933. Fitzosborne’s Letters: William Melmoth, Letters on Several Subjects. By the late Sir Thomas Fitzosborne, Bart. (1748).
934. par pluribus: A host in herself.’
935. outrage… civilized country: In 1779 Lord George Gordon organized and made himself head of the Protestant associations formed to secure the repeal of the Catholic Relief Act of 1778. He led a mob that marched on the Houses of Parliament on 2 June 1780, to present a petition against the Act. The ensuing riot lasted a week, causing great property damage and nearly 500 casualties. For his part in instigating this violence, Gordon was arrested on a charge of high treason, but he was acquitted on the ground that he had no treasonable intentions.
936. Sic fata ferunt: ‘The fates wrought to this end’ – Virgil, Aeneid, ii.34.
937. a young clergyman: The Revd Charles Lawrence.
938. O! preclarum diem: ‘O glorious day!’ – Cicero, De Senectute, 84.
939. Herculaneum: An ancient city at the base of Mount Vesuvius which was destroyed in the eruption of ad 79. Excavation of the site began in the eighteenth century, and the discoveries provided a rich and detailed vision of life in the ancient world which transformed men’s understanding of antiquity.
940. dactyclass="underline" A metrical foot consisting of a long syllable followed by two short (or, in modern verse, of an accented syllable and two unaccented) (OED).
941. Tu… non sei filosofo: ‘You are a saint, but you are not a philosopher.’
942. anfractuosities: Winding or tortuous crevices, channels, passages (OED).
943. gabble monstrously: Cf. The Tempest, I.ii.358–60, where Miranda tells Caliban ‘When thou didst not, savage, | Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like | A thing most brutish…’
944. High Life below Stairs: The Revd James Townley, High Life below Stairs (1759).
945. The Wonder: Susannah Centlivre, The Wonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret (1714).
946. The Thane of Ross: A minor role in Macbeth.
947. his grotto: Pope constructed a celebrated grotto (i.e. an excavation or structure made to imitate a rocky cave, often adorned with shellwork, etc., and serving as a place of recreation or a cool retreat) in the grounds of his villa at Twickenham: cf. Maynard Mack, The Country and the City (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), esp. ch. 2, ‘The Shadowy Cave’, pp. 41–76.
948. Let modest Foster… welclass="underline" Pope, ‘Epilogue to the Satires’, i.131-2.
949. a person: Richard Cumberland.
950. Domina de North et Gray: Lady North and Gray.
951. its authour: George Marriott.
952. One of the company: Edmund Burke.
953. Aristotle… the dead: Diogenes Laertius, V.i.19.
954. A lady of my acquaintance… her uncle: Mrs Thrale and Sir Thomas Salusbury.
955. A lady… how happy shalclass="underline" Gentleman’s Magazine, lxii (1792), 213–14.
956. Ah, Monsieur… trop: Ah, sir, you study too much.
957. one of the remarkers… revealed to him: Johnson alludes to a passage in Elizabeth Robinson Montagu’s Essay on the Writings and Genius of Shakespear (1769), pp. 160–61, in which she compares Shakespeare with Corneille.
958. Lord—: John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork and Orrery.
959. A clergyman: Possibly Dr Michael Lort.
960. The Old Man’s Wish: Walter Pope, The Old Man’s Wish (?i74o).
961. May I govern… sway: Ibid., p. 1; cf. The Spectator, 410 (20 June 1712).
962. unoculus inter ccecos: The one-eyed man among the blind (who proverbially was their king).
963. A gentleman: Possibly Sir Joshua Reynolds.
964. praxis: An example or collection of examples to serve for practice or exercise in a subject, esp. in grammar (OED, 2a).
965. A gentleman… his brother: Possibly James and David Boswell.
966. Parnassus’ hilclass="underline" In Greek mythology, Mount Parnassus was the home of the Muses; hence metonymic of poetic or artistic achievement.
967. South Sea: An allusion to the South Sea Bubble, a British speculation mania which created and destroyed great fortunes in 1720.
968. a friend: Perhaps Topham Beauclerk.
969. She will outstrip… behind her: The Tempest, IV.i.io-n.
970. a very young man: The Revd Thomas Robertson.
971. the admirable scolding of Timon of Athens: Timon of Athens, III.vii. 80–97; IV.i.1-41; IV.iii.1-23.
972. Nil… extra: ‘Seek not to find yourself outside yourself – Persius, Satires, i.7.
973. Down then… Dorian lyre: Gilbert West, Odes of Pindar… translated from the Greek (1749), p. 6.
974. a certain noble Lord: John Boyle, 5th Earl of Cork and Orrery.
975. a very angry answer: John Wilkes, A Letter to Samuel Johnson LL.D. (1770).
976. Philosophy and vain deceit: Colossians 2:8.
977. the Retreat of the Ten Thousand: Xenophon, Anabasis.
978. the Arian heresy: Named after the early Christian theologian Arius (c. 250–336), who denied the doctrine of the Trinity advanced by his great rival St Athanasius (c. 293–373); hence used to denote a spectrum of theological positions ranging from outright unitarianism to varying degrees and kinds of subordination of the Son to the Father. The first Arian controversy broke out in the fourth century, but it was echoed in the eighteenth century in England, when the doctrine of the Trinity again came under sceptical pressure: see Maurice Wiles, Archetypal Heresy: Arianism Through the Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
979. an ingenious writer: Joseph Warton.
980. the shield of Achilles: The shield forged for the Greek warrior Achilles by Hephaestus, the god of fire and metalworking, is the subject of a famous description in bk 18 of The Iliad.
981. Latiùs… suscepi: ‘But as my matter grew under my hand, I voluntarily undertook a bigger task than had been laid upon me’ – I.Proem.3.
982. Some other nymphs… the boy: Edmund Waller, ‘Of Loving at First Sight’, ll. 15–18.
983. Life of Sheffield: Johnson, Lives of the Poets, ed. Lonsdale, III, 47.
984. pannus assutus: ‘Purpureus… unus et alter | Assuitur pannus’ – ‘a purple patch or two is tacked on’ – Horace, Ars Poetica, ll. 15–16.
985. blazon: A record of virtues or excellencies (OED, 4).
986. The Revolution Society: A society established to commemorate the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Its members had been early enthusiasts for the French Revolution, and it was to a meeting of that society on 4 November 1789 that Richard Price delivered the speech which provoked Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).