[1102] See ante, iii. 4, note 2.
[1103] Sir Joshua's physician. He is mentioned by Goldsmith in his verses to the Miss Hornecks. Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 149.
[1104] How much balloons filled people's minds at this time is shewn by such entries as the following in Windham's Diary:-'Feb 7, 1784. Did not rise till past nine; from that time till eleven, did little more than indulge in idle reveries about balloons.' p. 3. 'July 20. The greater part of the time, till now, one o'clock, spent in foolish reveries about balloons.' p. 12. Horace Walpole wrote on Sept. 30 (Letters, viii. 505):—'I cannot fill my paper, as the newspapers do, with air-balloons; which though ranked with the invention of navigation, appear to me as childish as the flying kites of school-boys.' 'Do not write about the balloon,' wrote Johnson to Reynolds (post, p. 368), 'whatever else you may think proper to say.' In the beginning of the year he had written:—'It is very seriously true that a subscription of £800 has been raised for the wire and workmanship of iron wings.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 345.
[1105] It is remarkable that so good a Latin scholar as Johnson, should have been so inattentive to the metre, as by mistake to have written stellas instead of ignes. BOSWELL.
|
'Micat inter omnes Julium sidus, velut inter ignes Luna minores.' 'And like the Moon, the feebler fires among, Conspicuous shines the Julian star.' FRANCIS. Horace, Odes, i. 12. 46. |
[1107] See ante, iii. 209.
|
'The little blood that creeps within his veins Is but just warmed in a hot fever's pains.' DRYDEN. Juvenal, Satires, x. 217. |
[1109] Lunardi had made, on Sept. 15, the first balloon ascent in England. Gent. Mag. 1784, p. 711. Johnson wrote to Mr. Ryland on Sept. 18:—'I had this day in three letters three histories of the Flying Man in the great Balloon.' He adds:—'I live in dismal solitude.' Notes and Queries, 5th S. vii. 381.