JM: Alas, Sorbonne
University lies too far away: I can see a russet moon from my
window...but no Paris.
Btw: Borges'
comparison of T.B. Macaulay's assessment of James Boswell
(1831) and Bernard Shaw's mentions that, for the latter, biographee Samuel Johnson
was Boswell's creation, an invented character (Borges didn't
mention Hodges).
Like Kinbote, Boswell was an aristocrat, whereas
Johnson was a staunch monarchist, exceedingly clumsy and no
table-manners to speak of.
John Shade himself,a "popist", once described
his resemblance to Samuel Johnson - and two local "hags"
- one of them also "looks like Judge
Goldsworth ("One of us," interposed Shade inclining his head), "especially when
he is real mad at the whole world after a good dinner."
According to Borges, while he was writing Alexander Pope's biography,
Samuel Johnson kept Pope's manuscripts and corrected drafts
by his side and this is how he came to describe Pope's
ellaborations in detail. For example, Johnson mentions the
various phases undergone by a poetical epitet in Pope's
version of Homer's Iliad (canto II).
Apparently Pope began by a description of a
moon's "silvery light", before he added a bunch of shepherds
and blotted out the word "silvery". Next, in lieu of
"silvery light" he added a prosaic moon's "useful light". How
lucky we are bwecause Shade's moondrop inspiration
derives from Shakespeare, not Pope.