The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [928]
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