688. bottom: Physical resources, ‘staying power’, power of endurance; said especially of pugilists, wrestlers, race-horses, etc. (OED, 14).
689. a gentleman: Littleton Poyntz Meynell.
690. a certain person: George Garrick.
691. What shall I do to be saved: Acts 16:30. And cf. p. 43.
692. Ne sit… amor, &c: ‘Your love for a handmaid need cost you no blushes…’ – Horace, Odes, II.iv.i.
693. See Winter… constrains: William Hamilton, ‘Ode III’, in Poems on Several Occasions (1749), p. 32.
694. a friend of mine: George Dempster.
695. a gentleman of eminence in literature: Thomas Warton the younger.
696. Dos magna parentum virtus: ‘Their ample dowry is their parents’ worth’ – Horace, Odes, III.xxiv.21.
697. Daniel… Nebuchadnezzar’s dream: Daniel 2:1-49.
698. Quce terra… laboris: ‘What land is not yet full of our sorrow?’ – Virgil, Aeneid, i.460.
699. Sands… the year: Edward Young, The Love of Fame (1728), satire vi.194; slightly misquoted.
700. one of his friends: Edmund Burke.
701. vis inertice: The power of inertness.
702. a certain Scotch Lord: Archibald Montgomerie, nth Earl of Eglinton.
703. a person: Ibid.
704. obnubilation: The action of darkening or fact of being darkened with or as with a cloud (OED).
705. De rebus ad eum pertinentibus: ‘On matters that concerned him’.
706. Separatist: One who advocates ecclesiastical separation; one who belongs to a religious community separated from the Church or from a particular Church. In the seventeenth century applied chiefly to the Independents and those who agreed with them in rejecting all ecclesiastical authority outside the individual congregation. In later use an occasional hostile designation for Protestant Dissenters in general (OED).
707. great wit… near allied to madness: Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, l. 163.
708. in the Gospels: Mark 9:17–18; Luke 9:39.
709. dulcedo… natale solum: Sweetness of the native soil.
710. morn of life: Hamlet, I.iii.41. Cf. also Mark Akenside, The Pleasures of the Imagination: A Poem, iii.346, in The Poems (1772), p. 194.
711. Concio pro Tayloro: A sermon for Taylor.
712. an eminent Judge: Probably Lord Auchinleck.
713. a respectable person: Lord Auchinleck.
714. his son: David Boswell.
715. Jemmy: James Fieldhouse.
716. a scoundrel commissary: Robert Paris Taylor.
717. quatenùs: In so far as; in the quality or capacity of (OED).
718. one of our friends: Bennet Langton.
719. a gentleman of our acquaintance: Ibid.
720. a gentleman-farmer: Walter John Fieldhouse.
721. Pursues… the gale: Pope, An Essay on Man, iv.386.
722. Msop at play: Phaedrus, Fables, III.xiv, ‘De Lusu et Severitate’.
723. an old gentleman: Lord Auchinleck.
724. Eheu fugaces: ‘Eheu fugaces… Labuntur anni’ – ‘Ah me… how the fleeting years slip by’ – Horace, Odes, II.xiv.1-2.
725. a friend: Topham Beauclerk.
726. a gentleman: The Honourable Henry Hervey.
727. exordium: The beginning of anything; the introductory part of a discourse, treatise (OED). Johnson defined it as ‘the proemial part of a composition’.
728. maladie du pais: Homesickness.
729. from the mountains of the north: Cf. Judith 16:4. The phrase had become celebrated after being used in a speech in the House by Pitt the elder on 14 January 1766 against the Stamp Act (John Almon, Anecdotes of the life of the Right Hon. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, and of the principal events of his time. With his speeches in Parliament, 2 vols. (1792), I, 289).
730. the doom of man: Johnson, The Vanity of Human Wishes, l. 156.
731. Xerxes wept… afterwards: In 480 bc Xerxes is said to have wept when the massive army he had assembled for the conquest of Greece defiled before him at Abydos (Herodotus, vii.44-6).
732. Stretch’d… chair: Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, iv.342 (1742).
733. Till languor… for this: R. Griffiths, ‘Virtue, an Ethic Epistle’ (1759). The poem is in the British Library, shelf mark 11602 gg.29.
734. a zeal without knowledge: Cf. Romans 10:2.
735. Where did Beckford… learn English: The implication is that both men were American by birth.
736. merely positive: ‘Positive’ here refers to ‘a law or body of laws artificially instituted or imposed by an authority, often as contrasted with natural law rooted in the requirements of justice and right reason’ (OED).
737. Intaminatis… aurce: ‘Virtue, which cannot know the disgrace of rejection, shines bright with stainless honours, and neither takes nor resigns the rods [i.e. the fasces, the Roman symbols of official authority] at the shifting breath of the people’s pleasures’ – Horace, Odes, III.ii.18–20.
738. In bello… errare: ‘In war it is not permitted to make a mistake twice.’
739. the gentleman: Topham Beauclerk.
740. a friend: Possibly John Johnston of Grange.
741. Quamvis… candidus esses: ‘Though he was dark, and you are fair’ – Virgil, Eclogues, ii.16.
742. Ingenuas… artes: ‘A careful study of the liberal arts’ – Ovid, Epistles, II.ix.47.
743. De Animi Tranquillitate: ‘Concerning peace of mind.’
744. Bona res quies: Peace of mind is good.
745. your physical friend: Probably Dr Alexander Wood.
746. ut… amicis: That I may live for my own good, and that of my friends.
747. Ajax: In Homeric legend, a Greek captain whose bravery bordered on folly.
748. to know… the nightly dew: Thomas Parnell, ‘The Hermit’, in Poems on Several Occasions (1722), p. 165.
749. Lord North’s declaration… should be called: On 19 February 1778 Lord North, the prime minister, had introduced into the House what he called his ‘Conciliatory Propositions’ to bring the conflict with the American colonies to an end.