. l’homme d’epee: The man of the sword.

268. One of the company: Possibly Joshua Reynolds.

269. one of the company: James Boswell.

270. Zimri: In John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), ll. 543–68 – a portrait of the Duke of Buckingham.

271. Pope’s character of Addison: In Alexander Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735), ll. 193–214.

272. description… in the Mourning Bride: William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697), II.i.

273. god of his idolatry: Cf. Romeo and Juliet, II.i.156.

274. Agincourt… the tomb of her ancestors… Dover Cliff: Henry V, IV.i; Romeo and Juliet, IV.iii.14–57; King Lear, IV.vi.

275. some one: Probably James Boswell.

276. ad hominem: To the man.

277. one of our most eminent literati: Edmond Malone.

278. the authour of a modern tragedy: Robert Jephson.

279. The Scotchman: Lord Kames.

280. A wit about town: Benjamin Loveling.

281. The ballad of Hardyknute: An ancient poem collected by Thomas Percy in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 3 vols. (1765), II, 87–102.

282. a poor player… stage: Macbeth, V.v.23-4.

283. centos: A cento is a composition formed by joining scraps from other authors (Johnson).

284. a very laborious Judge: Lord Auchinleck.

285. e secretioribus consiliis: One of his most confidential advisers.

286. Heliconian spring: Helicon is a mountain in Boeotia, thought in Greek mythology to be the home of the Muses (see n. 28). On it were the sacred springs of Hippocrene and Aganippe, which by a natural association became poetic metonyms for artistic inspiration.

287. One of the company: James Boswell.

288. one of Cibber’s comedies… butt end of it: In Act I of Colley Cibber’s The Refusal: or, the Ladies Philosophy (1720), Witling says to Granger, ‘What, now your fire’s gone, you would knock me down with the butt-end, would you?’

289. the Middlesex election: Having stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the City of London on 25 March 1768, Wilkes decided to stand as a candidate for Middlesex, and, after a well-organized campaign buoyed up by popular enthusiasm, he was returned to Parliament for Middlesex on 28 March. He was then expelled on the grounds that he was still outlawed. The episode was an important test of whether popular support or the favour of the Crown was of greater importance in matters of political authority, and it prompted Edmund Burke’s pamphlet on that subject, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770).

290. Council of Trent: The nineteenth ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church (1545–63), the Council of Trent clarified Catholic teaching on a range of doctrines which had been challenged by the Protestant Churches, and launched the Counter-Reformation.

291. Albano… locutas: ‘Spoken by the Muses on the Alban hill’ – Horace, Epistles, II.i.26.

292. the long Parliament: The Parliament summoned by Charles I in November 1640, and which lasted until April 1653, when its members were ejected by Cromwell’s troops.

293. a French lady: Mme de Boufflers.

294. Ranelagh: Pleasure gardens on the Thames near Chelsea, opened to the public in 1742.

295. a certain player: Thomas Sheridan.

296. the apostolical injunction: ‘Giv[e] thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ – Ephesians 5:20.

297. Strange cozenage… remain: John Dryden, Aureng-Zebe (1675), IV.i. 39–40.

298. Fingal: One of the Ossianic poems of James Macpherson, Fingal was published in 1762.

299. lucidus ordo… nec certa recurrit imago: ‘Clear order… no certain image recurs’ – Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 41.

300. magis… Christianus: More of a philosopher than a Christian.

301. the Caliban of literature: In Shakespeare’s The Tempest Caliban is the son of the witch Sycorax, and in the dramatis personae he is referred to as ‘a savage and deformed… slave’.

302. Optima… mortis: ‘Life’s fairest days are ever the first to flee for hapless mortals; on creep diseases, and sad age, and suffering; and stern death’s ruthlessness sweeps away its prey’ – Virgil, Georgics, iii.66-8.

303. Aιν… αγγων: ‘Be always the best, and surpass other men’ – Homer, Iliad, vi.208.

304. a certain Prelate: Perhaps the Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Richard Robinson.

305. a celebrated historian: Edward Gibbon.

306. laudo tamen: The quotation comes from Juvenal, Satires, iii.2, a poem which Johnson himself had imitated in his London (1738), and in which he rendered ‘laudo tamen’, meaning literally ‘nevertheless I praise’, as ‘Yet still my calmer Thoughts his Choice commend’ (l. 3).

307. Falkland’s Islands: See n. 14.

308. Junius: The pseudonym of the author (now generally agreed to be Sir Philip Francis) of a series of brilliantly acerbic pro-Wilkes letters which appeared in the Public Advertiser between January 1769 and January 1772.

309. principalities… this world: Ephesians 6:12.

310. Manilla ransom: On 25 September 1762, as part of operations during the Seven Years War, British forces took Manila by storm. The Spanish inhabitants were allowed to ransom their possessions, and a large portion of this ransom was paid in the form of bills on the Spanish treasury. Unsurprisingly, these bills were later not honoured. In his Thoughts on Falkland’s Islands (1771) Johnson dismissed agitation for the repayment of this ransom as characteristic of ‘the inferior bellowers of sedition’.

311. one of the Secretaries of the Treasury: Either Sir Grey Cooper or John Robinson.

312. tristitiam… ventis: ‘Sadness and fear I banish to the wild winds, to go with them to the Cretan sea’ – Horace, Odes, I.xxvi.1-3.

313. Sive per: ‘Sive per Syrtis iter aestuosas | sive…’ – ‘Whether he be making his way through the waves of the Syrtes, or…’ – Horace, Odes, I.xxii. 5-6.

314. viaticum: The Eucharist, as administered to or received by one who is dying or in danger of death (OED, 1).

315. the expedition: In 1772 the natural scientist and botanist Sir Joseph Banks proposed a scientific expedition to the Pacific. It was however frustrated by Lord Sandwich at the Admiralty, and did not take place.

316. simples: Plants or herbs employed for medical purposes (OED, 6). Cf. ‘Culling of simples’ in Romeo and Juliet, V.i.40.

317. the fast of the 30th of January: In the Church of England, a day of fasting and mortification to commemorate the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649.

318. Royal Marriage Bill: The Royal Marriage Act (1772) prevented marriages of members of the royal family unless authorized by the monarch or ratified by the Privy Council.

319. a friend: Lord Cullen.

320. Lady––––––: Lady Emily Hervey.

321. Saturday, March 27: In fact 27 March 1772 was a Friday.

322. drank… with the wits: Matthew Prior, ‘The Chameleon’ (1708), l. 40.

323. the fools who use it: Cf. Hamlet, III.ii.39–40.

324. a certain prosperous member of Parliament: Henry Dundas.

325. Dives… his brethren: Luke 16:19–31.

326. the Pantheon: A place of public resort in Oxford Street, which had opened in January 1772.

327. J’ai fait… un ingrat: ‘I have disaffected ten men and made one man ungrateful’ – attributed to Louis XIV, and quoted by Johnson in his ‘Life of Swift’ (Samuel Johnson, The Lives of the Poets, ed. Roger Lonsdale, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), III, 197).

328. The Rehearsal: George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, The Rehearsal (1672); a farcical mockery of the heroic tragedies of the period, which in particular lampooned Sir William D’Avenant (but also aimed some thrusts at Dryden) in the character of the ridiculous playwright Bayes.

329. coup d’œil: A view or scene as it strikes the eye at a glance (OED).

330. in time of mourning: On 8 February 1772 the Princess Augusta, daughter-in-law of George III and consort of the Prince of Wales, had died of cancer of the throat.

331. a schoolmaster of his acquaintance: James Elphinston.

332. a Probationer: William MacMaster.

333. passage in scripture… forty thousand Assyrians: 2 Kings 19:35 (where the number given is in fact 185,000).

334. a passage… of Euripides: Euripides, The Phoenician Maidens, l. 1120. The siege of Thebes was conducted by Eteocles, ejected from Thebes by his brother Oedipus, and assisted by Adrastus, king of Argos, and the army of the seven chiefs. It also supplied the subject for Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes.

335. Il a bien fait… commence: ‘He did well, my prince – you started it.’

336. the siege of Belgrade: Belgrade had been taken by Prince Eugene of Savoy in 1717.

337. the Rockingham party: A group of pure Whigs led by the Marquis of Rockingham, whom Burke had served in the capacity of private secretary since 1765.

338. Bluebeard: The subject of a fairy story by Charles Perrault (1628–1703), Bluebeard killed his wives for disobeying his order not to look in a particular room, within which were the bodies of their predecessors.

339. Sappho in Ovid: Ovid, Heroides, xv.37-8. As part of her love letter to Phaon, Sappho argues that her own physical plainness should not put off the beautiful Phaon, since nature shows many examples of such apparent mismatches.

340. the Spectator… The Gentleman: See The Spectator, 12 (14 March 1711).

341. loco parentis: In place of a parent.

342. Elzevir edition: A family of printers in the Netherlands renowned since the late sixteenth century for the high quality and design of their books, the Elzevirs were also famous for producing duodecimo, or small-format, editions of the classics.

343. A gentleman: James Boswell.

344. one of his friends: Perhaps James Boswell.

345. A learned gentleman: Dr Robert Vansittart.

346. a modern historian… moralist: William Robertson and James Beattie.

347. a friend of mine: David Boswell, brother to James.

348. misera est… aut vagum: Where law is unknown or uncertain, life is pitiful slavery.

349. jura vaga… jura incognita… misera servitus: Unclear laws… unknown laws… miserable servitude.

350. Qui… in illicita: ‘Whoever is temperate in lawful pleasures will never fall into those which are unlawful’ – probably a misremembering of Radulfus Ardens, homily xxviii: ‘quoniam qui intemperanter sequuntur licita, cadunt in illicita. Et ille solus in illicita non cadit, qui a licitis caute se restringit.’

351. mala fide: In bad faith.

352. covin: A privy agreement between two or more to the prejudice of another; conspiracy, collusion (OED, 3).

353. Lex non recipit majus et minus: The law does not acknowledge greater and lesser.

354. Suum cuique tribuito: ‘To each his due’ – Justinian, Institutes, I.i.i.

355. Beattie’s book: James Beattie, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770); the third edition was published in 1772.

356. Dum memor… artus: ‘While I yet am conscious of myself, and while my breath governs these limbs’ – Virgil, Aeneid, iv.336.

357. Divisum… habet: ‘Caesar has divided the empire with Jove.’

358. This gentleman: Phineas Bond.

359. a new comedy: She Stoops to Conquer.

360. a gentleman eminent in the literary world: Bishop Percy.

361. another hand: Dr John Calder.

362. a young woman: Perhaps Miss Carmichael.

363. An eminent publick character: Edmund Burke.

364. A friend of ours: Sir Joshua Reynolds.

365. And every poet… friend: Untraced.

366. For colleges… a friend: Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, ll. 872-3.

367. Il a fait… grande dame: ‘He has paid a very gracious compliment to a certain great lady.’ The lady in question was the Duchess of Cumberland.

368. Monsieur Goldsmith… elegamment: ‘Mr Goldsmith is like the sea, which throws up pearls and many other beautiful things, without noticing that he does so… Very well said, and very elegantly.’

369. A person: Sir Henry Cavendish.

370. A gentleman: Arthur Murphy.

371. Molus: In Greek mythology the guardian of the winds, who gave Odysseus a leather bag confining the winds adverse to his voyage.

372. If there’s delight… bleed for me: William Congreve, The Way of the World (1700), III.i.422-3.

373. In Corum… Ennosigceum: ‘He that had been wont to inflict barbaric stripes upon the winds Corus and Eurus – never so mistreated in their Aeolian prison-house – he who had bound the Earth-shaker himself with chains’ – Juvenal, Satires, x.180–82.

374. The waves… the wind: Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), l. 232.

375. a learned gentleman: Sir William Weller Pepys.

376. a gentleman who had destroyed himself: William Fitzherbert.

377. Otaheite: Tahiti, visited by Captain Samuel Wallis, of the British navy, in 1767.

378. Pressens… Augustus: ‘Augustus shall prove himself a god on earth’ – Horace, Odes, III.v.2.

379. Forsitan… istis: ‘It may be that our names too will mingle with these’ – Ovid, De Arte Amandi, iii.339.

380. the Authour of Eugenio: Thomas Beach.

381. Thenwe… securely pry: JohnDryden, Annus Mirabilis (x66j), ll. 653-6.

382. Menagiana: Menagiana (1693–1715) is a collection of the jokes and sayings of Gilles Menage (1613–92), the French scholar and man of letters, compiled after his death by his friends.

383. Il preche… bien fort: ‘He preaches very well, and I preach very loud.’

384. Mad^me de Bourdonne… corps: ‘Madame de Bourdonne, canoness of Remiremont, had just listened to a sermon full of fire and spirit, but flimsy and very irregular. One of her lady friends, who was interested on behalf of the preacher, said to her as they were leaving, “Well, madame: how did what you have just heard strike you? Was it witty?” “ So much so, replied Madame de Bourdonne, that I saw no substance in it.”’ (The witticism depends on the multiple meanings of the French words esprit and corps, which can mean respectively both ‘wit’ and ‘soul’, and ‘substance’ and ‘body’.)

385. the Defence of Pluralities: Henry Wharton, A Defence of Pluralities (1692); a traditionalist defence of the Church of England practice of allowing a clergyman to hold two benefices simultaneously.

386. Caius… Titius: Fictional parties in Roman law.

387. a lady: Lady Diana Beauclerk.

388. the gentleman: Topham Beauclerk.

389. the father: Bennet Langton senior.

390. Exceptio probat regulam: The exception proves the rule.

391. nidification: The action of nest-building (OED).

392. the Grand Signor: The sultan of Turkey.

393. extra scandalum: Without offence.

394. A gentleman present: Bennet Langton.

395. a German: George Michael Moser; in fact a Swiss.

396. Sunday, May 8: In fact Sunday fell on 9 May in 1773.

397. Monday, May 9: See n. 396.

398. one of our friends: Bennet Langton.

399. pars magna fuit: ‘He was a great part’ – Virgil, Aeneid, ii.6.

400. Inchoavi… Homeri: ‘Began reading the Pentateuch. Finished the Confutatio Fabulae Burdonum. Read the first Act of Troades. Read Clarke’s last Dissertation on the Pentateuch. Two of Clarke’s Sermons. Read the Betriciam [in fact Bebrycian] in Apollonius. Read a hundred lines of Homer.’

401. —: Bennet Langton.

402. —: Langton, in Lincolnshire.

403. Flora: Flora MacDonald (1722–90), a Jacobite heroine, who assisted Bonnie Prince Charlie in escaping from Hanoverian troops in 1745.

404. Maria… cogunt: ‘Mary Queen of Scots, worthy of a better age, reluctantly surrenders her rights to her rebellious people’; ‘Rebellious subjects force Mary Queen of Scots against her will to abdicate her office.’

405. novce… vires: ‘In the battle new strength returns’ – a misremembering of Virgil, Aeneid, xii.424, ‘novae rediere in pristina vires’: ‘new-born strength returned to its old vigour’.

406. A gentleman: Edward Gibbon.

407. tell Dr. Blair… begin again: See p. 410.

408. simile non est idem: Likeness is not identity.

409. Maria… data 15—: ‘Mary Queen of Scots, born 15—, driven into exile by her countrymen 15—, executed by her hostess 15—.’

410. Kνσι γησoν: ‘Lord have mercy upon us.’

411. Busy, curious, thirsty fly: Johnson composed a Latin version of this popular song.

412. Töv ταΦoν… Φνσιxóν: ‘Stranger, you behold the tomb of Oliver Goldsmith. Tread not on his hallowed ashes with careless feet. If you have any care for nature, for the beauty of verse, for antiquity, then weep for a poet, a historian, and a naturalist.’

413. Ipecacuanha: A South American small shrubby plant, which possesses emetic, diaphoretic, and purgative properties (OED).

414. Even… see desert: A reworking of Alexander Pope, ‘Epilogue to the Satires’ (1738), ii.70.

415. concessere columnce: ‘Booksellers [never] concede’– Horace, Ars Poetica, l.373.

416. a convict: John Reid.

417. the Pollio and Gallus: Respectively Virgil, Eclogues iv and x.

418. Bis datqui cito dat: ‘He who gives quickly gives twice over’– Erasmus, Adages.

419. witching time o’ night: Hamlet, III.ii.358.

420. monumentum perenne: ‘Enduring monument’ – Horace, Odes, III.xxx.i.

421. the resolutions… Bostonians: The Boston Port Bill of 1774 had closed Boston as a port for the landing and shipping of goods.

422. Legitimas… preces: ‘Pure hearts make lawful prayers.’

423. De non existentibus… ratio: There is no distinction to be drawn between what does not exist and what does not appear.

424. of something after death: Hamlet, III.i.80.

425. an account of it: John Knox, A tour through the Highlands of Scotland, and the Hebride isles, in MDCCLXXXVI. By John Knox (1787).

426. a Scot, if ever Scot there were: Untraced.

427. natale solum: Native soil.

428. some low man: The Revd Donald M’Nicol.

429. another Scotchman: James Macpherson.

430. loved Scotland better than truth: Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), p. 192. The allusion is to the saying, attributed to Aristotle, that truth was to him an even dearer friend than Plato.

431. Resolutions… the American Congress: See n. 15.

432. a certain popular Lord Chancellor: Lord Camden.

433. Fallitur… Claudianus: ‘It is a mistake to think that obedience to a prince is slavery; a more pleasant freedom is not to be found than with a pious monarch’ – Claudian, Consulatus Stilichonis, iii.133.

434. a Right Honourable friend: William Gerard Hamilton.

435. counterfeiting Apollo’s coin: Johnson’s remark implies that Sheridan had no right to set himself up as a judge on literary matters.

436. The Hypocrite… Cibber’s Nonjuror: Isaac Bickerstaffe, The Hypocrite (1768); Colley Cibber, The Nonjuror (1717).

437. oath of abjuration: See n. 97 to the Introduction.

438. had he not… swore: Cf. Macbeth, II.ii.12–13, which has ‘slept’ rather than ‘swore’.

439. a poor boy from the country: William Davenport.

440. Bon Ton: David Garrick, Bon Ton: or, high life above stairs (1759).

441. Os homini… tollere vultus: ‘Man looks aloft, and with uplifted eyes | Beholds his own hereditary skies’– Ovid, Metamorphoses, i.85, tr. Dryden.

442. Weave… room enough: Gray, ‘The Bard’, ll. 49–51.

443. A young lady… a man: Lady Susan Fox and William O’Brien.

444. virum volitare per ora: ‘To fly through the mouths of men’ – Virgil, Georgics, iii.9.

445. One of the company: James Boswell.

446. CANCELLARIUS… quinto: ‘The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford, to all those who may read this, greeting. Know that the illustrious Samuel Johnson, a man learned in all humane letters and happy in his grasp of the sciences, long since became so famous for his writings, eminently calculated in form and matter to improve the manners of his countrymen, that the University thought him worthy of signal honour and so enrolled him among its honoured Masters. Now whereas this distinguished man has won such repute by his subsequent labours, notably in refining and fixing our language, that he is justly reckoned a chief and leader in the republic of letters, therefore we the Chancellor, Master, and Scholars of the University of Oxford, wishing at once to honour him as he deserves, and to record our own devotion to letters, have in our solemn Convocation of Doctors and Masters made the said Samuel Johnson a Doctor of Civil Law, and have by the present diploma made him free of all the rights and privileges that belong to that degree. Given in our Convocation House, 30 March 1775.’

447. un gentilhomme comme un autre: A gentleman like any other.

448. Viro… 1775: ‘To the Reverend Thomas Fothergill, Professor of Theology, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Dr Samuel Johnson. I need not use many words to tell you how I receive the commendation with which the University over which you preside has transmitted my name to posterity. Every man is glad to think well of himself; and that man must think well of himself, of whom you, the arbiters of letters, can think well. But the good you have done me has one drawback: henceforth any fault of mine, of commission or omission, will hurt your reputation; I must always fear that what is a signal honour to me may one day bring discredit upon you. 7 April 1775’

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 Elzevirianae, 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’).

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 much 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.

778. Romce… Romam: ‘I am as fickle as the wind – when in Rome, I love Tibur, when in Tibur, Rome’ – Horace, Epistles, I.viii.12. (Tibur is modern Tivoli, a town in the hills to the east of Rome, where Horace is said to have had a villa.)

779. Me constare… Romam: ‘You know that I am consistent, and that it is with a heavy heart that I go away whenever the business which I hate draws me to Rome’ – Ibid., I.xiv.16.

780. as Pope observes: Pope, An Essay on Man, ii.2.

781. One of the company: Richard Cambridge.

782. γησασxιν διδασxóμνoζ: γηζασxω δ’αιι πoγγα διδασxóμνoζ: ‘I grow in learning as I grow in years’ – attributed to Solon by Plutarch in his Life of Solon, xxxi.

783. One of the company: Richard Cambridge.

784. Est aliquid… lacertce: ‘It is something in whatever spot, however remote, to have become the possessor of a single lizard!’ – Juvenal, Satires, iii.230–31.

785. I must… mouth: Cf. As You Like It, III.ii.205.

786. He would not… to thunder: Coriolanus, III.i.256-7.

787. a gentleman: Bennet Langton.

788. freni strictio: A tight rein.

789. fortunam… habet: ‘Treats his good fortune with deference’ – Ausonius, Epigrammata, viii.7.

790. an eminent friend: John Mudge, whose son William was Johnson’s godson.

791. a gentleman: James Boswell.

792. the authour of that song: The song, beginning ‘Welcome, welcome, brother debtor’, has been attributed to Charles Coffey (d. 1745), and appeared in The Charmer (1749), pp. 269–70.

793. Smith’s Latin verses… the great traveller: Edmund Smith (1672–1710) wrote a Latin ode on the orientalist Dr Edward Pococke (1604–91) which Johnson, in his ‘Life of Smith’, praised as ‘excellent’ (Lives of the Poets, ed. Lonsdale, II, 173). The ‘great traveller’, however, was Dr Richard Pococke (1704–65).

794. said in his wrath: Cf. Psalms 2:5.

795. Odin: One of the principal gods in Norse mythology.

796. Salus populi: The first part of the classical legal tag ‘salus populi suprema lex est’, meaning ‘the safety of the people is the supreme law.’

797. a gentleman: Perhaps Norton Nicholls.

798. Parcus… relictos: ‘I have been a grudging and infrequent worshipper of the gods while I wandered, following a wisdom that is folly; I have been forced now to turn my sails backward and steer again in the course which I had abandoned’ – Horace, Odes, I.xxxiv.1-5.

799. facies… tamen: ‘Features neither exactly alike, nor yet diverse’ – Ovid, Metamorphoses, ii.13.

800. in potestate… in actu: Potentially… actually.

801. a friend: George Steevens.

802. Veniam… vicissim: ‘This licence we claim ourselves, and in our turn we grant the like’ – Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 11.

803. an old gentleman: Littleton Poyntz Meynell.

804. Coarse… thinks it luxury: Addison, Cato, I.iv.63–71, p. 10.

805. Maccaronick verses: A burlesque form of verse in which vernacular words are introduced into the context of another language (originally and chiefly Latin), often with corresponding inflections and constructions; hence designating any form of verse in which two or more languages are mingled together (OED).

806. Kγνββoισιν βανχθν: Klubboisin ebancten.

807. an English Benedictine Monk: The abbe Hooke.

808. If two… must ride behind: Much Ado about Nothing, III.v.33.

809. He… has no friend: Cf. Diogenes Laertius, V.i. – ‘He had friends, but no friend.’

810. Do the devils lie… not subsist: Thomas Brown, Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646), I.xi.16; cf. Samuel Johnson, Adventurer, 50 (1753).

811. Miss —: Hannah More.

812. The righteous… in his death: Proverbs 14.32.

813. I have fought… crown of life: Cf. 2 Timothy, 4:7-8.

814. Miss —: Jane Harry.

815. Copernican and Ptolemaick systems: The Ptolemaic system is a model of the universe created by the Alexandrian mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy about ad 100. It assumes that the Earth is the stationary centre of the universe. The Copernican system is a model of the solar system created by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), which places the Sun at the centre and arranges the Earth and the other planets circling around it.

816. a gentleman: Bennet Langton.

817. Tempe: The vale of Tempe is a narrow valley in north-eastern Thessaly. The ancient Greeks dedicated Tempe to the cult of Apollo, who, legend says, purified himself in the waters of the Pinios after killing the serpent Python. A temple was built in a recess on the right bank, and every eighth year a procession came from Delphi to gather sacred laurels to be awarded to the victors of contests.

818. Jo Ann. 2… erubuit: ‘John 2 | Water turned into Wine | Whence comes this redness, this strange purple colour? | What new blush changes the wondering waters? |A God, O guests! recognize the present God! | The shy nymph saw her God, and blushed’ – Richard Crashaw, Epigrammatum sacrorum liber (1634), p. 37.

819. Mira… secuta est: I sing a marvel: the sun set, but no night followed.’ Camden tentatively ascribed the line to Giraldus Cambrensis (William Camden, Remaines Concerning Britain, 6th edn (1657), p. 321).

820. a gentleman: The Revd James Phipps.

821. O my coevals… yourselves: Edward Young, Night Thoughts: ‘Night’, iv.109 (1743).

822. Non equidem… magis: ‘I do not envy you; rather, I marvel’ – Virgil, Eclogues, i.n.

823. A reverend friend of ours: Dr Blair.

824. Omnia… porto: ‘All that is mine, I carry with me’ – Cicero, Paradoxa, i.

825. the authour: William Marshall, the author of Minutes of Agriculture (1778).

826. April 14: In fact 18 April.

827. a… delinquent: Horne Tooke.

828. a gentleman: John Shebbeare.

829. The Gentleman: The Revd Norton Nicholls.

830. a gentleman: Bennet Langton.

831. a gentleman: Ibid.

832. Musarum Delicice: Sir John Mennes, Musarum Deliciae: or, The Muses Recreation (1656).

833. a lady: Lady Lucan and her daughter.

834. Historia Studiorum: ‘History of my studies’.

835. one of his friends: Bishop Percy.

836. the Ana: A collection of the memorable sayings or table-talk of anyone (OED).

837. on the shoulders: In Latin, ‘on the shoulders’ is humeris (in place of the numerisque in the Horatian original).

838. Numerisque… solutus: ‘As he [Pindar] is carried along in irregular metre’ – Horace, Odes, IV.ii.n-12.

839. Suum cuique tribuito: ‘To each his due’ – Justinian, Institutes, I.i.i.

840. Est modus… fines: ‘There is measure in everything, there are fixed limits’ – Horace, Satires, I.i.106.

841. a poor man: Mauritius Lowe.

842. un politique… aux raves: A politician among cabbages and turnips.

843. Omne… est: ‘All things are magnified by the condition of being unknown’ – Tacitus, Agricola, xxx.

844. toy-shop: A shop for the sale of trinkets, knick-knacks, or small ornamental articles; a fancy shop (OED, citing this passage).

845. Better… in Heaven: John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), i.263.

846. Curst… my foe: Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, ll. 283-4.

847. Si patrice… cari: ‘If we wish to live in a way which endears us to our country, and to ourselves’ – Horace, Epistles, I.iii.29.

848. a nobleman: Archibald Montgomerie, nth Earl of Eglinton.

849. superfoetation: Literally, the formation of a second foetus in a uterus already pregnant; metaphorically, superabundant production or accumulation (OED).

850. a certain nobleman: Lord Clive.

851. An ingenious gentleman: Robert Adam.

852. the Sphinx’s description… night: An allusion to the riddle which the winged Sphinx of Thebes was supposed to have posed to Oedipus: ‘What is it that walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, on three in the evening?’ The answer is ‘Man’, who crawls in infancy, walks when grown, and in old age uses a stick (so the times of day correspond to these three ages of man).

853. Nestor: In Homeric legend, an elder statesman and counsellor in the Greek camp at the siege of Troy.

854. one of our friends: Possibly Bennet Langton.

855. Cornelius, a devout man: Acts 10:1.

856. flow of talk: An allusion to Johnson’s comment on Dryden, that ‘such rapidity of composition naturally promises a flow of talk’ (Lives of the Poets, ed. Lonsdale, II, 112; cf. Thomas Chatterton, Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1778), p. 99.

857. An eminent authour: William Robertson.

858. habillee en Jesuite: Dressed in Jesuit costume.

859. On s’etonne… Janseniste: ‘It’s astonishing that Caliste has dressed as a Molinist. Since this young beauty denies everyone their liberty, is she not a Jansenist?’ –Menagiana, 4 vols. (Amsterdam, 1713–16), III, 376. The joke turns on the theological differences between these religious sects in respect of free will.

860. enucleated: Literally, having the kernel or nucleus extracted; so, by extension, having the essential point at issue defined and disengaged from its less important circumstances.

861. a curious clergyman: Dr Michael Lort.

862. Vous gagnerez… des honnettes gens: ‘You will win over two or three libertines, and will alienate goodness knows how many decent folk.’

863. He… not robb’d at all: Othello, III.iii.347-8.

864. a gentleman: Bennet Langton.

865. one of our friends: Bennet Langton senior.

866. Hummums: Turkish baths.

867. cupped: Bled by means of a cupping-glass (in which a partial vacuum is created by heating) (OED, 1).

868. —: Topham Beauclerk.

869. Lord—: Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke.

870. an Earl’s brother: A brother of Lord Rothes.

871. ––––––: Lord Clive.

872. weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable: Hamlet, I.ii.133.

873. a Baronet: Sir Nicholas Bayley.

874. Lord—: Lord Charlemont.

875. Eπα πτζoντα: Winged words.

876. bulse: A package of diamonds or gold-dust (OED).