H.S.E.
JOHANNES FENTON,
de Shelton
antiqua stirpe generosus:
juxta reliquias conjugis
CATHERINÆ
forma, moribus, pietate,
optimo viro dignissimæ:
Qui
intemerata in ecclesiam fide,
et virtutibus intaminatis enituit;
necnon ingenii lepore
bonis artibus expoliti,
ac animo erga omnes benevolo,
sibi suisque jucundus vixit.
Decem annos uxori dilectee superstes
magnum sui desiderium bonis
omnibus reliquit,
anno{salutis humanai 1694,
{ætatis suffi 56.
See Gent. Mag. 1791, vol. lxi. p. 703. N.
[23] He was entered of Jesus college, and took a bachelor’s degree in 1704: but it appears, by the list of Cambridge graduates, that he removed, in 1726, to Trinity hall. N.
[24] 1717. M.
[25] Ford was Johnson’s relation, his mother’s nephew, and is said to have been the original of the parson in Hogarth’s Modern Midnight Conversation. See Boswell, i. and iii. Ed.
[26] July 16.
[27] Spence.
[28] Shiels, Dr. Johnson’s amanuensis, who says, in Cibber’s Lives of the Poets, that he received this anecdote from a gentleman resident in Staffordshire. M.
[29] Goldworthy does not appear in the Villare. Dr. J.—Holdsworthy is probably meant.
[30] Spence.
[31] This mishap of Gay’s is said to have suggested the story of the scholar’s bashfulness in the 157th Rambler; and to similar stories in the Adventurer and Repton’s Variety. Ed.