[46] "Pray, Sir," said Mr. Morgann to Johnson, "whether do you reckon Derrick or Smart the best poet?" Johnson at once felt himself roused; and answered, "Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea." Boswell's "Life of Johnson." Date of March 30th, 1783.—Ed.
[47] Temple wrote "An Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning."—Ed.
[48] "The most ancient poets are considered as the best ... whether the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images."—"Rasselas," chapter x.—Ed.
[49] Thomas Sheridan, the father of R.B. Sheridan, was about this time lecturing on Oratory. "He knows that I laugh at his oratory," Johnson once said to Boswell.—Ed.
[50] The Ode is not worth reprinting.—Ed.
[51] These stanzas are nearly as bad as Boswell's Ode, and, like it, are not worth reprinting.—Ed.
[52] "The time is wonderfully sickly; nothing but sore-throats, colds, and fevers." Horace Walpole, in a letter to George Montagu, April 29, 1762.—Ed.
[53] "If I were as tedious as a king, I could find it in my heart to bestow it all of your worship."—"Much Ado about Nothing." Act iii., scene 5.—Ed.
[54] The author of the "History of the Popes." He had been a professor in the University of Macerata, and a Counsellor of the Inquisition. He became a Protestant, and died in England.—Ed.
[55] Sir James Melville. Born 1535, died 1607. His "Memoirs" were published in 1683.—Ed.