242. Nam genus… voco: ‘For birth and lineage, and whatever we ourselves have not created, can hardly be called our own.’
243. Nascetur… Ccesar: ‘A Caesar will be born from the fair line of Troy.’
244. Ille tamen… nomen: ‘And yet his name is drawn from our lineage.’
245. a garreteer: One who lives in a garret; an impecunious author or literary hack (OED) – in this case William Horsley.
246. False Delicacy: Hugh Kelly, False Delicacy (1768).
247. The Provoked Husband: Sir John Vanbrugh and Colley Cibber, The Provok’d Husband: or, A Journey to London (1728).
248. Sir Francis Wronghead: A character in The Provok’d Husband.
249. The Suspicious Husband: Benjamin Hoadly, The Suspicious Husband (1747).
250. The great Douglas Cause: A dispute over the Douglas family estates between Archibald Douglas (thought by some not to be the son of Lady Jane Douglas) and the Duke of Hamilton, who would inherit if Archibald Douglas’s claim were to be dismissed. The Judges of the Court of Session gave judgement in favour of the Duke of Hamilton on a casting vote, which was then overturned by the House of Lords.
251. a gentleman who… speculation: James Boswell.
252. esprits forts: ‘Strongminded’ persons; usually, ones who profess superiority to current prejudices, especially ‘freethinkers’ in religion (OED).
253. Maupertuis… peu de chose: ‘Maupertuis, dear Maupertuis, what a paltry thing is life!’ – ‘Ode VIII. A Maupertuis. La vie est un songe’, in Frederick II, Oeuvres du philosophe de Sans-Souci, 2 vols. (Potsdam, 1760), I, 35.
254. a gentleman… a lady: James Boswell; the woman was Isabelle de Zuylen. Boswell eventually married Margaret Montgomerie, on 25 November 1769.
255. an oppressed nation… free: A reference to the ultimately unavailing Corsican struggle for independence from Genoa and subsequently France, led by the charismatic Corsican general Pasquale Paoli, whom Boswell had visited in 1765. Boswell’s An Account of Corsica was published in 1768.
256. Wicked Will Whiston and good Mr. Ditton: The allusion is to a poem once attributed to Swift, the ‘Ode for Music, on the Longitude’, which contains the lines: ‘The longitude miss’d on | By wicked Will Whiston; | And not better hit on | By good master Ditton’. See n. 129.
257. Hunc librum… vacaret: ‘This book is the gift of Samuel Johnson, who from time to time was at leisure to study here.’
258. the question… of general warrants: John Wilkes, the author of issue No. 45 of the North Briton, which in April 1763 had denounced the King’s Speech, was arrested for libel on a general warrant (i.e. a warrant which neither named nor described the persons to be apprehended with any certainty), which Lord Chief Justice Pratt later declared to be unlawful.
259. the gentleman… night-cap: The Spectator, 576 (4 August 1714).
260. Artemisias: Artemisia was a poetic name for a learned woman or bluestocking: cf. Alexander Pope, Imitations of English Poets, ‘E. of Dorset’ (1727), ‘Artimesia’, ll. 1-6. It derived originally perhaps from the Artemisia who was queen of Halicarnassus and who fought manfully at the Battle of Salamis (Herodotus, viii.87-8).
261. a gentleman of my acquaintance: Lord Auchinleck (Boswell’s father).
262. one of our common friends: Bennet Langton.
263. vails: A vail is a gratuity given to a servant or attendant; a tip; one of those given by a visitor on his departure to the servants of the house in which he has been a guest (OED, 5).
264. foenum habet in cornu: ‘He carries hay on his horns’ – Horace, Satires, I.iv.34.
265. J’ai lu… de la campagne: ‘In the geography of Lucas de Linda I have read a paternoster written in a language completely different from Italian, and from all other languages which derive from Latin. The author calls it “the rustic language of Corsica”; perhaps it has gradually died out; but in the past it was certainly prevalent in the hills and countryside. The same author says the same thing when speaking of Sardinia: that there are two languages on the island, one urban, the other rural.’
266. lingua rustica: Country language or dialect.
267. l’homme d’epee: The man of the sword.
268. One of the company: Possibly Joshua Reynolds.
269. one of the company: James Boswell.
270. Zimri: In John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), ll. 543–68 – a portrait of the Duke of Buckingham.
271. Pope’s character of Addison: In Alexander Pope, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735), ll. 193–214.
272. description… in the Mourning Bride: William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697), II.i.
273. god of his idolatry: Cf. Romeo and Juliet, II.i.156.
274. Agincourt… the tomb of her ancestors… Dover Cliff: Henry V, IV.i; Romeo and Juliet, IV.iii.14–57; King Lear, IV.vi.
275. some one: Probably James Boswell.
276. ad hominem: To the man.
277. one of our most eminent literati: Edmond Malone.
278. the authour of a modern tragedy: Robert Jephson.
279. The Scotchman: Lord Kames.
280. A wit about town: Benjamin Loveling.
281. The ballad of Hardyknute: An ancient poem collected by Thomas Percy in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 3 vols. (1765), II, 87–102.
282. a poor player… stage: Macbeth, V.v.23-4.
283. centos: A cento is a composition formed by joining scraps from other authors (Johnson).
284. a very laborious Judge: Lord Auchinleck.
285. e secretioribus consiliis: One of his most confidential advisers.
286. Heliconian spring: Helicon is a mountain in Boeotia, thought in Greek mythology to be the home of the Muses (see n. 28). On it were the sacred springs of Hippocrene and Aganippe, which by a natural association became poetic metonyms for artistic inspiration.
287. One of the company: James Boswell.
288. one of Cibber’s comedies… butt end of it: In Act I of Colley Cibber’s The Refusaclass="underline" or, the Ladies Philosophy (1720), Witling says to Granger, ‘What, now your fire’s gone, you would knock me down with the butt-end, would you?’
289. the Middlesex election: Having stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the City of London on 25 March 1768, Wilkes decided to stand as a candidate for Middlesex, and, after a well-organized campaign buoyed up by popular enthusiasm, he was returned to Parliament for Middlesex on 28 March. He was then expelled on the grounds that he was still outlawed. The episode was an important test of whether popular support or the favour of the Crown was of greater importance in matters of political authority, and it prompted Edmund Burke’s pamphlet on that subject, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770).