diction was nowhere better demonstrated than
by the countless reflections, sermons, poems, pamphlets, biographical
sketches, and biographies about Samuel Johnson. The most productive
phase of this activity commenced almost immediately after Johnson's
death in December, 1784, and continued into the next century.

One item of Johnsoniana which seems to have been neglected, perhaps
because Birkbeck Hill did not include it in his _Johnsonian
Miscellanies_, is _A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral
Character of the Late Samuel Johnson, L.L.D., with Notes_. This poem
of three hundred and four lines was written by John Courtenay
(1741-1816). First published in the spring of 1786 by Charles Dilly,
the poem went through three editions in the same year. Its popularity
was determined less by Courtenay's poetic talent than by public
interest in the Johnsoniana that flooded the market. Courtenay's
literary output, though scanty, was diverse; he wrote light verse,
character sketches, and essays, including two controversial pieces in
support of the French Revolution.[1] It is apparent, however, that for
him writing was hardly more than an avocation.

Despite his notoriety as a controversial member of Parliament, as a
first-rate wit, and as an intimate friend of Boswell, Courtenay
remains a shadowy figure. References to him occur often in the last
volumes of Boswell's journal, but few of them are particularly
revealing. Courtenay evidently never met Johnson; indeed, the
anonymous author of _A Poetical Epistle from the Ghost of Dr. Johnson
to His Four Friends: The Rev. Mr. Strahan. James Boswell, Esq. Mrs.
Piozzi. J. Courtenay, Esq. M.P._ (1786) censures Courtenay for writing
about a man whom he did not know. Although a member of the Literary
Club, Courtenay did not join this group until four years after Johnson
died. He was proposed on 9 December 1788, by Sir Joshua Reynolds
(Boswell seconded), and elected two weeks later, on 23 December,
during the same meeting at which it was decided to erect a monument to
Dr. Johnson in Westminster Abbey.[2]

If, then, Courtenay did not belong to the Johnson circle, he became,
shortly after Johnson's death, a valued member of the Boswell circle.
Courtenay must have met Boswell in the spring or early summer of 1785,
about thirteen years after arriving in England from his native Ireland
in the service of Viscount Townshend. Boswell's first reference to
Courtenay occurs in his journal under 7