NPPF Preliminary: The Epigraph

[jbor]

Thanks for seeking out these possibilities and posting them along. I thought
the one about the duck anecdote and the "fanciful reflections" of Miss
Seward had a lot going for it too, particularly the final couple of
sentences: "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."

But you make a good case for this "blockhead" footnote (and the footnote
within a footnote!) as well. And Kinbote certainly expresses strong opinions
about those "scholars" who he sees as "blockheads".

best

on 13/7/03 10:27 AM, s~Z wrote:

> I'm leaning towards this as the Boswell footnote Kinbote has in his black
> pocketbook:
> 
> 3 I had this anecdote from Dr. Adams,
> and Dr. Johnson confirmed it.Bramston,
> in his "Man of Taste," has the same thought:
> 
> "Sure, of all blockheads, scholars are the worst."
> 
> [Johnson's meaning however, is, that a scholar who is a blockhead, must be
> the worst of all blockheads, because he is without excuse. But Bramston, in
> the assumed character of an ignorant coxcomb, maintains, that all scholars
> are blockheads, on account of their scholarship. -- J. BOSWELL.]
> 
> _________________________________________
> 
> The mention of having a Boswell footnote occurs on page 154. In the first
> full paragraph of page 155, some 16 lines later, Shade confirms with an
> "Exactly," Kinbote's suggestion that he regards negative book reviews as
> "the blabber of a blockhead."
> 
> On a separate, but related topic, on page 267, Samuel Johnson is listed by
> Shade as one of at least four people he has been said to resemble. Perhaps
> Kinbote is one to have said such, and to have written the epigraph,
> imagining himself to be Shade's Hodge.
>