NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph

[s~Z]

>>> (And, it gives pause
to wonder which actual footnote from Boswell's _Life_ he might have written
down in that pocketbook of his.) <<<

6. This anecdote of the duck, though disproved by internal and external
evidence, has nevertheless, upon supposition of its truth, been made the
foundation of the following ingenious and fanciful reflections of Miss
Seward, amongst the communications concerning Dr. Johnson with which she has
been pleased to favour me: -- "These infant numbers contain the seeds of
those propensities which through his life so strongly marked his character,
of that poetick talent which afterwards bore such rich and plentiful fruits;
for, excepting his orthographick works, every thing which Dr. Johnson wrote
was Poetry, whose essence consists not in numbers, or in jingle, but in the
strength and glow of a fancy, to which all the stores of nature and of art
stand in prompt administration; and in an eloquence which conveys their
blended illustrations in a language, 'more tuneable than needs or rhyme or
verse to add more harmony.' "The above little verses also shew that
superstitious bias which 'grew with his growth, and strengthened with his
strength,' and, of late years particularly, injured his happiness, by
presenting to him the gloomy side of religion, rather than that bright and
cheering one which gilds the period of closing life with the light of pious
hope." This is so beautifully imagined, that I would not suppress it. But,
like many other theories, it is deduced from a supposed fact, which is,
indeed, a fiction.