Quoting John Norton <[log in to unmask]>:
>
> Here's William Blake on Dr. Johnson:
>
> ‘Lo the Bat with Leathern wing Winking & blinking, Winking & blinking,
> Winking & blinking, Like Doctor Johnson/ Quid. ‘Oho’, said Dr. Johnson To
> Scipio Africanus, ‘If you don’t own me a Philosopher, I’ll kick your Roman
> Anus. ’
> John Norton
And I thought I knew my Blake.
What I have been reading is
The Making of Dr Johnson
by John Wiltshire
[Helm Information, 2009]
chapter five: Joshua Reynolds and Samuel Johnson by Daniel Vuillermin
who on page 122 writes of the Huntington Reynolds:
Reynolds shows the blindness in his left eye. Johnson clasps a book with both
hands, bending the pages, the tops of which are bent and frayed, back over the
spine. It was well known that Johnson did not take care of books, whether they
were his own or borrowed. The lines of the page are indecipherable; the text
itself is incidental. The very bending back of the unbound book, manuscript or
pamphlet suggests the activity of grasping or seizing meaning, regardless of
prudential or worldly considerations. Significantly, Johnson is reading towards
the end of the volume, connoting that he has read it, possibly in one session,
with an unmitigated force of attention. As [Morris] Brownell writes [Johnson's
Attitude to the Arts], Reynolds 'gives us the ravenous reader tearing the heart
out of a book.
The informality, even daring, of this picture is achieved through its
possible representation of Johnson's near-sightedness. According to ... Mrs
Piozzi [1786]...
'When Sir Joshua Reynolds had painted his portrait... holding it almost close to
his eye, as was his general custom, he felt displeased....'He may paint himself
as deaf [Self-Portrait as a Deaf Man] if he chuses (replied Johnson), but I will
not be blinking Sam.'
[I omit various complications to the story. Max]
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