This Ode, which is given in the Gent. Mag. 1742, p. 383, contains the following verse, which contrasts sadly with the poor poet's case:--
'Thou, sacred isle, amidst thy ambient main, Enjoyst the sweets of freedom all thy own.'
[G-2] It is not likely that Johnson called a sixpence 'a serious consideration.' He who in his youth would not let his comrades say prodigious (ante/, in. 303) was not likely in his old age so to misuse a word.
[G-3] Hugh Kelly is mentioned ante, ii. 48, note 2, and iii. 113.
[G-4] It was not on the return from Sky, but on the voyage from Sky to Rasay, that the spurs were lost. Post, v. 163.
[G-5] Dr. White's Bampton Lectures of 1784 'became part of the triumphant literature of the University of Oxford,' and got the preacher a Christ Church Canonry. Of these Lectures Dr. Parr had written about one-fifth part. White, writing to Parr about a passage in the manuscript of the last Lecture, said:--'I fear I did not clearly explain myself; I humbly beg the favour of you to make my meaning more intelligible.' On the death of Mr. Badcock in 1788, a note for L500 from White was found in his pocket-book. White pretended that this was remuneration for some other work; but it was believed on good grounds that Badcock had begun what Parr had completed, and that these famous Lectures were mainly their work. Badcock was one of the writers in the Monthly Review. Johnstone's Life of Dr. Parr, i. 218-278. For Badcock's correspondence with the editor of the Monthly Review, see Bodleian MS. Add. C. 90.
[G-6] 'Virgilium vidi tantum.' Ovid, Tristia, iv. 10. 51.
[G-7] Mackintosh says of Priestley:--'Frankness and disinterestedness in the avowal of his opinion were his point of honour.' He goes on to point out that there was 'great mental power in him wasted and scattered.' Life of Mackintosh, i. 349. See ante, ii. 124, and iv. 238 for Johnson's opinion of Priestley.
[G-8] Badcock, in using the term 'index-scholar,' was referring no doubt to Pope's lines:--
'How Index-learning turns no student pale, Yet holds the eel of science by the tail.'
Dunciad, i. 279.
APPENDIX H.
(Notes on Boswell's note on pages 421-422.)
[H-1] The last lines of the inscription on this urn are borrowed, with a slight change, from the last paragraph of the last Rambler/. (Johnson's Works, iii. 465, and ante, i. 226.) Johnson visited Colonel Myddelton on August 29, 1774, in his Tour to Wales. See post, v. 453.
[H-2] Johnson, writing to Dr. Taylor on Sept. 3, 1783, said:--'I sat to Opey (sic) as long as he desired, and I think the head is finished, but it is not much admired.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 481. Hawkins (Life of Johnson, p. 569) says that in 1784 'Johnson resumed sitting to Opie, but,' he adds, 'I believe the picture was never finished.'
[H-3] Of this picture, which was the one painted for Beauclerk (ante, p. 180), it is stated in Johnson's Work, ed. 1787, xi. 204, that 'there is in it that appearance of a labouring working mind, of an indolent reposing body, which he had to a very great degree.'
[H-4] It seems almost certain that the portrait of Johnson in the Common Room of University College, Oxford, is this very mezzotinto. It was given to the College by Sir William Scott, and it is a mezzotinto from Opie's portrait. It has been reproduced for this work, and will be found facing page 244 of volume iii. Scott's inscription on the back of the frame is given on page 245, note 3, of the same volume.
APPENDIX I.
(Page 424.)
Boswell most likely never knew that in the year 1790 Mr. Seward, in the name of Cadell the publisher, had asked Parr to write a Life of Johnson. (Johnstone's Life of Parr, iv. 678.) Parr, in his amusing vanity, was as proud of this Life as if he had written it. '"It would have been," he said, "the third most learned work that has ever yet appeared. The most learned work ever published I consider Bentley On the Epistles of Phalaris; the next Salmasius On the Hellenistic Language." Alluding to Boswell's Life he continued, "Mine should have been, not the droppings of his lips, but the history of his mind."' Field's Life of Parr, i. 164.
In the epitaph that he first sent in were found the words 'Probabili Poetae.'
'In arms,' wrote Parr, 'were all the Johnsonians: Malone, Steevens, Sir W. Scott, Windham, and even Fox, all in arms. The epithet was cold. They do not understand it, and I am a Scholar, not a Belles-Lettres man.'
Parr had wished to pass over all notice of Johnson's poetical character. To this, Malone said, none of his friends of the Literary Club would agree. He pointed out also that Parr had not noticed 'that part of Johnson's genius, which placed him on higher ground than perhaps any other quality that can be named--the universality of his knowledge, the promptness of his mind in producing it on all occasions in conversation, and the vivid eloquence with which he clothed his thoughts, however suddenly called upon.' Parr, regardless of Johnson's rule that 'in lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath' (ante, ii.