The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [791]
Planta, Joseph (1744–1827), librarian; assistant librarian of the department of printed books in the British Museum (1773); promoted to under-librarian (1776): principal librarian (1799); extended the library’s collection considerably; increased salaries at the British Museum; author of An Account of the Romansh Language (1776): 476 n. a
Plautus, Titus Maccus (c.254–184 bc), great Roman comic playwright: 274
Plaxton, Revd George (i648?–i72o), Church of England clergyman and antiquary; rector of Barwickin Elmet, Yorkshire (1703); published in Philosophical Transactions; letter cited in Life due to its mention of S.J.’s father: 25 n. b
Pliny the younger, Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (ad 61 or 62-c. 113), Roman aristocrat, author and statesman: 445 n. a
Plot, Robert (1640–96), naturalist and antiquary; establishment Tory; author of The Natural History of Oxfordshire (i6j6) and the Natural History of Staffordshire (1686); secretary of the Royal Society (1682-4); Mowbray herald-extraordinary (1695); registrar of the College of Heralds (1695): 624
Plowden, Edmund (1518–85), jurist: 935
Plutarch (c.ad 46-c. 120), biographer and moral philosopher: 22 and n. b, 977
Pococke, Dr Edward (1604–91), oriental scholar; professor of Arabic at Oxford (1636); rector of Childrey, Berks (1642); professor of Hebrew (1648); canon of Christ Church (1648); author of Specimen historiae Arabum (1650); delegate of Oxford University Press (1662); the finest European Arabist of his times: 668, 1053 n. 793
Pococke, Richard (1704–65), traveller and Church of Ireland bishop of Ossory (1756); vicar-general of Waterford and Lismore (1734); extensive travels through the Near East (1737–40); author of a Description of the East (2 vols., 1743–5); archdeacon of Dublin (1745); bishop of Elphin (1765); bishop of Meath (1765); fellow of the Royal Society (1741): 447, 668, 777, 1053 n. 793
Politian, Angelus (1454–94), Italian poet and humanist, the friend and protege of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and one of the foremost classical scholars of the Renaissance; equally fluent in Greek, Italian and Latin and equally talented in poetry, philosophy and philology: 53 and nn. b and c, 970 n. c
‘Poll’, Miss Carmichael (q.v.)
Polybius (c. 202–120 bc), Greek historian of the rise of the Roman republic; political theorist and coiner of the notion of the ‘mixed constitution’: 13, 166, 282
Pomfret, John (1667–1702), poet; rector of Maulden (1695); best known as a poet for The Choice (1700) and Reason (1700), a critique on the limits of human rationality; included by S.J. in his Lives of the English Poets: 724
Pope, Alexander (1688–1744), poet; dogged by Pott’s disease all his life; author of The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714) and The Dunciad (1728, 1742, 1743); translated Homer’s Iliad (1720) and Odyssey (1726); master of the mock-epic and heroic-comical; central figure in the Scriblerus Club and intimate of Swift; edited Shakespeare (1725); most of his major works produced in opposition as a Tory and in association with Catholicism and Jacobitism; ethicist; championed by Johnson; General: 10 n. a, 11, 13, 39, 40, 74–5, 76 n. a, 77, 80, 83, 84, 91, 103 n. b, 104, 125, 135, 147, 163, 166, 170, 177, 179, 200, 236, 263, 283 n. a, 304, 330 n. a, 344, 349, 357, 387, 441, 449 and n. a, 453, 471, 534, 557, 568, 584, 612, 631 n. a, 647, 652 n. a, 659, 661, 663, 690, 692, 698, 703, 709–11, 734, 740 and n. a, 741, 749, 767–8, 782 n. a, 784, 788–91, 794, 819, 834, 917, 933, 934 n. a, 972; Quotations and allusions: The Dunciad 631 n. a; Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady 99: Eloisa to Abelard 147; Epilogue to the Satires 413, 543, 767, 966; Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (or Prologue to the Satires) 304, 700; Essay on Criticism 557, 796: Essay on Man 112, 449,