The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [850]
a Melchior Canus, a celebrated Spanish Dominican, who died at Toledo in 1560. He wrote a treatise De Locis Theologicis, in twelve books.
b This passage, which some may think superstitious, reminds me of Archbishop Laud’s Diary.
a His tender affection for his departed wife, of which there are many evidences in his Prayers and Meditations, appears very feelingly in this passage.
a See p. 470.
b This epithet should be applied to this animal, with one bunch.
a He means, I suppose, that he read these different pieces while he remained in the library.
a I have looked in vain into De Bure, Meerman, Mattaire, and other typographical books, for the two editions of the Catholicon, which Dr. Johnson mentions here, with names which I cannot make out. I read ‘one by Latinius {Lathomi}, one by Boedinus {Badius}.’ I have deposited the original MS. in the British Museum, where the curious may see it. My grateful acknowledgements are due to Mr. Planta for the trouble he was pleased to take in aiding my researches.
a The writing is so bad here, that the names of several of the animals could not be decyphered without much more acquaintance with natural history than I possess. – Dr. Blagden, with his usual politeness, most obligingly examined the MS. To that gentleman, and to Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, who also very readily assisted me, I beg leave to express my best thanks.
b It is thus written by Johnson, from the French pronunciation of fossane. It should be observed, that the person who shewed this Menagerie was mistaken in supposing the fossane and the Brasilian weasel to be the same, the fossane being a different animal, and a native of Madagascar. I find them, however, upon one plate in Pennant’s Synopsis of Quadrupeds.
a My worthy and ingenious friend, Mr. Andrew Lumisden, by his accurate acquaintance with France, enabled me to make out many proper names, which Dr. Johnson had written indistinctly, and sometimes spelt erroneously.
a Joseph Ritter, a Bohemian, who was in my service many years, and attended Dr. Johnson and me in our Tour to the Hebrides. After having left me for some time, he had now returned to me.
a Acts of Parliament of Scotland, 1685, cap. 22.
a As first, the opinion of some distinguished naturalists, that our species is transmitted through males only, the female being all along no more than a nidus, or nurse, as Mother Earth is to plants of every sort; which notion seems to be confirmed by that text of scripture, ‘He was yet in the loins of his father when Melchisedeck met him’ (Heb. vii. 10); and consequently, that a man’s grandson by a daughter, instead of being his surest descendant as is vulgarly said, has in reality no connection whatever with his blood. – And secondly, independent of this theory, (which, if true, should completely exclude heirs general,) that if the preference of a male to a female, without regard to primogeniture, (as a son, though much younger, nay, even a grandson by a son, to a daughter,) be once admitted, as it universally is, it must be equally reasonable and proper in the most remote degree of descent from an original proprietor of an estate, as in the nearest; because, – however distant from the representative at the time, – that remote heir male, upon the failure of those nearer to the original proprietor than he is, becomes in fact the nearest male to him, and is, therefore, preferable as his representative, to a female descendant. – A little extension of mind will enable us easily to perceive that a son’s son, in continuation to whatever length of time, is preferable to a son’s daughter, in the succession to an ancient inheritance; in which regard should be had to the representation of the original proprietor, and not to that of one of his descendants.
I am aware of Blackstone’s admirable demonstration of the reasonableness of the legal succession, upon the principle of there being the greatest probability that the nearest heir of the person who last dies proprietor of an estate, is of the blood of the first purchaser. But supposing