The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [818]
a I had this anecdote from Dr. Adams, and Dr. Johnson confirmed it. Bramston, in his Man of Taste, has the same thought:
‘Sure, of all blockheads, scholars are the worst.’
a See Nash’s History of Worcestershire, vol. i. p. 529.
a Mr. Warton informs me, ‘that this early friend of Johnson was entered a Commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, aged seventeen, in 1698; and is the authour of many Latin verse translations in the Gent. Mag. (vol. xv. 102). One of them is a translation of
“My time, O ye Muses, was happily spent,” &c.’38
He died Aug. 3, 1751, and a monument to his memory has been erected in the Cathedral of Lichfield, with an inscription written by Mr. Seward, one of the Prebendaries.
a The words of Sir John Hawkins, p. 316.
b Sir Thomas Aston, Bart., who died in January, 1724–5, left one son, named Thomas also, and eight daughters. Of the daughters, Catherine married Johnson’s friend, the Hon. Henry Hervey; Margaret, Gilbert Walmsley. Another of these ladies married the Rev. Mr. Gastrell; Mary, or Molly Aston, as she was usually called, became the wife of Captain Brodie of the navy.
a [Bishop Hurd does not praise Blackwall, but the Rev. Mr. Budworth, headmaster of the grammar school at Brewood, who had himself been bred under Blackwall.]
b See Gent. Mag. Dec. 1784, p. 957.
c [It appears from a letter of Johnson’s to a friend, dated Lichfield, July 27, 1732, that he had left Sir Wolstan Dixie’s house recently, before that letter was written.]
a See Rambler, No. 103.
b May we not trace a fanciful similarity between Politian and Johnson? Huetius, speaking of Paulus Pelissonius Fontanerius, says,’… in quo Natura, ut olim in Angelo Politiano, deformitatem oris excellentis ingenii praestantia compensavit.’42 Comment. de reb. ad eum pertin. Edit. Amstel. 1718, p. 200.
c ‘The Latin Poems of Angelus Politianus, edited by Samuel Johnson with notes, a history of Latin poetry from Petrarch to Politian, and a fuller life of Politian than has hitherto been written.’ The book was to contain more than thirty sheets, the price to be two shillings and sixpence at the time of subscribing, and two shillings and sixpence at the delivery of a perfect book in quires.
d Miss Cave, the grand-niece of Mr. Edward Cave, has obligingly shewn me the originals of this and the other letters of Dr. Johnson, to him, which were first published in the Gent. Mag.,43 with notes by Mr. John Nichols, the worthy and indefatigable editor of that valuable miscellany, signed N.; some of which I shall occasionally transcribe in the course of this work.
a Sir John Floyer’s Treatise on Cold Baths. Gent. Mag. 1734, p. 197.
b A prize of fifty pounds for the best poem on ‘Life, Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell.’ See Gent. Mag. vol. iv. p. 560. N.
a Mrs. Piozzi gives the following account of this little composition from Dr. Johnson’s own relation to her, on her inquiring whether it was rightly attributed to him: – ‘I think it is now just forty years ago, that a young fellow had a sprig of myrtle given him by a girl he courted, and asked me to write him some verses that he might present her in return. I promised, but forgot; and when he called for his lines at the time agreed on – Sit still a moment, (says I) dear Mund, and I’ll fetch them thee – So stepped aside for five minutes, and wrote the nonsense you now keep such a stir about.’ Anec. p. 34.
In my first edition I was induced to doubt the authenticity of this account, by the following circumstantial statement in a letter to me from Miss Seward, of Lichfield: – ‘ I know those verses were addressed to Lucy Porter, when he was enamoured of her in his boyish days, two or three years before he had seen her mother, his future wife. He wrote them at my grandfather’s, and gave them to Lucy in the presence of my mother, to whom he showed them on the instant. She used to repeat them to me, when I asked her for the Verses Dr. Johnson gave her on a Sprig of Myrtle, which he had stolen or begged from her bosom. We all know honest Lucy Porter to have been incapable