Yes — and my first reaction is that the footnotes are doing something very valuable for this piece.

They suit the essay’s temperament. The main text is already dense, allusive, and highly personal, and the notes allow you to keep that momentum in the body while moving some of the secondary wit, bibliographic nudges, and historiographical asides below the line. In that sense, the footnotes are not ornamental; they are structurally apt. They create a second register for the essay: part annotation, part sotto voce commentary, part learned afterthought. That is very much in keeping with the Grice-Speranza atmosphere.

What is working well is the general principle behind the notes. They do at least four good things. They clarify references that would otherwise be too compressed in the main text. They preserve the essay’s conversational and polemical tone without overloading the body paragraphs. They create a kind of intimacy with the reader, as though one were being let into the backroom of the argument. And they reinforce the sense that this is not merely exposition but a lived intellectual world with remembered names, anecdotes, grievances, and allegiances.

Several notes are especially effective in tone. The note on Peacocke helps ground the symbolic discussion without slowing the paragraph itself. The note on Gallie is exactly the sort of source clarification that footnotes are made for. The note on Bennett and the publication chronology is helpful because it gives the historical clarification cleanly and at the right level. And some of the notes on Austin, White, Hart, and Strawson have real charm because they keep the personal and Oxonian dimension alive in a subordinate voice rather than forcing it into the main exposition.

That said, the notes are not yet fully under control as a system. At the moment, they oscillate among three functions: source citation, interpretive gloss, and mini-essay. All three are legitimate, but they need a slightly firmer sense of hierarchy if the notes are to feel crafted rather than merely accumulated. Right now some notes are admirably crisp, while others become so expansive and anecdotal that they begin to compete with the text above. That is not always bad, but it does create unevenness.

My clearest advice is this. Decide, note by note, whether each footnote is primarily doing one of these three things. If it is a source note, keep it short and exact. If it is an interpretive gloss, let it sharpen a point already made above. If it is an aside or mini-essay, make sure it really earns its space by adding something not already implied in the main prose. A few of the current notes feel as though they are half source, half anecdote, half polemic all at once, and then they become slightly baggy.

There is also a tonal question. The best notes preserve the essay’s wit but remain serviceable. A few, however, become so inward or playful that an external reader may not know quite how to weigh them. For example, a line like “What’s the matter? Never mind” has charm, but as a footnote it gives the reader very little help. Likewise, some notes that end in a joke or a barb may delight a sympathetic reader but leave a more neutral reader unsure whether the note is evidentiary, interpretive, or theatrical. Since the essay itself is already highly personal, the notes work best when they slightly stabilize rather than further volatilize the discourse.

There is also the question of consistency of bibliographic practice. Some notes point clearly to authors or works, while others refer more loosely. If you want the notes to increase scholarly authority, even within a highly idiosyncratic essay, it would help to make the citation style a little more regular. I do not mean standardized in a mechanical sense, but at least more predictable. At present the notes sometimes sound like memory speaking, sometimes like bibliography speaking. The ideal would be memory with a tidier bibliographic hand.

I would also note that some of the footnotes contain material strong enough to deserve promotion into the main text. For instance, the Bennett chronology note is not merely decorative; it clarifies a genuine argumentative point. Similarly, some of the notes about Austin, White, and the status of symposia are so conceptually relevant to your argument about Grice’s reception that they might deserve partial incorporation into the main prose, with the note then shortened accordingly.

From a purely stylistic point of view, the notes are at their best when they sharpen and localize. They are weaker when they sprawl. The longer notes can still work, but they need slightly tighter sentences and a more determinate destination. Otherwise the reader risks treating them as a parallel stream rather than an illuminating subtext.

So my overall judgment is favorable. The footnotes are a good addition, and they are genuinely native to the spirit of this essay. They make the piece feel more inhabited, more learned, and more layered. But they would become considerably stronger if you made them a little more disciplined in function and a little more even in tone.

If I had to summarize my view in one sentence, I would say this: the notes are excellent in conception, often delightful in execution, but they now need light editorial tightening so that they support the essay rather than occasionally stealing its spotlight.

If you want, I can next do one of three things. I can identify which notes are strongest and which are weakest. I can suggest which notes should be cut, shortened, or moved into the main text. Or I can rewrite a selected batch of footnotes in a more polished and consistent form while keeping your tone.