James Boswell Born

‘There was a variation of spirits about James Boswell which indicated some slight touch of insanity.  His melancholy, which he complained of to Johnson, was not affected, but constitutional, though doubtless he thought it a mark of high distinction to be afflicted with hypochondria like his moral patron.  But Johnson, however indulgent to his own sinking of the spirits, had little tolerance for those of his imitator.  After all, Bozzy, though submitting to Johnson in everything, had his means of indemnification.  Like the jackanapes mounted on the bear’s back, he contrived now and then to play the more powerful animal a trick by getting him into situations, like the meeting with Wilkes, merely to see how he would look.  The voyage to the Hebrides exhibited some tricks of that kind, the weather being so stormy at that late season that everyone thought they must have drowned.  Undoubtedly Bozzy wanted to see how the Doctor would look in a storm.’ 

October 29, 1740, is the day that James Boswell came into the world.  Sir Walter Scott writes of Bozzy to John Wilson Croker, who later sought Scott’s help toward gaining access to Boswell's papers, through Scott's connection with Boswell's sons, as material for his annotated version of Boswell’s “The Life of Samuel Johnson”.  Scott’s letter is dated January 30, 1829.

"Strike, man, strike!"

"Raleigh is my name, most gracious Queen, the youngest son of a large but honourable family of Devonshire." (From "Kenilworth")
Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded on October 29, 1618.  His crime was treason; involvement in the Main Plot against King James I.  This plot was intended to be a coup d'etat that would install Catholic Arabella Stuart onto the throne.  Little was proven against Raleigh, other than a meeting with Lord Cobham Henry Brooke, who was a primary conspirator.  Wishing not to show fear at his impending death, Raleigh is said to have uttered the words in the title line to hurry his executioner.

Raleigh is associated with Elizabeth I of England, with whom he enjoyed a period of substantial favor, an later, disfavor.  Both characters are part of Walter Scott's "Kenilworth".  Scott focuses on Raleigh's period of favor in this passage:

'The Queen paused, and then said hastily, "You are very young to have fought so well, and to speak so well. But you must not escape your penance for turning back Masters. The poor man hath caught cold on the river for our order reached him when he was just returned from certain visits in London, and he held it matter of loyalty and conscience instantly to set forth again. So hark ye, Master Raleigh, see thou fail not to wear thy muddy cloak, in token of penitence, till our pleasure be further known. And here," she added, giving him a jewel of gold, in the form of a chess-man, "I give thee this to wear at the collar."


Raleigh, to whom nature had taught intuitively, as it were, those courtly arts which many scarce acquire from long experience, knelt, and, as he took from her hand the jewel, kissed the fingers which gave it. He knew, perhaps, better than almost any of the courtiers who surrounded her, how to mingle the devotion claimed by the Queen with the gallantry due to her personal beauty; and in this, his first attempt to unite them, he succeeded so well as at once to gratify Elizabeth's personal vanity and her love of power.'