’When Boyse was almost perishing with hunger, and some money was produced to purchase him a dinner, he got a bit of roast beef, but could not eat it without ketch-up; and laid out the last half-guinea he possessed in truffles and mushrooms, eating them in bed too, for want of clothes, or even a shirt to sit up in.’

Hawkins (Life, p. 159) gives 1740 as the year of Boyse’s destitution.

‘He was,’ he says, ’confined to a bed which had no sheets; here, to procure food, he wrote; his posture sitting up in bed, his only covering a blanket, in which a hole was made to admit of the employment of his arm.’

Two years later Boyse wrote the following verses to Cave from a spunging-house:—­

      ’Hodie, teste coelo summo,
       Sine pane, sine nummo,
       Sorte positus infeste,
       Scribo tibi dolens moeste. 
       Fame, bile tumet jecur: 
       Urbane, mitte opem, precor. 
       Tibi enim cor humanum
       Non a malis alienum: 
       Mihi mens nee male grato,
       Pro a te favore dato. 
     Ex gehenna debitoria,
     Vulgo, domo spongiatoria.’

He adds that he hopes to have his Ode on the British Nation done that day.  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.