This pocket-sized edition of Ovid’s Epistles was Boswell’s constant companion on his tour of Scotland with Johnson, and he refers to it in his journal of the tour, while waiting onboard a ship for passage from one Hebridean island to another: “I got some of Ovid’s Epistle from Penelope to Ulysses by heart, which served well to divert the tedious hours.”
This collection of poems, primarily written by John Husbands, is most notable for containing the first published work by Samuel Johnson. Johnson wrote “Messia,” a Latin translation of Alexander Pope’s “Messiah,” in 1728. It was a Christmas vacation assignment from his tutor at Pembroke College, Oxford, William Jorden, who then passed it on to his Pembroke colleague, Husbands. Although Johnson was just 19 when he wrote it, he remained sufficiently pleased with “Messia” to republish it with minor revisions in Gentleman’s Magazine in 1752.
