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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] ------------------------------------------------------------ This email was sent from Netspace Webmail: http://www.netspace.net.au