[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.’