'Sir, It Has No Power'

My brother turns sixty-six today. Number one on the bestseller list on April 25, 1955 was John P. Marquand’s Sincerely, Willis Wayde, which neither of us has read. In twelfth place was a great novel, Marguerite Yourcenar’s Hadrian’s Memoir. Later that year, Lolita would be published in Paris by Olympia Press.

Ken is likely to be amused by a story from two centuries earlier. On this date in 1778, Boswell and Johnson dined at the home of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Other guests included “the learned” Dr. Samuel Musgrave, Counsellor Leland of Ireland, Mrs. Cholmondeley and “some more ladies.” Dr. Musgrave read aloud a recent, anonymously published poem, “The Project.” Now we know the poem is the work of a minor playwright and satirist, the delightfully named Richard Tickell.

JOHNSON: “Were it not for the well-known names with which it is filled, it would be nothing: the names carry the poet, not the poet the names.”

DR. MUSGRAVE: “A temporary poem always entertains us.”

JOHNSON: “So does an account of the criminals hanged yesterday entertain us.”

That’s the kind of literary criticism we sorely need today. A brief biographical note on Tickell: “On 4 Nov. 1793 he killed himself by jumping from the parapet outside the window of his room at Hampton Court.”

Happy birthday, Ken. Here’s to you.