The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [935]
821. O my coevals… yourselves: Edward Young, Night Thoughts: ‘Night’, iv.109 (1743).
822. Non equidem… magis: ‘I do not envy you; rather, I marvel’ – Virgil, Eclogues, i.n.
823. A reverend friend of ours: Dr Blair.
824. Omnia… porto: ‘All that is mine, I carry with me’ – Cicero, Paradoxa, i.
825. the authour: William Marshall, the author of Minutes of Agriculture (1778).
826. April 14: In fact 18 April.
827. a… delinquent: Horne Tooke.
828. a gentleman: John Shebbeare.
829. The Gentleman: The Revd Norton Nicholls.
830. a gentleman: Bennet Langton.
831. a gentleman: Ibid.
832. Musarum Delicice: Sir John Mennes, Musarum Deliciae: or, The Muses Recreation (1656).
833. a lady: Lady Lucan and her daughter.
834. Historia Studiorum: ‘History of my studies’.
835. one of his friends: Bishop Percy.
836. the Ana: A collection of the memorable sayings or table-talk of anyone (OED).
837. on the shoulders: In Latin, ‘on the shoulders’ is humeris (in place of the numerisque in the Horatian original).
838. Numerisque… solutus: ‘As he [Pindar] is carried along in irregular metre’ – Horace, Odes, IV.ii.n-12.
839. Suum cuique tribuito: ‘To each his due’ – Justinian, Institutes, I.i.i.
840. Est modus… fines: ‘There is measure in everything, there are fixed limits’ – Horace, Satires, I.i.106.
841. a poor man: Mauritius Lowe.
842. un politique… aux raves: A politician among cabbages and turnips.
843. Omne… est: ‘All things are magnified by the condition of being unknown’ – Tacitus, Agricola, xxx.
844. toy-shop: A shop for the sale of trinkets, knick-knacks, or small ornamental articles; a fancy shop (OED, citing this passage).
845. Better… in Heaven: John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), i.263.
846. Curst… my foe: Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, ll. 283-4.
847. Si patrice… cari: ‘If we wish to live in a way which endears us to our country, and to ourselves’ – Horace, Epistles, I.iii.29.
848. a nobleman: Archibald Montgomerie, nth Earl of Eglinton.
849. superfoetation: Literally, the formation of a second foetus in a uterus already pregnant; metaphorically, superabundant production or accumulation (OED).
850. a certain nobleman: Lord Clive.
851. An ingenious gentleman: Robert Adam.
852. the Sphinx’s description… night: An allusion to the riddle which the winged Sphinx of Thebes was supposed to have posed to Oedipus: ‘What is it that walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, on three in the evening?’ The answer is ‘Man’, who crawls in infancy, walks when grown, and in old age uses a stick (so the times of day correspond to these three ages of man).
853. Nestor: In Homeric legend, an elder statesman and counsellor in the Greek camp at the siege of Troy.
854. one of our friends: Possibly Bennet Langton.
855. Cornelius, a devout man: Acts 10:1.
856. flow of talk: An allusion to Johnson’s comment on Dryden, that ‘such rapidity of composition naturally promises a flow of talk’ (Lives of the Poets, ed. Lonsdale, II, 112; cf. Thomas Chatterton, Miscellanies in Prose and Verse (1778), p. 99.
857. An eminent authour: William Robertson.
858. habillee en Jesuite: Dressed in Jesuit costume.
859. On s’etonne… Janseniste: ‘It’s astonishing that Caliste has dressed as a Molinist. Since this young beauty denies everyone their liberty, is she not a Jansenist?’ –Menagiana, 4 vols. (Amsterdam, 1713–16), III, 376. The joke turns on the theological differences between these religious sects in respect of free will.
860. enucleated: Literally, having the kernel or nucleus extracted; so, by extension, having the essential point at issue defined and disengaged from its less important circumstances.
861. a curious clergyman: Dr Michael Lort.
862. Vous gagnerez… des honnettes gens: ‘You will win over two or three libertines, and will alienate goodness knows how many decent folk.’
863. He… not robb’d at all: Othello, III.iii.347-8.
864. a gentleman: Bennet Langton.
865. one of our friends: Bennet Langton senior.
866. Hummums: Turkish baths.
867. cupped: Bled by means of a cupping-glass (in which a partial