[954] Wednesday was the 16th

[955] See ante, i. 41.

[956] Letters to Mrs. Thrale, vol. ii. p. 372. BOSWELL.

[957] See ante/, i. 155.

[958] The recommendation in this list of so many histories little agrees 'with the fierce and boisterous contempt of ignorance' with which, according to Lord Macaulay, Johnson spoke of history. Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1843, i. 403.

[959] See ante, iii. 12.

[960] Northcote's account of Reynolds's table suits the description of this 'gentleman's mode of living.' 'A table prepared for seven or eight was often compelled to contain fifteen or sixteen.' There was a 'deficiency of knives and forks, plates and glasses. The attendance was in the same style.' There were 'two or three undisciplined domestics. The host left every one at perfect liberty to scramble for himself.' 'Rags' is certainly a strong word to apply to any of the company; but then strong words were what Johnson used. Northcote mentions 'the mixture of company.' Northcote's Reynolds, ii. 94-6. See ante, iii. 375, note 2.

[961] The Mayor of Windsor. Rogers's Boswelliana, p. 211.

[962] The passage occurs in Brooke's Earl of Essex(1761) at the close of the first act, where Queen Elizabeth says:

'I shall henceforth seek For other lights to truth; for righteous monarchs, Justly to judge, with their own eyes should see; To rule o'er freemen should themselves be free.' Notes and Queries, 5th S. viii. 456.

The play was acted at Drury Lane Theatre, old Mr. Sheridan taking the chief part. He it was who, in admiration, repeated the passage to Johnson which provoked the parody. Murphy's Garrick, p. 234.

[963] 'Letters to Mrs. Thrale, vol. ii. p. 284. BOSWELL. In a second letter (ib. p. 347) he says:—'Cator has a rough, manly independent understanding, and does not spoil it by complaisance.' Miss Burney accuses him of emptiness, verbosity and pomposity, all of which she describes in an amusing manner. Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 47.

[964] 'All general reflections upon nations and societies are the trite, thread-bare jokes of those who set up for wit without having any, and so have recourse to common-place.' Chesterfield's Letters, i. 231.

[965] See vol. ii. p. 126. BOSWELL

[966] '"That may be so," replied the lady, "for ought I know, but they are above my comprehension." "I an't obliged to find you comprehension, Madam, curse me," cried he,' Roderick Random, ch. 53. '"I protest," cried Moses, "I don't rightly comprehend the force of your reasoning." "O, Sir," cried the Squire, "I am your most humble servant, I find you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too."' Vicar of Wakefield, ch. 7.

[967] In the first edition, 'as the Honourable Horace Walpole is often called;' in the second edition, 'as Horace, now Earl of Orford, &c.' Walpole succeeded to the title in Dec. 1791. In answer to congratulations he wrote (Letters, ix. 364):—'What has happened destroys my tranquillity.... Surely no man of seventy-four, unless superannuated, can have the smallest pleasure in sitting at home in his own room, as I almost always do, and being called by a new name.' He died March 2, 1797.

[968] In The Rambler, No. 83, a character of a virtuoso is given which in many ways suits Walpole:—'It is never without grief that I find a man capable of ratiocination or invention enlisting himself in this secondary class of learning; for when he has once discovered a method of gratifying his desire of eminence by expense rather than by labour, and known the sweets of a life blest at once with the ease of idleness and the reputation of knowledge, he will not easily be brought to undergo again the toil of thinking, or leave his toys and trinkets for arguments and principles.'

[969] Walpole says:—'I do not think I ever was in a room with Johnson six times in my days.' Letters, ix. 319. 'The first time, I think, was at the Royal Academy. Sir Joshua said, "Let me present Dr. Goldsmith to you;" he did. "Now I will present Dr. Johnson to you." "No," said I, "Sir Joshua; for Dr. Goldsmith, pass—but you shall not present Dr. Johnson to me."' Journal &c. of Miss Berry, i. 305. In his Journal of the Reign of George III, he speaks of Johnson as 'one of the venal champions of the Court,' 'a renegade' (i. 430); 'a brute,' 'an old decrepit hireling' (ib. p. 472); and as 'one of the subordinate crew whom to name is to stigmatize' (ib. ii. 5). In his Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iv. 297, he says:—'With a lumber of learning and some strong parts Johnson was an odious and mean character. His manners were sordid, supercilious, and brutal; his style ridiculously bombastic and vicious, and, in one word, with all the pedantry he had all the gigantic littleness of a country schoolmaster.'

[970] See ante, i. 367.

[971] On May 26, 1791, Walpole wrote of Boswell's Life of Johnson (Letters ix. 3l9):—'I expected amongst the excommunicated to find myself, but am very gently treated. I never would be in the least acquainted with Johnson; or, as Boswell calls it, I had not a just value for him; which the biographer imputes to my resentment for the Doctor's putting bad arguments (purposely out of Jacobitism) into the speeches which he wrote fifty years ago for my father in the Gentleman's Magazine; which I did not read then, or ever knew Johnson wrote till Johnson died.' Johnson said of these Debates:—'I saved appearances tolerably well; but I took care that the Whig dogs should not have the best of it.' Ante, i. 504. 'Lord Holland said that whenever Boswell came into a company where Horace Walpole was, Walpole would throw back his head, purse up his mouth very significantly, and not speak a word while Boswell remained.' Autobiographical Recollections of C. R. Leslie, i. 155. Walpole (Letters, viii. 44) says:—'Boswell, that quintessence of busybodies, called on me last week, and was let in, which he should not have been, could I have foreseen it. After tapping many topics, to which I made as dry answers as an unbribed oracle, he vented his errand.'

[972] Walpole wrote (Letters, vi. 44):—'If The School for Wives and The Christmas Tale were laid to me, so was The Heroic Espistle. I could certainly have written the two former, but not the latter.' See ante, iv. 113.

[973] The title given by Bishop Pearson to his collection of Hales's Writings is the Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable John Hales of Eaton College, &c. It was published in 1659.

[974] I Henry IV, act ii. sc. 4. 'Sir James Mackintosh remembers that, while spending the Christmas of 1793 at Beaconsfield, Mr. Burke said to him, 'Johnson showed more powers of mind in company than in his writings; but he argued only for victory; and when he had neither a paradox to defend, nor an antagonist to crush, he would preface his assent with "Why, no, Sir."' CROKER. Croker's Boswell, p. 768.

[975]

Search then the ruling passion: There alone The wild are constant, and the cunning known; The fool consistent, and the false sincere; Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here.' Pope, Moral Essays, i. 174.

'The publick pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit.' The Idler, No. 18.

[976] Ante, ii. 241, and iii. 325.

[977] Boswell refers to Cicero's Treatise on Famous Orators.

[978] Boswell here falls into a mistake. About harvest-time in 1766, there were corn-riots owing to the dearness of bread. By the Act of the 15th of Charles II, corn, when under a certain price, might be legally exported. On Sept. 26, 1766, before this price had been reached, the Crown issued a proclamation to prohibit the exportation of grain. When parliament met in November, a bill of indemnity was brought in for those concerned in the late embargo. 'The necessity of the embargo was universally allowed;' it was the exercise by the Crown of a power of dispensing with the laws that was attacked. Some of the ministers who, out of office, 'had set up as the patrons of liberty,' were made the object 'of many sarcasms on the beaten subject of occasional patriotism.' Ann. Reg. x. 39-48, and Dicey's Law of the Constitution, p. 50.

[979] St. Mark, ii. 9.

[980] Anecdotes, p. 43. BOSWELL. The passage is from the Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies, March 22, 1775. Payne's Burke, i. 173. The image of the angel and Lord Bathurst was thus, according to Mrs. Piozzi, parodied by Johnson:—'Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to Wharton, or to Marlborough, or to any of the eminent Whigs of the last age, the devil had, not with great impropriety, consented to appear.' See ante, iii. 326, where Johnson said 'the first Whig was the Devil.'

[981] Boswell was stung by what Mrs. Piozzi wrote when recording this parody. She said that she had begged Johnson's leave to write it down directly. 'A trick,' she continues, 'which I have seen played on common occasions of sitting steadily [? stealthily] down at the other end of the room to write at the moment what should be said in company, either by Dr. Johnson or to him, I never practised myself, nor approved of in another. There is something so ill-bred, and so inclining to treachery in this conduct, that, were it commonly adopted, all confidence would soon be exiled from society.' See post, under June 30, 1784, where Boswell refers to this passage.

[982]

'Who'er offends, at some unlucky time Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.'

Pope, Imitations of Horace, 2 Satires, i. 78.

[983] On March 14, 1770, in a debate on the licentiousness of the press, Townshend joined together Johnson and Shebbeare. Burke, who followed him, said nothing about Johnson. Fitzherbert, speaking of Johnson as 'my friend,' defended him as 'a pattern of morality.' Cavendish Debates, i.514. On Feb. 16, 1774, when Fox drew attention to a 'vile libel' signed A South Briton, Townshend said 'Dr. Shebbeare and Dr. Johnson have been pensioned, but this wretched South Briton is to be prosecuted.' It was Fox, and not Burke, who on this occasion defended Johnson. Parl. Hist. xvii.1054. As Goldsmith was writing Retaliation at the very time that this second attack was made, it is very likely that it was the occasion, of the change in the line.

[984] In the original yet.

[985]

'Sis pecore et multa dives tellure licebit, Tibique Pactolus fluat.' 'Though wide thy land extends, and large thy fold, Though rivers roll for thee their purest gold.'

FRANCIS. Horace, Epodes, xv. 19.

[986] See Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1843, i. 404, for Macaulay's appropriation and amplification of this passage.

[987] See ante, ii. 168.

[988] Mr. Croker suggests the Rev. Martin Sherlock, an Irish Clergyman, 'who published in 1781 his own travels under the title of _Letters of an English Traveller translated from the French._' Croker's _Boswell, p. 770. Mason writes of him as 'Mister, or Monsieur, or Signor Sherlock, for I am told he is both [sic] French, English, and Italian in print.' Walpole's _Letters_, viii. 202. I think, however, that Dr. Thomas Campbell is meant. His _Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland_ Boswell calls 'a very entertaining book, which has, however, one fault;—that it assumes the fictitious character of an Englishman.' _Ante_, ii. 339.

[989] See ante, iv. 49.

[990] This anecdote is not in the first two editions.

[991] See ante, in. 369.

[992] 'I have heard,' says Hawkins (Life, p. 409), 'that in many instances, and in some with tears in his eyes, he has apologised to those whom he had offended by contradiction or roughness of behaviour.' See ante, ii. 109, and 256, note 1.

[993] Johnson (Works, viii. 131) describes Savage's 'superstitious regard to the correction of his sheets ... The intrusion or omission of a comma was sufficient to discompose him, and he would lament an errour of a single letter as a heavy calamity.'

[994] Compositor in the Printing-house means, the person who adjusts the types in the order in which they are to stand for printing; and arranges what is called the form, from which an impression is taken. BOSWELL.

[995] This circumstance therefore alluded to in Mr. Courtenay's Poetical Character of him is strictly true. My informer was Mrs. Desmoulins, who lived many years in Dr. Johnson's house. BOSWELL. The following are Mr. Courtenay's lines:—

'Soft-eyed compassion with a look benign, His fervent vows he offered at thy shrine; To guilt, to woe, the sacred debt was paid, And helpless females blessed his pious aid; Snatched from disease, and want's abandoned crew, Despair and anguish from their victims flew; Hope's soothing balm into their bosoms stole, And tears of penitence restored the soul.'

[996] The Cross Readings were said to be formed 'by reading two columns of a newspaper together onwards,' whereby 'the strangest connections were brought about,' such as:—

'This morning the Right Hon. the Speaker was convicted of keeping a disorderly house. Whereas the said barn was set on fire by an incendiary letter dropped early in the morning. By order of the Commissioners for Paving An infallible remedy for the stone and gravel. The sword of state was carried before Sir John Fielding and committed to Newgate.'

The New Foundling Hospital for Wit, i. 129. According to Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 217), 'Dr. Goldsmith declared, in the heat of his admiration of these Cross Readings, it would have given him more pleasure to have been the author of them than of all the works he had ever published of his own.' Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 30) writes:— 'Have you seen that delightful paper composed out of scraps in the newspapers? I laughed till I cried. I mean the paper that says:—

"This day his Majesty will go in great state to fifteen notorious common prostitutes."'

[997] One of these gentlemen was probably Mr. Musgrave (ante, ii. 343, note 2), who, says Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 295), when 'once he was singularly warm about Johnson's writing the lives of our famous prose authors, getting up and entreating him to set about the work immediately, he coldly replied, "Sit down, Sir."' Miss Burney says that 'the incense he paid Dr. Johnson by his solemn manner of listening, by the earnest reverence with which he eyed him, and by a theatric start of admiration every time he spoke, joined to the Doctor's utter insensibility to all these tokens, made me find infinite difficulty in keeping my countenance.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 85. The other gentleman was perhaps Dr. Wharton. Ante, ii. 41, note 1.

[998] Probably Dr. Beattie. The number of letters in his name agrees with the asterisks given a few lines below. Ante, iii. 339, note 1, and post, p. 330.

[999] Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines conge d'elire as the king's permission royal to a dean and chapter in time of vacation, to choose a bishop. When Dr. Hampden was made Bishop of Hereford in 1848, the Dean resisted the appointment. H. C. Robinson records, on the authority of the Bishop's Secretary (Diary, iii. 311), that 'at the actual confirmation in Bow Church the scene was quite ludicrous. After the judge had told the opposers that he could not hear them, the citation for opposers to come forward was repeated, at which the people present laughed out, as at a play.'

[1000] This has been printed in other publications, 'fall to the ground.' But Johnson himself gave me the true expression which he had used as above; meaning that the recommendation left as little choice in the one case as the other. BOSWELL. One of the 'other publications is Hawkins's edition of Johnson's Works. See in it vol. xi. p. 216.

[1001] They are published in vol. xi. of Hawkins's edition of Johnson's Works. 1787, and are often quoted in my notes. It should be remembered that Steevens is not trustworthy. See ante, iii. 281, and iv. 178.

[1002] See ante, ii. 96.

[1003] See ante, p. iii.

[1004] She Stoops to Conquer was first acted on March 15, 1773. The King of Sardinia had died on Feb. 20. Gent. Mag. 1773, pp. 149, 151.

[1005] Hannah More (Memoirs, i. 170) describes how, in 1780, she went to one of Mrs. Ord's assemblies at a time when 'the mourning for some foreign Wilhelmina Jaquelina was not over. Every human creature was in deep mourning, and I, poor I, all gorgeous in scarlet. Even Jacobite Johnson was in deep mourning.'

[1006] In the tenth edition of the Rambler, published in 1784, the entry is still found:—'Milton, Mr. John, remarks on his versification.' In like manner we find:—'Shakspeare, Mr. William, his eminent success in tragi-comedy;' 'Spenser, Mr. Edmund, some imitations of his diction censured;' 'Cowley, Mr. Abraham, a passage in his writing illustrated.'

[1007] See ante, p. 116.

[1008] See ante, iii. 425, note 3.

[1009] Hawkins (Life, p. 571) writes:—'The plan for Johnson's visiting the Continent became so well known, that, as a lady then resident at Rome afterwards informed me, his arrival was anxiously expected throughout Italy.'

[1010] Edward Lord Thurlow. BOSWELL.

[1011] See ante, p. 179.

[1012] In 1778.

[1013] 'With Lord Thurlow, while he was at the bar, Johnson was well acquainted. He said to Mr. Murphy twenty years ago, "Thurlow is a man of such vigour of mind that I never knew I was to meet him, but—I was going to tell a falsehood; I was going to say I was afraid of him, and that would not be true, for I was never afraid of any man—but I never knew that I was to meet Thurlow, but I knew I had something to encounter."' Monthly Review for 1787, lxxvi. 382. Murphy, no doubt, was the writer. Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chancellors, ed. 1846, v.621) quotes from 'the Diary of a distinguished political character' an account of a meeting between Thurlow and Horne Tooke, in 1801. 'Tooke evidently came forward for a display, and as I considered his powers of conversation as surpassing those of any person I had ever seen (in point of skill and dexterity, and if necessary in lying), so I took for granted old grumbling Thurlow would be obliged to lower his top-sail to him—but it seemed as if the very look and voice of Thurlow scared him out of his senses from the first moment. So Tooke tried to recruit himself by wine, and, though not generally a drinker, was very drunk, but all would not do.'

[1014] It is strange that Sir John Hawkins should have related that the application was made by Sir Joshua Reynolds, when he could so easily have been informed of the truth by inquiring of Sir Joshua. Sir John's carelessness to ascertain facts is very remarkable. BOSWELL.

[1015] There is something dreadful in the thought of the old man quietly going on with his daily life within a few hundred yards of this shocking scene of slaughter, this 'legal massacre,' to use his own words (ante, p. 188, note 3). England had a kind of Reign of Terror of its own; little thought of at the time or remembered since. Twenty-four men were sentenced to death at the Old Bailey Sessions that ended on April 28. On June 16 nine of these had the sentence commuted; the rest were hanged this day. Among these men was not a single murderer. Twelve of them had committed burglary, two a street robbery, and one had personated another man's name, with intent to receive his wages. Ann. Reg. xxvii, 193, and Gent. Mag. liv. 379, 474. The Gent. Mag. recording the sentences, remarks:—'Convicts under sentence of death in Newgate and the gaols throughout the kingdom increase so fast, that, were they all to be executed, England would soon be marked among the nations as the Bloody Country.' In the spring assizes the returns are given for ten towns. There were 88 capital convictions, of which 21 were at Winchester. Ib. 224. In the summer assizes and at the Old Bailey Sessions for July there were 149 capital convictions. At Maidstone a man on being sentenced 'gave three loud cheers, upon which the judge gave strict orders for his being chained to the floor of the dungeon.' Ib. pp. 311, 633. The hangman was to grow busier yet. This increase in the number of capital punishments was attributed by Romilly in great part to Madan's Thoughts on Executive Justice; 'a small tract, in which, by a mistaken application of the maxim "that the certainty of punishment is more efficacious than its severity for the prevention of crimes," he absurdly insisted on the expediency of rigidly enforcing, in every instance, our penal code, sanguinary and barbarous as it was. In 1783, the year before the book was published, there were executed in London only 51 malefactors; in 1785, the year after the book was published, there were executed 97; and it was recently after the publication of the book that was exhibited a spectacle unseen in London for a long course of years before, the execution of nearly 20 criminals at a time.' Life of Romilly, i. 89. Madan's Tract was published in the winter of 1784-5. Boswell's fondness for seeing executions is shewn, ante, ii. 93.

[1016] See ante, ii. 82, 104; iii. 290; and v. 7l.

[1017] A friend of mine happened to be passing by a field congregation in the environs of London, when a Methodist preacher quoted this passage with triumph. BOSWELL. On Dec. 26, 1784, John Wesley preached the condemned criminals' sermon to forty-seven who were under sentence of death. He records:—'The power of the Lord was eminently present, and most of the prisoners were in tears. A few days after, twenty of them died at once, five of whom died in peace. I could not but greatly approve of the spirit and behaviour of Mr. Villette, the Ordinary; and I rejoiced to hear that it was the same on all similar occasions.' Wesley's Journal, ed. 1827, iv. 287.

[1018] I trust that THE CITY OF LONDON, now happily in unison with THE COURT, will have the justice and generosity to obtain preferment for this Reverend Gentleman, now a worthy old servant of that magnificent Corporation. BOSWELL. In like manner, Boswell in 1768 praised the Rev. Mr. Moore, Mr. Villette's predecessor. 'Mr. Moore, the Ordinary of Newgate, discharged his duty with much earnestness and a fervour for which I and all around me esteemed and loved him. Mr. Moore seems worthy of his office, which, when justly considered, is a very important one.' London Mag. 1783, p. 204. For the quarrel between the City and the Court, see ante, iii. 201.

[1019] See ante, i. 387.

[1020] Knox in Winter Evenings, No. xi. (Works, ii. 348), attacks Johnson's biographers for lowering his character by publishing his private conversation. 'Biography,' he complains, 'is every day descending from its dignity.' See ante, i. 222, note 1.

[1021] Piozzi Letters, ii. 256.

[1022] Johnson wrote on April 15:—'I am still very weak, though my appetite is keen and my digestion potent. ... I now think and consult to-day what I shall eat to-morrow. This disease likewise will, I hope, be cured.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 362. Beattie, who dined with Johnson on June 27, wrote:—'Wine, I think, would do him good, but he cannot be prevailed on to drink it. He has, however, a voracious appetite for food. I verily believe that on Sunday last he ate as much to dinner as I have done in all for these ten days past.' Forbes's Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 315. It was said that Beattie latterly indulged somewhat too much in wine. Ib. p. 432.

[1023] Horace Walpole wrote in April 1750 (Letters, ii. 206):—'There is come from France a Madame Bocage who has translated Milton: my Lord Chesterfield prefers the copy to the original; but that is not uncommon for him to do, who is the patron of bad authors and bad actors. She has written a play too, which was damned, and worthy my lord's approbation.' It was this lady who bade her footman blow into the spout of the tea-pot. Ante, ii. 403. Dr. J. H. Burton writes of her in his Life of Hume, ii. 213:—'The wits must praise her bad poetry if they frequented her house. "Elle etait d'une figure aimable," says Grimm, "elle est bonne femme; elle est riche; elle pouvait fixer chez elle les gens d'esprit et de bonne compagnie, sans les mettre dans l'embarras de lui parler avec peu de sincerite de sa Colombiade ou de ses Amazones."'

[1024] It is the sea round the South Pole that she describes in her Elegy (not Ode). The description begins:—

'While o'er the deep in many a dreadful form, The giant Danger howls along the storm, Furling the iron sails with numbed hands, Firm on the deck the great Adventurer stands; Round glitt'ring mountains hear the billows rave, And the vast ruin thunder on the wave.'

In the Gent. Mag. 1793, p. 197, were given extracts abusive of Johnson from some foolish letters that passed between Miss Seward and Hayley, a poet her equal in feebleness. Boswell, in his Corrections and Additions to the First Edition (ante, i.10), corrected an error into which he had been led by Miss Seward (ante, i.92, note 2). She, in the Gent. Mag. for 1793, p.875, defended herself and attacked him. His reply is found on p.1009. He says:—'As my book was to be a real history, and not a novel, it was necessary to suppress all erroneous particulars, however entertaining.' (Ante, ii 467, note 4.) He continues:—'So far from having any hostile disposition towards this Lady, I have, in my Life of Dr. Johnson...quoted a compliment paid by him to one of her poetical pieces; and I have withheld his opinion of herself, thinking that she might not like it. I am afraid it has reached her by some other means; and thus we may account for various attacks by her on her venerable townsman since his decease...What are we to think of the scraps of letters between her and Mr. Hayley, impotently attempting to undermine the noble pedestal on which the publick opinion has placed Dr. Johnson?'

[1025] See ante, i.265, and iv. 174.

[1026] 'Johnson said he had once seen Mr. Stanhope at Dodsley's shop, and was so much struck with his awkward manners and appearance that he could not help asking Mr. Dodsley who he was.' Johnson's Works, (1787) xi.209.

[1027] Chesterfield was Secretary of State from Nov. 1746 to Feb. 1748. His letters to his son extend from 1739 to 1768.

[1028] Foote had taken off Lord Chesterfield in The Cozeners. Mrs. Aircastle trains her son Toby in the graces. She says to her husband:—'Nothing but grace! I wish you would read some late Posthumous Letters; you would then know the true value of grace.' Act ii. sc. 2.

[1029] See ante, p.78, note 1.

[1030] See a pamphlet entitled Remarks on the Characters of the Court of Queen Anne, included in Swift's Works, ed. 1803, vi. 163.

[1031] Carleton, according to the Memoirs, made his first service in the navy in 1672—seventeen years before the siege of Derry. There is no mention of this siege in the book.

[1032] 'He had obtained, by his long service, some knowledge of the practic part of an engineer.' Preface to the Memoirs.

[1033] Nearly 200 pages in Bohn's edition. See ante, i. 71, for Johnson's rapid reading.

[1034] Lord Mahon (War of the Succession in Spain, Appendix, p. 131) proves that a Captain Carleton really served. 'It is not impossible,' he says, 'that the MS. may have been intrusted to De Foe for the purpose of correction or revision...The Memoirs are most strongly marked with internal proofs of authenticity.' Lockhart (Life of Scott, iii. 84) says:—'It seems to be now pretty generally believed that Carleton's Memoirs were among the numberless fabrications of De Foe; but in this case (if the fact indeed be so), as in that of his Cavalier, he no doubt had before him the rude journal of some officer.' Dr. Burton (Reign of Queen Anne ii. 173) says that MSS. in the British Museum disprove 'the possibility of De Foe's authorship.'

[1035] Lord Chesterfield (Letters, ii. 109) writing to his son on Nov. 29, 1748, says of Mr. Eliot:—'Imitate that application of his, which has made him know all thoroughly, and to the bottom. He does not content himself with the surface of knowledge; but works in the mine for it, knowing that it lies deep.'

[1036] The Houghton Collection was sold in 1779 by the third Earl of Orford, to the Empress of Russia for L40,555. (Walpole's Letters, vii. 227, note 1.)

Horace Walpole wrote on Aug. 4 of that year (ib. p. 235):—'Well! adieu to Houghton! about its mad master I shall never trouble myself more. From the moment he came into possession, he has undermined every act of my father that was within his reach, but, having none of that great man's sense or virtues, he could only lay wild hands on lands and houses; and since he has stript Houghton of its glory, I do not care a straw what he does with the stone or the acres.'

[1037] This museum at Alkerington near Manchester is described in the Gent. Mag. 1773, p.219. A proposal was made in Parliament to buy it for the British Museum. Ib. 1783, p. 919. On July 8, 1784, a bill enabling Lever to dispose of it by lottery passed the House of Commons. Ib. 1784, p.705.

[1038] Johnson defines intuition as sight of anything; immediate knowledge; and sagacity as quickness of scent; acuteness of discovery.

[1039] In the first edition it stands 'A gentleman' and below instead of Mr. ——, Mr. ——. In the second edition Mr. —— becomes Mr. ——. In the third edition young is added. Young Mr. Burke is probably meant. As it stood in the second edition it might have been thought that Edmund Burke was the gentleman; the more so as Johnson often denied his want of wit.

[1040] Hamlet, act i. sc. 2.

[1041] See ante, i. 372, note 1.

[1042] Windham says (Diary, p. 34) that when Dr. Brocklesby made this offer 'Johnson pressed his hands and said, "God bless you through Jesus Christ, but I will take no money but from my sovereign." This, if I mistake not, was told the King through West.' Dr. Brocklesby wrote to Burke, on July 2, 1788, to make him 'an instant present of L1000, which,' he continues, 'for years past, by will, I had destined as a testimony of my regard on my decease.' Burke, accepting the present, said:—'I shall never be ashamed to have it known, that I am obliged to one who never can be capable of converting his kindness into a burthen.' Burke's Corres. iii.78. See ante, p. 263, for the just praise bestowed by Johnson on physicians in his Life of Garth.

[1043] See ante, ii. 194.

[1044] Letters to Mrs. Thrale, vol. ii. p 375. BOSWELL.

[1045] Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 45) describes him as 'a very handsome, gentlemanly, and amiable person. Mme. D'Arblay tells how one evening at Dr. Burney's home, when Signor Piozzi was playing on the piano, 'Mrs. Thrale stealing on tip-toe behind him, ludicrously began imitating him. Dr. Burney whispered to her, "Because, Madam, you have no ear yourself for music, will you destroy the attention of all who in that one point are otherwise gifted?"' Mrs. Thrale took this rebuke very well. This was her first meeting with Piozzi. It was in Mr. Thrale's life-time. Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii. 110.

[1046] Dr. Johnson's letter to Sir John Hawkins, Life, p. 570. BOSWELL. The last time Miss Burney saw Johnson, not three weeks before his death, he told her that the day before he had seen Miss Thrale. 'I then said:—"Do you ever, Sir, hear from mother?" "No," cried he, "nor write to her. I drive her quite from my mind. If I meet with one of her letters, I burn it instantly. I have burnt all I can find. I never speak of her, and I desire never to hear of her more. I drive her, as I said, wholly from my mind."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 328.

[1047] See ante, i. 493.

[1048] Anec. p. 293. BOSWELL.

[1049] 'The saying of the old philosopher who observes, "that he who wants least is most like the gods who want nothing," was a favourite sentence with Dr. Johnson, who on his own part required less attendance, sick or well, than ever I saw any human creature. Conversation was all he required to make him happy.' Piozzi's Anec. p.275. Miss Burney's account of the life at Streatham is generally very cheerful. I suspect that the irksome confinement described by Mrs. Piozzi was not felt by her till she became attached to Mr. Piozzi. This caused a great change in her behaviour and much unhappiness. (Ante, p. 138, note 4.) He at times treated her harshly. (Ante, p. 160, note.) Two passages in her letters to Miss Burney shew a want of feeling in her for a man who for nearly twenty years had been to her almost as a father. On Feb. 18, 1784, she writes:—'Johnson is in a sad way doubtless; yet he may still with care last another twelve-month, and every week's existence is gain to him, who, like good Hezekiah, wearies Heaven with entreaties for life. I wrote him a very serious letter the other day.' On March 23 she writes:—' My going to London would be a dreadful expense, and bring on a thousand inquiries and inconveniences—visits to Johnson and from Cator.' It is likely that in other letters there were like passages, but these letters Miss Burney 'for cogent reasons destroyed.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 305, 7, 8.

[1050] 'Bless'd paper credit! last and best supply! That lends corruption lighter wings to fly!'

Pope, Moral Essays, iii. 39.

[1051] Who has been pleased to furnish me with his remarks. BOSWELL. No doubt Malone, who says, however: 'On the whole the publick is indebted to her for her lively, though very inaccurate and artful, account of Dr. Johnson.' Prior's Malone, p. 364.

[1052] See ante, iii. 81.

[1053] Anec. p. 183. BOSWELL.

[1054] Hannah More. She, with her sisters, had kept a boarding-school at Bristol.

[1055] She first saw Johnson in June, 1774. According to her Memoirs (i. 48) he met her 'with good humour in his countenance, and continued in the same pleasant humour the whole of the evening.' She called on him in Bolt Court. One of her sisters writes:—'Miss Reynolds told the doctor of all our rapturous exclamations [about him] on the road. He shook his scientific head at Hannah, and said, "She was a silly thing."' Ib. p. 49. 'He afterwards mentioned to Miss Reynolds how much he had been touched with the enthusiasm of the young authoress, which was evidently genuine and unaffected.' Ib. p. 50. She met him again in the spring of 1775. Her sister writes:—'The old genius was extremely jocular, and the young one very pleasant. They indeed tried which could "pepper the highest" [Goldsmith's Retaliation], and it is not clear to me that he was really the highest seasoner.' Ib. p. 54. From the Mores we know nothing of his reproof. He had himself said of 'a literary lady'—no doubt Hannah More—'I was obliged to speak to Miss Reynolds to let her know that I desired she would not flatter me so much.' Ante, iii.293. Miss Burney records a story she had from Mrs. Thrale, 'which,' she continues, 'exceeds, I think, in its severity all the severe things I have yet heard of Dr. Johnson's saying. When Miss More was introduced to him, she began singing his praise in the warmest manner. For some time he heard her with that quietness which a long use of praise has given him: she then redoubled her strokes, till at length he turned suddenly to her, with a stern and angry countenance, and said, "Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i.103. Shortly afterwards Miss Burney records (ib. p. 121) that Mrs. Thrale said to him:—'We have told her what you said to Miss More, and I believe that makes her afraid.' He replied:—'Well, and if she was to serve me as Miss More did, I should say the same thing to her.' We have therefore three reports of what he said—one from Mrs. Thrale indirectly, one from her directly, and the third from Malone. However severe the reproof was, the Mores do not seem to have been much touched by it. At all events they enjoyed the meeting with Johnson, and Hannah More needed a second reproof that was conveyed to her through Miss Reynolds.

[1056] Anec. p. 202. BOSWELL.

[1057] See ante, i. 40, 68, 92, 415, 481; ii. 188, 194; iii. 229; and post, v. 245, note 2.

[1058] Anec. p. 44. BOSWELL. See ante, p. 318, note 1, where I quote the passage.

[1059] Ib. p. 23. BOSWELL.

[1060] Ib. p. 45. Mr. Hayward says:—'She kept a copious diary and notebook called Thraliana from 1776 to 1809. It is now,' [1861] he continues, 'in the possession of Mr. Salusbury, who deems it of too private and delicate a character to be submitted to strangers, but has kindly supplied me with some curious passages from it.' Hayward's Piozzi, i. 6.

[1061] Ib. p. 51 [192]. BOSWELL.

[1062] Anec. p. 193 [51]. BOSWELL.

[1063] Johnson, says Murphy, (Life, p. 96) 'felt not only kindness, but zeal and ardour for his friends.' 'Who,' he asks (ib. p. 144), 'was more sincere and steady in his friendships?' 'Numbers,' he says (ib. p. 146), 'still remember with gratitude the friendship which he shewed to them with unaltered affection for a number of years.'

[1064] See ante, ii. 285, and iii. 440.

[1065] Johnson's Works, i. 152, 3.

[1066] In vol. ii. of the Piozzi Letters some of these letters are given.

[1067] He gave Miss Thrale lessons in Latin. Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 243 and 427.

[1068] Anec. p. 258. BOSWELL.

[1069] George James Cholmondeley, Esq., grandson of George, third Earl of Cholmondeley, and one of the Commissioners of Excise; a gentleman respected for his abilities, and elegance of manners. BOSWELL. When I spoke to him a few years before his death upon this point, I found him very sore at being made the topic of such a debate, and very unwilling to remember any thing about either the offence or the apology. CROKER.

[1070] Letters to Mrs. Thrale, vol. ii. p. 12. BOSWELL.

[1071] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec.p. 258) lays the scene of this anecdote 'in some distant province, either Shropshire or Derbyshire, I believe.' Johnson drove through these counties with the Thrales in 1774 (ante, ii. 285). If the passage in the letter refers to the same anecdote—and Mrs. Piozzi does not, so far as I know, deny it—more than three years passed before Johnson was told of his rudeness. Baretti, in a MS. note on Piozzi Letters, ii. 12, says that the story was 'Mr. Cholmondeley's running away from his creditors.' In this he is certainly wrong; yet if Mr. Cholmondeley had run away, and others gave the same explanation of the passage, his soreness is easily accounted for.

[1072] Anec. p. 23. BOSWELL.

[1073] Ib. p. 302. BOSWELL.

[1074] Rasselas, chap, xvii

[1075] Paradise Lost, iv. 639.

[1076] Anec. p. 63. BOSWELL.

[1077] 'Johnson one day, on seeing an old terrier lie asleep by the fire-side at Streatham, said, "Presto, you are, if possible, a more lazy dog that I am."' Johnson's Works, ed. 1787, xi. 203.

[1078] Upon mentioning this to my friend Mr. Wilkes, he, with his usual readiness, pleasantly matched it with the following sentimental anecdote. He was invited by a young man of fashion at Paris, to sup with him and a lady, who had been for some time his mistress, but with whom he was going to part. He said to Mr. Wilkes that he really felt very much for her, she was in such distress; and that he meant to make her a present of two hundred louis-d'ors. Mr. Wilkes observed the behaviour of Mademoiselle, who sighed indeed very piteously, and assumed every pathetick air of grief; but eat no less than three French pigeons, which are as large as English partridges, besides other things. Mr. Wilkes whispered the gentleman, 'We often say in England, Excessive sorrow is exceeding dry, but I never heard Excessive sorrow is exceeding hungry. Perhaps one hundred will do.' The gentleman took the hint. BOSWELL.

[1079] See post, p. 367, for the passage omitted.

[1080] Sir Joshua Reynolds, on account of the excellence both of the sentiment and expression of this letter, took a copy of it which he shewed to some of his friends; one of whom, who admired it, being allowed to peruse it leisurely at home, a copy was made, and found its way into the newspapers and magazines. It was transcribed with some inaccuracies. I print it from the original draft in Johnson's own hand-writing. BOSWELL. Hawkins writes (Life, p. 574):—'Johnson, upon being told that it was in print, exclaimed in my hearing, "I am betrayed," but soon after forgot, as he was ever ready to do all real or supposed injuries, the error that made the publication possible.'

[1081] Cowper wrote of Thurlow:—'I know well the Chancellor's benevolence of heart, and how much he is misunderstood by the world. When he was young he would do the kindest things, and at an expense to himself which at that time he could ill afford, and he would do them too in the most secret manner.' Southey's Cowper, vii. 128. Yet Thurlow did not keep his promise made to Cowper when they were fellow-clerks in an attorney's office. 'Thurlow, I am nobody, and shall be always nobody, and you will be chancellor. You shall provide for me when you are.' He smiled, and replied, 'I surely will.' Ib. i. 41. When Cowper sent him the first volume of his poems, 'he thought it not worth his while,' the poet writes, 'to return me any answer, or to take the least notice of my present.' Ib. xv. 176. Mr. (afterwards Sir) W. Jones, in two letters to Burke, speaks of Thurlow as the [Greek: thaerion] (beast). 'I heard last night, with surprise and affliction,' he wrote on Feb. 15, 1783,'that the [Greek: thaerion] was to continue in office. Now I can assure you from my own positive knowledge (and I know him well), that although he hates our species in general, yet his particular hatred is directed against none more virulently than against Lord North, and the friends of the late excellent Marquis.' Burke's Corres. ii. 488, and iii. 10.

[1082] 'Scarcely had Pitt obtained possession of unbounded power when an aged writer of the highest eminence, who had made very little by his writings, and who was sinking into the grave under a load of infirmities and sorrows, wanted five or six hundred pounds to enable him, during the winter or two which might still remain to him, to draw his breath more easily in the soft climate of Italy. Not a farthing was to be obtained; and before Christmas the author of the English Dictionary and of the Lives of the Poets had gasped his last in the river fog and coal smoke of Fleet-street.' Macaulay's Writings and Speeches, ed. 1871, p. 413. Just before Macaulay, with monstrous exaggeration, says that Gibbon, 'forced by poverty to leave his country, completed his immortal work on the shores of Lake Leman.' This poverty of Gibbon would have been 'splendour' to Johnson. Debrett's Royal Kalendar, for 1795 (p. 88), shews that there were twelve Lords of the King's Bedchamber receiving each L1000 a year, and fourteen Grooms of the Bedchamber receiving each, L500 a year. As Burns was made a gauger, so Johnson might have been made a Lord, or at least a Groom of the Bedchamber. It is not certain that Pitt heard of the application for an increased pension. Mr. Croker quotes from Thurlow's letter to Reynolds of Nov. 18, 1784:—'It was impossible for me to take the King's pleasure on the suggestion I presumed to move. I am an untoward solicitor.' Whether he consulted Pitt cannot be known. Mr. Croker notices a curious obliteration in this letter. The Chancellor had written:—'It would have suited the purpose better, if nobody had heard of it, except Dr. Johnson, you and J. Boswell.' Boswell has been erased—'artfully' too, says—Mr. Croker-so that 'the sentence appears to run, "except Dr. Johnson, you, and I."' Mr. Croker, with his usual suspiciousness, suspects 'an uncandid trick.' But it is very likely that Thurlow himself made the obliteration, regardless of grammar. He might easily have thought that it would have been better still had Boswell not been in the secret.

[1083] See ante, iii. 176.

[1084] On June 11 Boswell and Johnson were together (ante, p. 293). The date perhaps should be July 11. The letter that follows next is dated July 12.

[1085] 'Even in our flight from vice some virtue lies.' FRANCIS. Horace, i. Epistles, I. 41.

[1086] See vol. ii. p. 258. BOSWELL.

[1087] Mrs. Johnson died in 1752. See ante, i. 241, note 2.

[1088] See Appendix.

[1089] Printed in his Works [i. 150]. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 241, note 2.

[1090] He wrote to Mr. Ryland on the same day:—'Be pleased to let the whole be done with privacy that I may elude the vigilance of the papers.' Notes and Queries, 5th S. vii. 381.

[1091] Boileau, Art Poetique, chant iv.

[1092] This is probably an errour either of the transcript or the press. Removes seems to be the word intended. MALONE.

[1093] See ante, i. 332, and post p. 360.

[1094] See ante, p. 267.

[1095] I have heard Dr. Johnson protest that he never had quite as much as he wished of wall-fruit, except once in his life.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 103.

[1096] At the Essex Head, Essex-street. BOSWELL.

[1097] Juvenal, Satires, x. 8:—

'Fate wings with every wish the afflictive dart.'

Vanity of Human Wishes, l. 15.

[1098] Mr. Allen, the printer. BOSWELL. See ante, iii. 141, 269.

[1099] It was on this day that he wrote the prayer given below (p. 370) in which is found that striking line—'this world where much is to be done and little to be known.'

[1100] His letter to Dr. Heberden (Croker's Boswell, p. 789) shews that he had gone with Dr. Brocklesby to the last Academy dinner, when, as he boasted, 'he went up all the stairs to the pictures without stopping to rest or to breathe.' Ante, p. 270, note 2.

[1101]

Quid te exempta levat spinis de pluribus una? 'Pluck out one thorn to mitigate thy pain, What boots it while so many more remain?'

FRANCIS. Horace, 2 Epistles, ii. 212.

[1102] See ante, iii. 4, note 2.

[1103] Sir Joshua's physician. He is mentioned by Goldsmith in his verses to the Miss Hornecks. Forster's Goldsmith, ii. 149.

[1104] How much balloons filled people's minds at this time is shewn by such entries as the following in Windham's Diary:-'Feb 7, 1784. Did not rise till past nine; from that time till eleven, did little more than indulge in idle reveries about balloons.' p. 3. 'July 20. The greater part of the time, till now, one o'clock, spent in foolish reveries about balloons.' p. 12. Horace Walpole wrote on Sept. 30 (Letters, viii. 505):—'I cannot fill my paper, as the newspapers do, with air-balloons; which though ranked with the invention of navigation, appear to me as childish as the flying kites of school-boys.' 'Do not write about the balloon,' wrote Johnson to Reynolds (post, p. 368), 'whatever else you may think proper to say.' In the beginning of the year he had written:—'It is very seriously true that a subscription of L800 has been raised for the wire and workmanship of iron wings.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 345.

[1105] It is remarkable that so good a Latin scholar as Johnson, should have been so inattentive to the metre, as by mistake to have written stellas instead of ignes. BOSWELL.

[1106]

'Micat inter omnes Julium sidus, velut inter ignes Luna minores.' 'And like the Moon, the feebler fires among, Conspicuous shines the Julian star.'

FRANCIS. Horace, Odes, i. 12. 46.

[1107] See ante, iii. 209.

[1108]

'The little blood that creeps within his veins Is but just warmed in a hot fever's pains.'

DRYDEN. Juvenal, Satires, x. 217.

[1109] Lunardi had made, on Sept. 15, the first balloon ascent in England. Gent. Mag. 1784, p. 711. Johnson wrote to Mr. Ryland on Sept. 18:—'I had this day in three letters three histories of the Flying Man in the great Balloon.' He adds:—'I live in dismal solitude.' Notes and Queries, 5th S. vii. 381.

[1110] 'Sept. 27, 1784. Went to see Blanchard's balloon. Met Burke and D. Burke; walked with them to Pantheon to see Lunardi's. Sept. 29. About nine came to Brookes's, where I heard that the balloon had been burnt about four o'clock.' Windham's Diary, p. 24.

[1111] His love of London continually appears. In a letter from him to Mrs. Smart, wife of his friend the Poet, which is published in a well-written life of him, prefixed to an edition of his Poems, in 1791, there is the following sentence:-'To one that has passed so many years in the pleasures and opulence of London, there are few places that can give much delight.'

Once, upon reading that line in the curious epitaph quoted in The Spectator;

'Born in New-England, did in London die;'

he laughed and said, 'I do not wonder at this. It would have been strange, if born in London, he had died in New-England.' BOSWELL. Mrs. Smart was in Dublin when Johnson wrote to her. After the passage quoted by Boswell he continued:—'I think, Madam, you may look upon your expedition as a proper preparative to the voyage which we have often talked of. Dublin, though a place much worse than London, is not so bad as Iceland.' Smart's Poems, i. xxi. For Iceland see ante, i. 242. The epitaph, quoted in The Spectator, No. 518, begins—

Here Thomas Sapper lies interred. Ah why! Born in New-England, did in London die.'

[1112] St. Mark, v. 34.

[1113] There is no record of this in the Gent. Mag. Among the 149 persons who that summer had been sentenced to death (ante, p. 328) who would notice these two?

[1114] See ante, p. 356, note 1

[1115] Johnson wrote for him a Dedication of his Tasso in 1763. Ante, i. 383.

[1116] There was no information for which Dr. Johnson was less grateful that than for that which concerned the weather. It was in allusion to his impatience with those who were reduced to keep conversation alive by observations on the weather, that he applied the old proverb to himself. If any one of his intimate acquaintance told him it was hot or cold, wet or dry, windy or calm, he would stop them, by saying, 'Poh! poh! you are telling us that of which none but men in a mine or a dungeon can be ignorant. Let us bear with patience, or enjoy in quiet, elementary changes, whether for the better or the worse, as they are never secrets.' BURNEY. In The Idler, No. II, Johnson shews that 'an Englishman's notice of the weather is the natural consequence of changeable skies and uncertain seasons... In our island every man goes to sleep unable to guess whether he shall behold in the morning a bright or cloudy atmosphere, whether his rest shall be lulled by a shower, or broken by a tempest. We therefore rejoice mutually at good weather, as at an escape from something that we feared; and mutually complain of bad, as of the loss of something that we hoped.' See ante, i. 332, and iv. 353.

[1117] His Account of the Musical Performances in Commemoration of Handel. See ante, p. 283.

[1118] The celebrated Miss Fanny Burney. BOSWELL.

[1119] Dr. Burney's letter must have been franked; otherwise there would have been no frugality, for each enclosure was charged as a separate letter.

[1120] He does not know, that is to say, what people of his acquaintance were in town, privileged to receive letters post free; such as members of either House of Parliament.

[1121] Consolation is clearly a blunder, Malone's conjecture mortification seems absurd.

[1122] See ante, iii. 48, and iv. 177.

[1123] Windham visited him at Ashbourne in the end of August, after the former of these letters was written. See ante, p. 356.

[1124] This may refer, as Mr. Croker says, to Hamilton's generous offer, mentioned ante, p. 244. Yet Johnson, with his accurate mind, was not likely to assign to the spring an event of the previous November.

[1125] Johnson refers to Pope's lines on Walpole:—

'Seen him I have but in his happier hour Of social pleasure, ill-exchanged for power.'

Satires. Epilogue, i. 29.

[1126] Son of the late Peter Paradise, Esq. his Britannick Majesty's Consul at Salonica, in Macedonia, by his lady, a native of that country. He studied at Oxford, and has been honoured by that University with the degree of LL.D. He is distinguished not only by his learning and talents, but by an amiable disposition, gentleness of manners, and a very general acquaintance with well-informed and accomplished persons of almost all nations. BOSWELL.

[1127] Bookseller to his Majesty. BOSWELL.

[1128] Mr. Cruikshank attended him as a surgeon the year before. Ante, p. 239.

[1129]Allan Ramsay, Esq. painter to his Majesty, who died Aug. 10, 1784, in the 71st year of his age, much regretted by his friends. BOSWELL. See ante, p. 260.

[1130] Northcote (Life of Reynolds, ii. 187) says that Johnson 'most probably refers to Sir Joshua's becoming painter to the King. 'I know,' he continues, 'that Sir Joshua expected the appointment would be offered to him on the death of Ramsay, and expressed his disapprobation with regard to soliciting for it; but he was informed that it was a necessary point of etiquette, with which at last he complied.' His 'furious purposes' should seem to have been his intention to resign the Presidency of the Academy, on finding that the place was not at once given him, and in the knowledge that in the Academy there was a party against him. Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 448.

[1131] See ante, p. 348.

[1132] The Chancellor had not, it should seem, asked the King. See ante, p. 350, note.

[1133] The Duke of Devonshire has kindly given me the following explanation of this term:—'It was formerly the custom at some (I believe several) of the large country-houses to have dinners at which any of the neighbouring gentry and clergy might present themselves as guests without invitation. The custom had been discontinued at Chatsworth before my recollection, and so far as I am aware is now only kept-up at Wentworth, Lord Fitzwilliam's house in Yorkshire, where a few public dinners are still given annually. I believe, however, that all persons intending to be present on such occasions are now expected to give notice some days previously. Public dinners were also given formerly by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and if I am not mistaken also by the Archbishop of York. I have myself been present at a public dinner at Lambeth Palace within the last fifty years or thereabouts, and I have been at one or more such dinners at Wentworth.' Since receiving this explanation I have read the following in the second part of the Greville Memoirs, i. 99:—'June 1, 1838. I dined yesterday at Lambeth, at the Archbishop's public dinner, the handsomest entertainment I ever saw. There were nearly a hundred people present, all full-dressed or in uniform. Nothing can be more dignified and splendid than the whole arrangement.'

[1134] Six weeks later he was willing to hear even of balloons, so long as he got a letter. 'You,' he wrote to Mr. Sastres, 'may always have something to tell: you live among the various orders of mankind, and may make a letter from the exploits, sometimes of the philosopher, and sometimes of the pickpocket. You see some balloons succeed and some miscarry, and a thousand strange and a thousand foolish things.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 412.

[1135] See ante, p. 349, note.

[1136] 'He alludes probably to the place of King's Painter; which, since Burke's reforming the King's household expenses, had been reduced from L200 to L50 per annum.' Northcote's Reynolds, ii. 188. The place was more profitable than Johnson thought. 'It was worth having from the harvest it brought in by the multiplication of the faces of King and Queen as presents for ambassadors and potentates.' This is shewn by the following note in Sir Joshua's price-book:—'Nov. 28, 1789, remain in the Academy five Kings, four Queens; in the house two Kings and one Queen.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 449.

[1137] Mr. Nichols published in 1782 Anecdotes of William Bowyer, Printer. In 1812-15 he brought out this work, recast and enlarged, under the title of Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century. See ante, p. 161.

[1138] In the original (which is in the British Museum) not hints but names.

[1139] On Nov. 4, he wrote to Mr. Ryland:—'I have just received a letter in which you tell me that you love to hear from me, and I value such a declaration too much to neglect it. To have a friend, and a friend like you, may be numbered amongst the first felicities of life; at a time when weakness either of body or mind loses the pride and the confidence of self-sufficiency, and looks round for that help which perhaps human kindness cannot give, and which we yet are willing to expect from one another. I am at this time very much dejected.... I am now preparing myself for my return, and do not despair of some more monthly meetings [post, Appendix C]. To hear that dear Payne is better gives me great delight. I saw the draught of the stone [over Mrs. Johnson's grave, ante, p. 351]. Shall I ever be able to bear the sight of this stone? In your company I hope I shall.' Mr. Morrison's Autographs, vol. ii.

[1140] To him as a writer might be generally applied what he said of Rochester:—'His pieces are commonly short, such as one fit of resolution would produce.' Works, vii. 159.

[1141] Odes, iv.7. Works, i. 137.

[1142] Against inqitisitive and perplexing thoughts. 'O LORD, my Maker and Protector, who hast graciously sent me into this world to work out my salvation, enable me to drive from me all such unquiet and perplexing thoughts as may mislead or hinder me in the practice of those duties which Thou hast required. When I behold the works of thy hands, and consider the course of thy providence, give me grace always to remember that thy thoughts are not my thoughts, nor thy ways my ways. And while it shall please Thee to continue me in this world, where much is to be done, and little to be known, teach me by thy Holy Spirit, to withdraw my mind from unprofitable and dangerous enquiries, from difficulties vainly curious, and doubts impossible to be solved. Let me rejoice in the light which Thou hast imparted, let me serve Thee with active zeal and humble confidence, and wait with patient expectation for the time in which the soul which Thou receivest shall be satisfied with knowledge. Grant this, O LORD, for JESUS CHRIST'S sake. Amen.' BOSWELL. Pr. and Med. p. 219.

[1143] Life of Johnson, p. 599.

[1144] Porson with admirable humour satirised Hawkins for his attack on Barber. Gent. Mag. 1787, p. 752, and Porson Tracts, p. 358. Baretti in his Tolondron, p. 149, says that 'Barber from his earliest youth served Johnson with the greatest affection and disinterestedness.'

[1145] Vol. ii. p. 30. BOSWELL.

[1146] I shall add one instance only to those which I have thought it incumbent on me to point out. Talking of Mr. Garrick's having signified his willingness to let Johnson have the loan of any of his books to assist him in his edition of Shakspeare [ante, ii. 192]; Sir John says, (p. 444,) 'Mr. Garrick knew not what risque he ran by this offer. Johnson had so strange a forgetfulness of obligations of this sort, that few who lent him books ever saw them again.' This surely conveys a most unfavourable insinuation, and has been so understood. Sir John mentions the single case of a curious edition of Politian [ante, i. 90], which he tells us, 'appeared to belong to Pembroke College, and which, probably, had been considered by Johnson as his own, for upwards of fifty years.' Would it not be fairer to consider this as an inadvertence, and draw no general inference? The truth is, that Johnson was so attentive, that in one of his manuscripts in my possession, he has marked in two columns, books borrowed, and books lent.

In Sir John Hawkins's compilation, there are, however, some passages concerning Johnson which have unquestionable merit. One of them I shall transcribe, in justice to a writer whom I have had too much occasion to censure, and to shew my fairness as the biographer of my illustrious friend: 'There was wanting in his conduct and behaviour, that dignity which results from a regular and orderly course of action, and by an irresistible power commands esteem. He could not be said to be a stayed man, nor so to have adjusted in his mind the balance of reason and passion, as to give occasion to say what may be observed of some men, that all they do is just, fit, and right.' [Hawkins's Johnson, p. 409.] Yet a judicious friend well suggests, 'It might, however, have been added, that such men are often merely just, and rigidly correct, while their hearts are cold and unfeeling; and that Johnson's virtues were of a much higher tone than those of the stayed, orderly man, here described.' BOSWELL.

[1147] 'Lich, a dead carcase; whence Lichfield, the field of the dead, a city in Staffordshire, so named from martyred Christians. Salve magna parens.' It is curious that in the Abridgment of the Dictionary he struck out this salutation, though he left the rest of the article. Salve magna parens, (Hail, mighty parent) is from Virgil's Georgics, ii. 173. The Rev. T. Twining, when at Lichfield in 1797, says:—'I visited the famous large old willow-tree, which Johnson, they say, used to kiss when he came to Lichfield.' Recreations and Studies of a Country Clergyman of the XVIII Century, p. 227.

[1148] The following circumstance, mutually to the honour of Johnson, and the corporation of his native city, has been communicated to me by the Reverend Dr. Vyse, from the Town-Clerk:—'Mr. Simpson has now before him, a record of the respect and veneration which the Corporation of Lichfield, in the year 1767, had for the merits and learning of Dr. Johnson. His father built the corner-house in the Market-place, the two fronts of which, towards Market and Broad-market-street, stood upon waste land of the Corporation, under a forty years' lease, which was then expired. On the 15th of August, 1767, at a common-hall of the bailiffs and citizens, it was ordered (and that without any solicitation,) that a lease should be granted to Samuel Johnson, Doctor of Laws, of the encroachments at his house, for the term of ninety-nine years, at the old rent, which was five shillings. Of which, as Town-Clerk, Mr. Simpson had the honour and pleasure of informing him, and that he was desired to accept it, without paying any fine on the occasion, which lease was afterwards granted, and the Doctor died possessed of this property.' BOSWELL.

[1149] See vol. i. p. 37. BOSWELL.

[1150] According to Miss Seward, who was Mr. White's cousin, 'Johnson once called him "the rising strength of Lichfield."' Seward's Letters, i. 335.

[1151] The Rev. R. Warner, who visited Lichfield in 1801, gives in his Tour through the Northern Counties, i. 105, a fuller account. He is clearly wrong in the date of its occurrence, and in one other matter, yet his story may in the main be true. He says that Johnson's friends at Lichfield missed him one morning; the servants said that he had set off at a very early hour, whither they knew not. Just before supper he returned. He informed his hostess of his breach of filial duty, which had happened just fifty years before on that very day. 'To do away the sin of this disobedience, I this day went,' he said, 'in a chaise to—, and going into the market at the time of high business uncovered my head, and stood with it bare an hour, before the stall which my father had formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by, and the inclemency of the weather.' This penance may recall Dante's lines,—

'Quando vivea piu glorioso, disse, Liberamente nel campo di Siena, Ogni vergogna deposta, s'affisse.' '"When at his glory's topmost height," said he, "Respect of dignity all cast aside, Freely he fix'd him on Sienna's plain."'

CARY. Dante, Purgatory. Cant. xi. l. 133.

[1152]

'How instinct varies in the grovelling swine, Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine.'

Pope, Essay on Man, i. 221.

[1153] See ante, iii. 153, 296.

[1154] Mr. Burke suggested to me as applicable to Johnson, what Cicero, in his CATO MAJOR, says of Appius:—'Intentum enim animum tanquam arcum habebat, nec languescens succumbebat senectuti;' repeating, at the same time, the following noble words in the same passage:—'Ita enim senectus honesta est, si se ipsa defendit, si jus suum retinet, si nemini emancipata est, si usque ad extremum vitae spiritum vindicet jus suum.' BOSWELL. The last line runs in the original:-'si usque ad ultimum spiritum dominatur in suos.' Cato Major, xi. 38.

[1155]

'atrocem animum Catonis.' 'Cato— Of spirit unsubdued.'

FRANCIS. Horace, 2 Odes, i. 24.

[1156] Yet Baretti, who knew Johnson well, in a MS. note on Piozzi Letters, i.315, says:—'If ever Johnson took any delight in anything it was to converse with some old acquaintance. New people he never loved to be in company with, except ladies, when disposed to caress and flatter him.'

[1157] Johnson, thirty-four years earlier, wrote:—'I think there is some reason for questioning whether the body and mind are not so proportioned that the one can bear all that can be inflicted on the other; whether virtue cannot stand its ground as long as life, and whether a soul well principled will not be separated sooner than subdued.' The Rambler, No. 32. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14, 1780:—'But what if I am seventy-two; I remember Sulpitius says of Saint Martin (now that's above your reading), Est animus victor annorum, et senectuti cedere nescius. Match me that among your young folks.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 177. On Sept. 2, 1784, he wrote to Mr. Sastres the Italian master:—'I have hope of standing the English winter, and of seeing you, and reading Petrarch at Bolt-court.' Ib. p. 407.

[1158] Life of Johnson, p. 7.

[1159] It is a most agreeable circumstance attending the publication of this Work, that Mr. Hector has survived his illustrious schoolfellow so many years; that he still retains his health and spirits; and has gratified me with the following acknowledgement: 'I thank you, most sincerely thank you, for the great and long continued entertainment your Life of Dr. Johnson has afforded me, and others, of my particular friends.' Mr. Hector, besides setting me right as to the verses on a sprig of Myrtle, (see vol. i. p. 92, note,) has favoured me with two English odes, written by Dr. Johnson, at an early period of his life, which will appear in my edition of his poems. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 16, note 1.

[1160] The editor of the Biographia Britannica. Ante, iii. 174.

[1161] On Dec. 23, Miss Adams wrote to a friend:—'We are all under the sincerest grief for the loss of poor Dr. Johnson. He spent three or four days with my father at Oxford, and promised to come again; as he was, he said, nowhere so happy.' Pemb. Coll. MSS.

[1162] See ante, p. 293.

[1163] Mr. Strahan says (Preface, p. iv.) that Johnson, being hindered by illness from revising these prayers, 'determined to give the MSS., without revision, in charge to me. Accordingly one morning, on my visiting him by desire at an early hour, he put these papers into my hands, with instructions for committing them to the press, and with a promise to prepare a sketch of his own life to accompany them.' Whatever Johnson wished about the prayers, it passes belief that he ever meant for the eye of the world these minute accounts of his health and his feelings. Some parts indeed Mr. Strahan himself suppressed, as the Pemb. Coll. MSS. shew (ante, p. 84, note 4). It is curious that one portion at least fell into other hands (ante, ii. 476). There are other apparent gaps in the diary which raise the suspicion that it was only fragments that Mr. Strahan obtained. On the other hand Mr. Strahan had nothing to gain by the publication beyond notoriety (see his Preface, p. vi.). Dr. Adams, whose name is mentioned in the preface, expressed in a letter to the Gent. Mag. 1785, p. 755, his disapproval of the publication. Mr. Courtenay (Poetical Review, ed. 1786, p. 7), thus attacked Mr. Strahan:—

'Let priestly S—h—n in a godly fit The tale relate, in aid of Holy Writ; Though candid Adams, by whom David fell [A], Who ancient miracles sustained so well, To recent wonders may deny his aid, Nor own a pious brother of the trade.'

[A] The Rev. Dr. Adams of Oxford, distinguished for his answer to David Hume's Essay on Miracles.

[1164] Johnson once said to Miss Burney of her brother Charles:—'I should be glad to see him if he were not your brother; but were he a dog, a cat, a rat, a frog, and belonged to you, I must needs be glad to see him.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 233. On Nov. 25 she called on him. 'He let me in, though very ill. He told me he was going to try what sleeping out of town might do for him. "I remember," said he, "that my wife, when she was near her end, poor woman, was also advised to sleep out of town; and when she was carried to the lodgings that had been prepared for her, she complained that the staircase was in very bad condition, for the plaster was beaten off the walls in many places." "Oh!" said the man of the house, "that's nothing but by the knocks against it of the coffins of the poor souls that have died in the lodgings." He laughed, though not without apparent secret anguish, in telling me this.' Miss Burney continues:—'How delightfully bright are his faculties, though the poor and infirm machine that contains them seems alarmingly giving way. Yet, all brilliant as he was, I saw him growing worse, and offered to go, which, for the first time I ever remember, he did not oppose; but most kindly pressing both my hands, "Be not," he said, in a voice of even tenderness, "be not longer in coming again for my letting you go now." I assured him I would be the sooner, and was running off, but he called me back in a solemn voice, and in a manner the most energetic, said:—"Remember me in your prayers."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 327. See ante, iii. 367, note 4.

[1165] Mr. Hector's sister and Johnson's first love. Ante, ii. 459.

[1166] The Rev. Dr. Taylor. BOSWELL.

[1167] See ante, ii. 474, and iii. 180.

[1168] 'Reliquum est, [Greek: Sphartan elaches, tahutan khusmei].' Cicero, Epistolae ad Atticum, iv. 6. 'Spartam nactus es, hanc orna.' Erasmus, Adagiorum Chiliades, ed. 1559, p. 485.

[1169] Temple says of the spleen that it is a disease too refined for this country and people, who are well when they are not ill, and pleased when they are not troubled; are content, because they think little of it, and seek their happiness in the common eases and commodities of life, or the increase of riches; not amusing themselves with the more speculative contrivances of passion, or refinements of pleasure.' Temple's Works, ed. 1757, i. 170.

[1170] It is truly wonderful to consider the extent and constancy of Johnson's literary ardour, notwithstanding the melancholy which clouded and embittered his existence. Besides the numerous and various works which he executed, he had, at different times, formed schemes of a great many more, of which the following catalogue was given by him to Mr. Langton, and by that gentleman presented to his Majesty:

'DIVINITY.

'A small book of precepts and directions for piety; the hint taken from the directions in Morton's exercise.

'PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY, and LITERATURE in general.

'History of Criticism, as it relates to judging of authours, from Aristotle to the present age. An account of the rise and improvements of that art; of the different opinions of authours, ancient and modern.

'Translation of the History of Herodian.

'New edition of Fairfax's Translation of Tasso, with notes, glossary, &c.

'Chaucer, a new edition of him, from manuscripts and old editions, with various readings, conjectures, remarks on his language, and the changes it had undergone from the earliest times to his age, and from his to the present: with notes explanatory of customs, &c., and references to Boccace, and other authours from whom he has borrowed, with an account of the liberties he has taken in telling the stories; his life, and an exact etymological glossary.

'Aristotle's Rhetorick, a translation of it into English.

'A Collection of Letters, translated from the modern writers, with some account of the several authours.

'Oldham's Poems, with notes, historical and critical.

'Roscommon's Poems, with notes.

'Lives of the Philosophers, written with a polite air, in such a manner as may divert as well as instruct.

'History of the Heathen Mythology, with an explication of the fables, both allegorical and historical; with references to the poets.

'History of the State of Venice, in a compendious manner.

'Aristotle's Ethicks, an English translation of them, with notes.

'Geographical Dictionary, from the French.

'Hierocles upon Pythagoras, translated into English, perhaps with notes. This is done by Norris.

'A book of Letters, upon all kinds of subjects.

'Claudian, a new edition of his works, cum notis variorum, in the manner of Burman.

'Tully's Tusculan Questions, a translation of them.

'Tully's De Natura Deorum, a translation of those books.

'Benzo's New History of the New World, to be translated.

'Machiavel's History of Florence, to be translated.

'History of the Revival of Learning in Europe, containing an account of whatever contributed to the restoration of literature; such as controversies, printing, the destruction of the Greek empire, the encouragement of great men, with the lives of the most eminent patrons and most eminent early professors of all kinds of learning in different countries.

'A Body of Chronology, in verse, with historical notes.

'A Table of the Spectators, Tatlers, and Guardians, distinguished by figures into six degrees of value, with notes, giving the reasons of preference or degradation.

'A Collection of Letters from English authours, with a preface giving some account of the writers; with reasons for selection, and criticism upon styles; remarks on each letter, if needful.

'A Collection of Proverbs from various languages. Jan. 6,—53.

'A Dictionary to the Common Prayer, in imitation of Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible. March, 52.

'A Collection of Stories and Examples, like those of Valerius Maximus. Jan. 10,—53.

'From Aelian, a volume of select Stories, perhaps from others. Jan. 28,-53.

'Collection of Travels, Voyages, Adventures, and Descriptions of Countries.

'Dictionary of Ancient History and Mythology.

'Treatise on the Study of Polite Literature, containing the history of learning, directions for editions, commentaries, &c.

'Maxims, Characters, and Sentiments, after the manner of Bruyere, collected out of ancient authours, particularly the Greek, with Apophthegms.

'Classical Miscellanies, Select Translations from ancient Greek and Latin authours.

'Lives of Illustrious Persons, as well of the active as the learned, in imitation of Plutarch.

'Judgement of the learned upon English authours.

'Poetical Dictionary of the English tongue.

'Considerations upon the present state of London.

'Collection of Epigrams, with notes and observations.

'Observations on the English language, relating to words, phrases, and modes of Speech.

'Minutiae Literariae, Miscellaneous reflections, criticisms, emendations, notes.

'History of the Constitution.

'Comparison of Philosophical and Christian Morality, by sentences collected from the moralists and fathers.

'Plutarch's Lives, in English, with notes.

'POETRY and works of IMAGINATION.

'Hymn to Ignorance.

'The Palace of Sloth,—a vision.

'Coluthus, to be translated.

'Prejudice,—a poetical essay.

'The Palace of Nonsense,—a vision.'

Johnson's extraordinary facility of composition, when he shook off his constitutional indolence, and resolutely sat down to write, is admirably described by Mr. Courtenay, in his Poetical Review, which I have several times quoted:

'While through life's maze he sent a piercing view, His mind expansive to the object grew. With various stores of erudition fraught, The lively image, the deep-searching thought, Slept in repose;—but when the moment press'd, The bright ideas stood at once confess'd; Instant his genius sped its vigorous rays, And o'er the letter'd world diffus'd a blaze: As womb'd with fire the cloud electrick flies, And calmly o'er th' horizon seems to rise; Touch'd by the pointed steel, the lightning flows, And all th' expanse with rich effulgence glows.'

We shall in vain endeavour to know with exact precision every production of Johnson's pen. He owned to me, that he had written about forty sermons; but as I understood that he had given or sold them to different persons, who were to preach them as their own, he did not consider himself at liberty to acknowledge them. Would those who were thus aided by him, who are still alive, and the friends of those who are dead, fairly inform the world, it would be obligingly gratifying a reasonable curiosity, to which there should, I think, now be no objection. Two volumes of them, published since his death, are sufficiently ascertained; see vol. iii. p. 181. I have before me, in his hand-writing, a fragment of twenty quarto leaves, of a translation into English of Sallust, De Bella Catilinario. When it was done I have no notion; but it seems to have no very superior merit to mark it as his. Beside the publications heretofore mentioned, I am satisfied, from internal evidence, to admit also as genuine the following, which, notwithstanding all my chronological care, escaped me in the course of this work:

'Considerations on the Case of Dr. Trapp's Sermons,' + published in 1739, in the Gentleman's Magazine. [These Considerations were published, not in 1739, but in 1787. Ante, i. 140, note 5.] It is a very ingenious defence of the right of abridging an authour's work, without being held as infringing his property. This is one of the nicest questions in the Law of Literature; and I cannot help thinking, that the indulgence of abridging is often exceedingly injurious to authours and booksellers, and should in very few cases be permitted. At any rate, to prevent difficult and uncertain discussion, and give an absolute security to authours in the property of their labours, no abridgement whatever should be permitted, till after the expiration of such a number of years as the Legislature may be pleased to fix.

But, though it has been confidently ascribed to him, I cannot allow that he wrote a Dedication to both Houses of Parliament of a book entitled The Evangelical History Harmonized. He was no croaker; no declaimer against the times. [See ante, ii. 357.] He would not have written, 'That we are fallen upon an age in which corruption is not barely universal, is universally confessed.' Nor 'Rapine preys on the publick without opposition, and perjury betrays it without inquiry.' Nor would he, to excite a speedy reformation, have conjured up such phantoms of terrour as these: 'A few years longer, and perhaps all endeavours will be in vain. We may be swallowed by an earthquake: we may be delivered to our enemies.' This is not Johnsonian.

There are, indeed, in this Dedication, several sentences constructed upon the model of those of Johnson. But the imitation of the form, without the spirit of his style, has been so general, that this of itself is not sufficient evidence. Even our newspaper writers aspire to it. In an account of the funeral of Edwin, the comedian, in The Diary of Nov. 9, 1790, that son of drollery is thus described: 'A man who had so often cheered the sullenness of vacancy, and suspended the approaches of sorrow.' And in The Dublin Evening Post, August 16, 1791, there is the following paragraph: 'It is a singular circumstance, that, in a city like this, containing 200,000 people, there are three months in the year during which no place of publick amusement is open. Long vacation is here a vacation from pleasure, as well as business; nor is there any mode of passing the listless evenings of declining summer, but in the riots of a tavern, or the stupidity of a coffee-house.'

I have not thought it necessary to specify every copy of verses written by Johnson, it being my intention to, publish an authentick edition of all his Poetry, with notes. BOSWELL. This Catalogue, as Mr. Boswell calls it, is by Dr. Johnson intitled Designs. It seems from the hand that it was written early in life: from the marginal dates it appears that some portions were added in 1752 and 1753. CROKER.

[1171] On April 19 of this year he wrote: 'When I lay sleepless, I used to drive the night along by turning Greek epigrams into Latin. I know not if I have not turned a hundred.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 364. Forty-five years earlier he described how Boerhaave, 'when he lay whole days and nights without sleep, found no method of diverting his thoughts so effectual as meditation upon his studies, and often relieved and mitigated the sense of his torments by the recollection of what he had read, and by reviewing those stores of knowledge which he had reposited in his memory.' Works, vi. 284.

[1172] Mr. Cumberland assures me, that he was always treated with great courtesy by Dr. Johnson, who, in his Letters to Mrs. Thrale, vol. ii. p. 68 thus speaks of that learned, ingenious, and accomplished gentleman: 'The want of company is an inconvenience: but Mr. Cumberland is a million.' BOSWELL. Northcote, according to Hazlitt (Conversations of Northcote, p. 275), said that Johnson and his friends 'never admitted C——[Cumberland] as one of the set; Sir Joshua did not invite him to dinner. If he had been in the room, Goldsmith would have flown out of it as if a dragon had been there. I remember Garrick once saying, "D—n his dish-clout face; his plays would never do, if it were not for my patching them up and acting in them."'

[1173] See ante, p. 64, note 2.

[1174] Dr. Parr said, "There are three great Grecians in England: Porson is the first; Burney is the third; and who is the second I need not tell"' Field's Parr, ii. 215.

[1175] 'Dr. Johnson,' said Parr, 'was an admirable scholar.... The classical scholar was forgotten in the great original contributor to the literature of his country.' Ib. i. 164. 'Upon his correct and profound knowledge of the Latin language,' he wrote, 'I have always spoken with unusual zeal and unusual confidence.' Johnson's Parr, iv. 679. Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 54) recounts a 'triumph' gained by Johnson in a talk on Greek literature.

[1176] Ante, iii. 172.

[1177] We must smile at a little inaccuracy of metaphor in the Preface to the Transactions, which is written by Mr. Burrowes. The critick of the style of JOHNSON having, with a just zeal for literature, observed, that the whole nation are called on to exert themselves, afterwards says: 'They are called on by every tye which can have a laudable influence on the heart of man.' BOSWELL.

[1178] Johnson's wishing to unite himself with this rich widow, was much talked of, but I believe without foundation. The report, however, gave occasion to a poem, not without characteristical merit, entitled, 'Ode to Mrs. Thrale, by Samuel Johnson, LL.D. on their supposed approaching Nuptials; printed for Mr. Faulder in Bond-street.' I shall quote as a specimen the first three stanzas:—

'If e'er my fingers touch'd the lyre, In satire fierce, in pleasure gay; Shall not my THRALIA'S smiles inspire? Shall Sam refuse the sportive lay? My dearest Lady! view your slave, Behold him as your very Scrub; Eager to write, as authour grave, Or govern well, the brewing-tub. To rich felicity thus raised, My bosom glows with amorous fire; Porter no longer shall be praised, 'Tis I MYSELF am Thrale's Entire'

[1179] See ante, ii. 44.

[1180] 'Higledy piggledy,—Conglomeration and confusion.

'Hodge-podge,—A culinary mixture of heterogeneous ingredients: applied metaphorically to all discordant combinations.

'Tit for Tat,—Adequate retaliation.

'Shilly Shally,—Hesitation and irresolution.

'_Fee! fau! fum!—Gigantic intonations.

Rigmarole,-Discourse, incoherent and rhapsodical.

'Crincum-crancum,—Lines of irregularity and involution.

'Dingdong—Tintinabulary chimes, used metaphorically to signify dispatch and vehemence.' BOSWELL. In all the editions that I have examined the sentence in the text beginning with 'annexed,' and ending with 'concatenation,' is printed as if it were Boswell's. It is a quotation from vol. ii. p. 93 of Colman's book. For Scrub, see ante, iii. 70, note 2.

[1181] See ante, iii. 173.

[1182] History of America, vol. i. quarto, p. 332. BOSWELL.

[1183] Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 219) thus writes of his own style:—'The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise. Many experiments were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declamation; three times did I compose the first chapter, and twice the second and third, before I was tolerably satisfied with their effect.' See ante, p. 36, note 1.

[1184] Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. i. chap. iv. BOSWELL.

[1185] Macaulay (Essays, ed. 1874, iv. 157) gives a yet better example of her Johnsonian style, though, as I have shewn (ante, p. 223, note 5), he is wrong in saying that Johnson's hand can be seen.