NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[[1]] See DNB.

[[2]] For the information about Courtenay's election, I am indebted to Professor James M. Osborn of Yale University. Boswell gives no precise date for Courtenay's entry into the Club. His first reference to Courtenay's membership occurs in his journal entry of 19 January 1790. See Private Papers of James Boswell, ed. Geoffrey Scott and Frederick A. Pottle (Privately Printed, 1928-1934), XVIII, 22. See also Boswell's letter to Edmond Malone dated 16 December 1790, Letters of James Boswell, ed. C. B. Tinker (Oxford, 1924), II, 409-410. Courtenay and other intimates of Boswell were called "The Gang" by Philip Metcalfe. See Private Papers, XVII, 52, 55; XVIII, 15.

[[3]] Private Papers, XVI, 106.

[[4]] Ibid., XVII, 80. For additional testimony to Courtenay's reputation as a wit, see Thraliana, ed. Katharine C. Balderston (Oxford, 1951), I, 486, and James Prior, Life of Edmond Malone (London, 1860), 287-288.

[[5]] Private Papers, XVII, 86.

[[6]] Ibid., pp. 76-77.

[[7]] Ibid., XVI, 178. "M. C." is Mrs. Rudd.

[[8]] See Boswell's letters to Malone, Letters, II, 405, 427, and Private Papers, XVIII, 100. Courtenay became alarmed over Boswell's deepening melancholy, as seen in this passage from his letter to Malone of 22 February 1791: "Poor Boswell is very low, & desperate & ... melancholy mad, feels no spring, no pleasure in existence, & is so perceptibly altered for the worse that it is remarked everywhere. I try all I can to revivify him, but he [turns?] so tiresomely & tediously—for the same cursed trite commonplace topics, about death &c.—that we grow old, and when we are old, we are not young—that I despair of effecting a cure. Doctors Warren and Devaynes very kindly interest themselves about him, but you wd be of more service to him than anyone." Quoted from a MS at Yale University Library by James Osborn, "Edmond Malone and Dr. Johnson," Johnson, Boswell and Their Circle: Essays Presented to Lawrence Fitzroy Powell in Honour of His Eighty-fourth Birthday (Oxford, 1965), p. 16.

[[9]] Letters, II, 428, 425. Boswell tried to negotiate loans for Courtenay, and made a successful application to Reynolds. See Private Papers, XVII, 85-86, 101-102; XVIII, 120.

[[10]] Private Papers, XVIII, 171, 178, 184.

[[11]] See Frank Brady, Boswell's Political Career (New Haven, 1965), p. 169, and Frederick A. Pottle, The Literary Career of James Boswell, Esq. (Oxford, 1929), p. 147.

[[12]] Private Papers, XVIII, 271. This entry is dated 31 March 1794, not long before the journal ends and some thirteen months before Boswell's death.

[[13]] The Art of Biography in Eighteenth Century England (Princeton, 1941), p. 345.

[[14]] Ibid., p. 346.

[[15]] W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., in The Prose Style of Samuel Johnson (New Haven, 1941), pp. 135-138, argues against the notion that Johnson's friends formed such a "school."

[[16]] Boswell praised Courtenay's "just and discriminative eulogy" on Johnson's Latin poems, and quoted it. See Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, revised L. F. Powell (Oxford, 1934-1950), I, 62.

[[17]] See European Magazine, IX (April 1786), 266; Gentleman's Magazine, LVI (May 1786), 415; Monthly Review, LXXV (September 1786), 229.

[[18]] It should be noted that the attack on Courtenay in this poem is the mildest of the four. The famous caricaturist, Sayer, included Courtenay in a poetic attack on Mrs. Piozzi appended to his print, Frontispiece to the 2nd Edition of Johnson's Letters, published 7 April 1788. See James L. Clifford, Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale) (Oxford, 1952), p. 329.

[[19]] Boswell quoted Courtenay's compliment in Life, II, 268.

[[20]] Letters, II, 444.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The text of this edition of A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the Late Samuel Johnson, L.L.D., with Notes is reproduced from a copy in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.