(50) Fanny’s step-mother.-Ed. (51) Boswell prints these lines as follows: 

“When first I drew my vital breath,
A little minikin I came upon earth
And then I came from a dark abode,
into this gay and gaudy world,"-Ed,

(52) Malone gives some further particulars about Bet Flint in a note to Boswell’s “Life of Johnson.”  She was tried, and acquitted, at the Old Bailey in September, 1758, the prosecutrix, Mary Walthow, being unable to prove “that the goods charged to have been stolen (a counterpane, a silver spoon, two napkins, etc.) were her property.  Bet does not appear to have lived at that time in a very genteel style; for she paid for her ready-furnished room in Meard’s-court, Dean-street, Soho, from which these articles were alleged to be stolen, only five shillings a week."-Ed.

(53) Margaret Caroline Rudd was in great notoriety about the year 1776, from the fame of her powers of fascination, which, it was said, had brought a man to the gallows.  This man, her lover, was hanged in January, 1776, for forgery, and the fascinating Margaret appeared as evidence against him.  Boswell visited her in that year, and to a lady who expressed her disapprobation of such proceedings, Johnson said:  “Nay, madam, Boswell is right:  I should have visited her myself, were it not that they have got a trick of putting every thing into the newspapers."-Ed.

(54) Kitty Fisher—­more correctly, Fischer, her father being a German—­an even more famous courtesan, who enjoyed the distinction of having been twice painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds -ed.

(55) The blind poetess, and inmate of Dr. Johnson’s house.-Ed.

(56) Michael Lort, D.D., Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and subsequently Greek Professor.  He was born in 1725, and died in 1799.-Ed.

(57) “I wished the man a dinner and sat still."-Pope.

(58) The Miss Palmers were the nieces of Sir Joshua Reynolds.  Mary, the elder, married, in 1792, the Earl of Inchiquin, afterwards created Marquis of Thomond; the younger, Theophila ("Offy"), married Robert Lovell Gwatkin, Esq.  One of Sir Joshua’s most charming pictures ("Simplicity”) was painted, in 1788, from Offy’s little daughter.  Lady Ladd was the sister of Mr. Thrale.-Ed.

(59) Miss Thrale.-Ed.

(60) Edmund Burke, our “greatest man since Milton,” as Macaulay called him.-Ed.

(61) At Sir Joshua’s town house, in Leicester Square.  The house is now occupied by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson, the auctioneers.-Ed.

(62) “de Mullin” is Mrs. Desmoulins, the daughter of Johnson’s godfather, Dr. Swinfen, a physician in Lichfield.  Left in extreme indigence by the deaths of her father and husband, she found for many years an asylum in the house of Dr. Johnson, whom she survived.-Ed.

(63) Macbean was sometime Johnson’s amanuensis.  His “Dictionary of Ancient Geography” was published in 1773, with a Freface by Johnson.-Ed