The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [689]
This appendix has the more modest ambition of placing before the curious reader a selection of the more striking, substantial or surprising variants in the manuscript. Each entry is keyed to the relevant passage in the text as printed above. The meaning of the various symbols employed in the transcription is explained below.
[] – material in the MS which does not appear in the printed text.
∫ – indicates an alternative word or phrase.
↑↑ – enclose a later addition to the manuscript text.
p. 47, 1731
… could maintain himself. [One of the first expedients which he thought of for raising money was to publish Politian’s poetical Works for which he solicited subscriptions at two shillings and sixpence a Book as appears from a Receipt in the possession of Mr. Levett of Lichfield given to that gentleman’s Father by Johnson; but, meeting with no great encouragement he dropped the design.] In the December…
p. 98, 1744
… herself an adulteress.’ [I am however assured by the respectable gentleman to whom I have alluded ∫ quarter that I have alluded to, that her Ladyship who was the daughter of Sir Richard Mason had on account of cruel treatment eloped from her husband then Lord Brandon within a week after their marriage and lived separate from him three and twenty years; and] But I have…
p. 139, 1753
…JESUS CHRIST. Amen.’
[Whether by beginning the second volume of his Dictionary he meant beginning to print it, or beginning to compile it is not quite clear, from the expression ‘room being left in the first’ it would seem that printing must be meant. If otherwise, he must have been uncommonly diligent ∫ laboured with extraordinary assiduity during the next two years, for, the Work was published in April 1755. Indeed it appears impossible that one half of that immense Undertaking could be both written and printed in two years. Whatever was his diligence during that period it must have been almost totally devoted to his Dictionary.]
He [however] this year…
p. 167, 1756
… subversive of the crown.
[If his maintaining such a principle should be contrasted with his ↑ afterwards ↑ beating down all popular inquiries concerning government in his False Alarm let it be considered that in his False Alarm he was saying all he could as an Advocate for a Cause which he had undertaken ↑ to defend ↑, and that a bad cause as is now generally admitted. But such an evidence of his ↑ true ↑ patriotick spirit in 1756 is highly to his honour and fully refutes the unworthy charge that he had it only in the raw ignorance of his youth.]
A still stronger…
p. 214, 25 June 1763
… did not think. [I have heard him say with a manly disdain of the idle clamour that was made upon this subject from various quarters, ‘This is my opinion. I have a right to give it. They may tell ∫ Let them shew me I am wrong.’]
Finding him…
p. 222, 1 July 1763
… only a few.’
[It must be remembered ∫ The truth is that Churchill did not at first declare war against Johnson. On the contrary in his first Poem The Rosciad he rather treated him with ↑ some ↑ respect; for, while mentioning ∫ enumerating the men of genius ∫ eminent men whom he supposes as candidates for being the Judge who should decide the merits of the various pretenders to the vacant chair of Roscius there is this passage
For JOHNSON some, but JOHNSON it was feared
Would be too grave and Sterne too loose appeared.
But when he understood that Johnson undervalued his poetry, ∫ opposed the current of fashion, he drew the following very extravagant and gross Caricatura of him which like all Caricatures]
In this depreciation…
p. 227, 14 July 1763
… any of the sciences.
[And although for a general acquisition of knowledge reading that for which we have an inclination may be best as it is most nutritive to eat that for which we have an appetite, we must consider