Life of Johnson, Volume 5 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 730 pages of information about Life of Johnson, Volume 5.

Life of Johnson, Volume 5 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 730 pages of information about Life of Johnson, Volume 5.

[1205] ‘No’ or ‘little’ is here probably omitted.  CROKER.

[1206] The name of this house is Bodryddan; formerly the residence of the Stapyltons, the parents of five co-heiresses, of whom Mrs. Cotton, afterwards Lady Salusbury Cotton, was one.  DUPPA.

[1207] ’Dr. Johnson, whose ideas of anything not positively large were ever mingled with contempt, asked of one of our sharp currents in North Wales, “Has this brook e’er a name?” and received for answer, “Why, dear Sir, this is the River Ustrad.”  “Let us,” said he, turning to his friend, “jump over it directly, and shew them how an Englishman should treat a Welsh river."’ Piozzi’s Synonymy, i. 82.

[1208] See ante, i. 313, note 4.

[1209] On Aug. 16 he wrote to Mr. Levett:—­’I have made nothing of the Ipecacuanha.’ Ante, ii. 282.  Mr. Croker suggests that up is omitted after ‘I gave.’

[1210] See post, p. 453.

[1211] F.G. are the printer’s signatures, by which it appears that at this time four sheets (B, C, D, E), or 64 pages had already been printed.  The MS. was ‘put to the press’ on June 20. Ante, ii. 278.

[1212] The English version Psalm 36 begins,—­’My heart sheweth me the wickedness of the ungodly,’ which has no relation to ‘Dixit injustus.’

[1213] This alludes to ’A prayer by R.W., (evidently Robert Wisedom) which Sir Henry Ellis, of the British Museum, has found among the Hymns which follow the old version of the singing Psalms, at the end of Barker’s Bible of 1639.  It begins,

     ’Preserve us, Lord, by thy deare word,
      From Turk and Pope, defend us Lord,
      Which both would thrust out of his throne
      Our Lord Jesus Christ, thy deare son.’

CROKER.

[1214] ’Proinde quum dominus Matth. 6 docet discipulos suos ne in orando multiloqui sint, nihil aliud docet quam ne credant deum inani verborum strepitu flecti rem eandem subinde flagitantium.  Nam Graecis est [Greek:  battologaesate]. [Greek:  Battologein] autem illis dicitur qui voces easdem frequenter iterant sine causa, vel loquacitatis, vel naturae, vel consuetudinis vitio.  Alioqui juxta precepta rhetorum nonnunquam laudis est iterare verba, quemadmodum et Christus in cruce clamitat.  Deus meus, deus meus:  non erat illa [Greek:  battologia], sed ardens ac vehemens affectus orantis.’  Erasmus’s Works, ed. 1540, v. 927.

[1215] This alludes to Southwell’s stanzas ‘Upon the Image of Death,’ in his Maeonia, [Maeoniae] a collection of spiritual poems:—­

     ’Before my face the picture hangs,
        That daily should put me in mind
      Of those cold names and bitter pangs
        That shortly I am like to find: 
      But, yet, alas! full little I
      Do thinke hereon that I must die.’ &c.

Robert Southwell was an English Jesuit, who was imprisoned, tortured, and finally, in Feb. 1598 [1595] executed for teaching the Roman Catholic tenets in England.  CROKER.

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Life of Johnson, Volume 5 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.