750. in my mind’s ears: Cf. Hamlet, I.ii.184.
751. a friend of ours: Bennet Langton.
752. He mouths… a bone: Churchill, The Rosciad, l. 322. Davies’s career as an actor had been blighted when, catching sight of Churchill in the pit (who had already attacked his enunciation, and who had cast leering eyes upon his attractive wife), he had disrupted the scene, in which Garrick was also acting.
753. now see… face to face: 1 Corinthians 13:12.
754. Be not angry… wish to be: Imitation of Christ, bk i, ch. xvi.
755. incredulus odi: ‘I hate and disbelieve’ – cf. Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 188.
756. Rhedi… divini poetce: ‘Rhedi on the generation of insects’… ‘of the divine poet’.
757. Sempre… vergogna: ‘Always to that truth which has the appearance of a lie a man should close his lips as much as he can, lest, without sin, he be put to shame’ – Dante, Inferno (c. 1307–1320), xi.124-6.
758. different letters: C = Chemist (Dr George Fordyce); E = Edmund Burke; F = John Fitzpatrick, Lord Upper Ossory; I or J = Infidel (Edward Gibbon); P = Painter (Joshua Reynolds); R = Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
759. bulls… in Ireland: The word ‘bull’ can mean ‘a self-contradictory proposition containing a manifest contradiction in terms or involving a ludicrous inconsistency unperceived by the speaker; often associated with the Irish’ (OED). Johnson defined it in this sense as ‘A blunder; a contradiction’.
760. Quo clamor… faventium: ‘Whither the shouting and the applauding populace call us’ – Horace, Odes, III.xxiv.46.
761. a man: James Boswell.
762. our friend the Dean: Dr Barnard, the dean of Derry; afterwards bishop of Killaloe and Limerick.
763. cavere… caperet: ‘Take care that the State suffer no harm’ – in the Roman republic, the responsibility laid on the man appointed Dictator in an emergency.
764. a respectable person: Lord Auchinleck.
765. Bring me… capacious mouth: John Gay, Acis and Galatea (1718), in Dramatic Works, ed. J. Fuller, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), I, 271.
766. a man of various enquiry: The Revd Thomas Morer.
767. a certain female friend: Mrs Thrale.
768. medii cevi: Of the middle ages.
769. a celebrated gentleman: William Gerard Hamilton.
770. a very eminent physician: Dr Richard Warren.
771. Animal… cornutum: A quadruped which chews the cud and has horns.
772. An eminent friend of ours: Edmund Burke.
773. A Clergyman: The Revd Mr Embry.
774. Poor Tom’s a-cold: King Lear, III.iv.135.
775. Mad Tom… the world again: A line from a popular song, ‘Forth from my dark and dismal cell’ (see The Aviary: or, Magazine of British Melody [London, 1745?], song 337, p. 169).
776. A Spanish writer… dura: ‘Only that which was static disappeared; what is fugitive remains and endures’ – Quevedo y Villegas, El Parnaso Espanol (1659), p. 4.
777. immota… manent: ‘The motionless disappears; what is in constant motion abides’ – Janus Vitalis, De Roma, in Deliciae C.C. Italorum Poetarum (1608), p. 1433.
778. Romce… Romam: ‘I am as fickle as the wind – when in Rome, I love Tibur, when in Tibur, Rome’ – Horace, Epistles, I.viii.12. (Tibur is modern Tivoli, a town in the hills to the east of Rome, where Horace is said to have had a villa.)
779. Me constare… Romam: ‘You know that I am consistent, and that it is with a heavy heart that I go away whenever the business which I hate draws me to Rome’ – Ibid., I.xiv.16.
780. as Pope observes: Pope, An Essay on Man, ii.2.
781. One of the company: Richard Cambridge.
782. γησασxιν διδασxóμνoζ: γηζασxω δ’αιι πoγγα διδασxóμνoζ: ‘I grow in learning as I grow in years’ – attributed to Solon by Plutarch in his Life of Solon, xxxi.
783. One of the company: Richard Cambridge.
784. Est aliquid… lacertce: ‘It is something in whatever spot, however remote, to have become the possessor of a single lizard!’ – Juvenal, Satires, iii.230–31.
785. I must… mouth: Cf. As You Like It, III.ii.205.
786. He would not… to thunder: Coriolanus, III.i.256-7.
787. a gentleman: Bennet Langton.
788. freni strictio: A tight rein.
789. fortunam… habet: ‘Treats his good fortune with deference’ – Ausonius, Epigrammata, viii.7.
790. an eminent friend: John Mudge, whose son William was Johnson’s godson.
791. a gentleman: James Boswell.
792. the authour of that song: The song, beginning ‘Welcome, welcome, brother debtor’, has been attributed to Charles Coffey (d. 1745), and appeared in The Charmer (1749), pp. 269–70.
793. Smith’s Latin verses… the great traveller: Edmund Smith (1672–1710) wrote a Latin ode on the orientalist Dr Edward Pococke (1604–91) which Johnson, in his ‘Life of Smith’, praised as ‘excellent’ (Lives of the Poets, ed. Lonsdale, II, 173). The ‘great traveller’, however, was Dr Richard Pococke (1704–65).
794. said in his wrath: Cf. Psalms 2:5.
795. Odin: One of the principal gods in Norse mythology.
796. Salus populi: The first part of the classical legal tag ‘salus populi suprema lex est’, meaning ‘the safety of the people is the supreme law.’
797. a gentleman: Perhaps Norton Nicholls.
798. Parcus… relictos: ‘I have been a grudging and infrequent worshipper of the gods while I wandered, following a wisdom that is folly; I have been forced now to turn my sails backward and steer again in the course which I had abandoned’ – Horace, Odes, I.xxxiv.1-5.
799. facies… tamen: ‘Features neither exactly alike, nor yet diverse’ – Ovid, Metamorphoses, ii.13.
800. in potestate… in actu: Potentially… actually.
801. a friend: George Steevens.
802. Veniam… vicissim: ‘This licence we claim ourselves, and in our turn we grant the like’ – Horace, Ars Poetica, l. 11.
803. an old gentleman: Littleton Poyntz Meynell.
804. Coarse… thinks it luxury: Addison, Cato, I.iv.63–71, p. 10.
805. Maccaronick verses: A burlesque form of verse in which vernacular words are introduced into the context of another language (originally and chiefly Latin), often with corresponding inflections and constructions; hence designating any form of verse in which two or more languages are mingled together (OED).
806. Kγνββoισιν βανχθν: Klubboisin ebancten.