melange

Life of Johnson, Volume 4 · Chapter 44Footnotes: (12)

This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original. Translate into Spanish

[900] Dr. John Radcliffe, who died in 1714, left by his will, among other great benefactions to the University of Oxford, '£600 yearly to two persons, when they are Masters of Arts and entered on the physic-line, for their maintenance for the space of ten years; the half of which time at least they are to travel in parts beyond sea for their better improvement.' Radcliffe's Life and Will, p. 123. Pope mentions them in his Imitations of Horace, Epistles, ii. i. 183:—

[901] What risks were run even by inoculation is shewn in two of Dr. Warton's letters. He wrote to his brother:—'This moment the dear children have all been inoculated, never persons behaved better, no whimpering at all, I hope in God for success, but cannot avoid being in much anxiety.' A few days later he wrote:—'You may imagine I never passed such a day as this in my life! grieved to death myself for the loss of so sweet a child, but forced to stifle my feelings as much as possible for the sake of my poor wife. She does not, however, hit on, or dwell on, that most cutting circumstance of all, poor Nanny's dying, as it were by our own means, tho' well intended indeed.' Wooll's Warton, i. 289. Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, i. 155), on the other hand, bitterly regretted that he had not had a child inoculated, whom he lost by small-pox.

[902] See post, before Nov. 17, and under Dec. 9, 1784.

[903] 'I am the vilest of sinners and the worst of men.' Taylor's Works (ed. 1864), iii. 31. 'The best men deserve not eternal life, and I who am the worst may have it given me.' Ib. p. 431—'He that hath lived worst, even I.' Ib. vii. 241. 'Behold me the meanest of thy creatures.' Ib. p. 296.

[904] 'You may fairly look upon yourself to be the greatest sinner that you know in the world. First, because you know more of the folly of your own heart than you do of other people's; and can charge yourself with various sins that you only know of yourself, and cannot be sure that other people are guilty of them.' Law's Serious Call, chap. 23.

[905] 1 Timothy, i. 15.

[906] See post, v. 68, note 4.

[907] 'Be careful thou dost not speak a lie in thy prayers, which though not observed is frequently practised by careless persons, especially in the forms of confession, affirming things which they have not thought, professing sorrow which is not, making a vow they mean not.' Taylor's Works, ed. 1865, vii. 622.

[908] Reynolds wrote:—'As in Johnson's writings not a line can be found which a saint would wish to blot, so in his life he would never suffer the least immorality or indecency of conversation, [or anything] contrary to virtue or piety to proceed without a severe check, which no elevation of rank exempted them from.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 458. See ante, iii. 41.

[909] No doubt Mr. Langton.

[910] Dr. Sheridan tells how Swift overheard a Captain Hamilton say to a gentleman at whose house he had arrived 'that he was very sorry he had chosen that time for his visit. "Why so?" "Because I hear Dean Swift is with you. He is a great scholar, a wit; a plain country squire will have but a bad time of it in his company, and I don't like to be laughed at." Swift then stepped up and said, "Pray, Captain Hamilton, do you know how to say yes or no properly?" "Yes, I think I have understanding enough for that." "Then give me your hand—depend upon it, you and I will agree very well."' 'The Captain told me,' continues Sheridan, 'that he never passed two months so pleasantly in his life.' Swift's Works, ed. 1803, ii. 104.

[911] Gibbon wrote on Feb. 21, 1772 (Misc. Works, ii. 78):—'To day the House of Commons was employed in a very odd way. Tommy Townshend moved that the sermon of Dr. Nowell, who preached before the House on the 30th of January (id est, before the Speaker and four members), should be burnt by the common hangman, as containing arbitrary, Tory, high-flown doctrines. The House was nearly agreeing to the motion, till they recollected that they had already thanked the preacher for his excellent discourse, and ordered it to be printed.'

[912]

[913] According to Mr. Croker, this was the Rev. Henry Bate, of the Morning Post, who in 1784 took the name of Dudley, was created a baronet in 1815, and died in 1824. Horace Walpole wrote on Nov. 13, 1776 (Letters, vi. 39l):—'Yesterday I heard drums and trumpets in Piccadilly: I looked out of the window and saw a procession with streamers flying. At first I thought it a press-gang, but seeing the corps so well-drest, like Hussars, in yellow with blue waistcoats and breeches, and high caps, I concluded it was some new body of our allies, or a regiment newly raised, and with new regimentals for distinction. I was not totally mistaken, for the Colonel is a new ally. In short, this was a procession set forth by Mr. Bate, Lord Lyttelton's chaplain, and author of the old Morning Post, and meant as an appeal to the town against his antagonist, the new one.' In June, 1781, Bate was sentenced to a year's imprisonment 'for an atrocious libel on the Duke of Richmond. He was the worst of all the scandalous libellers that had appeared both on private persons as well as public. His life was dissolute, and he had fought more than one duel. Yet Lord Sandwich had procured for him a good Crown living, and he was believed to be pensioned by the Court.' Walpole's Journal of the Reign of George III, ii. 464.

[914] See ante, ii. 339, and iii. 265.

[915] Three days earlier, in the debate on the Westminster Scrutiny, Fox accused 'a person of great rank in this House'—Pitt I believe—'of adding pertness and personal contumely to every species of rash and inconsiderate violence.' Parl. Hist. xxiv. 924. Pitt, in reply, classed Fox among 'political apostates,' ib. p. 929. Burke, the same evening, 'sat down saying, "he little minded the ill-treatment of a parcel of boys."' When he was called to order, he said:—'When he used the term "a parcel of boys," he meant to apply it to the ministry, who, he conceived, were insulting him with their triumph; a triumph which grey hairs ought to be allowed the privilege of expressing displeasure at, when it was founded on the rash exultation of mere boys.' Ib. p. 939. Pitt, Prime-Minister though he was, in the spring of the same year, was called to order by the Speaker, for charging a member with using 'language the most false, the most malicious, and the most slanderous.' Ib. p. 763.

[916] Epistles to Mr. Pope, ii. 165.

[917] See an account of him, in a sermon by the Reverend Mr. Agutter. BOSWELL. This sermon was published in 1788. In Hannah More's Memoirs (i. 217), Henderson is described as 'a mixture of great sense, which discovered uncommon parts and learning, with a tincture of nonsense of the most extravagant kind. He believes in witches and apparitions, as well as in judicial astronomy.' Mrs. Kennicott writes (ib. p. 220):—'I think if Dr. Johnson had the shaking him about, he would shake out his nonsense, and set his sense a-working. 'He never got out into the world, says Dr. Hall, the Master of Pembroke College, having died in College in 1788.

[918] This was the second Lord Lyttelton, commonly known as 'the wicked Lord Lyttelton.' Fox described him to Rogers as 'a very bad man—downright wicked.' Rogers's Table Talk, p. 95. He died Nov. 27, 1779. Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 292) wrote to Mason on Dec. 11 of that year:—'If you can send us any stories of ghosts out of the North, they will be very welcome. Lord Lyttelton's vision has revived the taste; though it seems a little odd that an apparition should despair of being able to get access to his Lordship's bed in the shape of a young woman, without being forced to use the disguise of a robin-red-breast.' In the Gent. Mag. 1815, i. 597, and 1816, ii. 421, accounts are given of this vision. In the latter account it is said that 'he saw a bird fluttering, and afterwards a woman appeared in white apparel, and said, "Prepare to die; you will not exist three days."' Mrs. Piozzi also wrote a full account of it. Hayward's Piozzi, i. 332.

[919] See ante, ii. 150, and iii. 298, note 1.

[920] See ante, p. 278.

[921] 'If he who considers himself as suspended over the abyss of eternal perdition only by the thread of life, which must soon part by its own weakness, and which the wing of every minute may divide, can cast his eyes round him without shuddering with horror, or panting for security; what can he judge of himself, but that he is not yet awakened to sufficient conviction? &c.' The Rambler, No. 110. In a blank leaf in the book in which Johnson kept his diary of his journey in Wales is written in his own hand, 'Faith in some proportion to Fear.' Duppa's Johnson's Diary of a Journey &c., p. 157. See ante, iii. 199.

[922] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on March 20:—'Write to me no more about dying with a grace; when you feel what I have felt in approaching eternity—in fear of soon hearing the sentence of which there is no revocation, you will know the folly.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 354. Of him it might have been said in Cowper's words:—

The Task: The Winter Morning Walk, 1. 611. See ante, iii. 294.

[923] The Reverend Mr. Ralph Churton, Fellow of Brazen-Nose College, Oxford, has favoured me with the following remarks on my Work, which he is pleased to say, 'I have hitherto extolled, and cordially approve.'

'The chief part of what I have to observe is contained in the following transcript from a letter to a friend, which, with his concurrence, I copied for this purpose; and, whatever may be the merit or justness of the remarks, you may be sure that being written to a most intimate friend, without any intention that they ever should go further, they are the genuine and undisguised sentiments of the writer:—

'Jan. 6, 1792.

'Last week, I was reading the second volume of Boswell's Johnson, with increasing esteem for the worthy authour, and increasing veneration of the wonderful and excellent man who is the subject of it. The writer throws in, now and then, very properly some serious religious reflections; but there is one remark, in my mind an obvious and just one, which I think he has not made, that Johnson's "morbid melancholy," and constitutional infirmities, were intended by Providence, like St. Paul's thorn in the flesh, to check intellectual conceit and arrogance; which the consciousness of his extraordinary talents, awake as he was to the voice of praise, might otherwise have generated in a very culpable degree. Another observation strikes me, that in consequence of the same natural indisposition, and habitual sickliness, (for he says he scarcely passed one day without pain after his twentieth year,) he considered and represented human life, as a scene of much greater misery than is generally experienced. There may be persons bowed down with affliction all their days; and there are those, no doubt, whose iniquities rob them of rest; but neither calamities nor crimes, I hope and believe, do so much and so generally abound, as to justify the dark picture of life which Johnson's imagination designed, and his strong pencil delineated. This I am sure, the colouring is far too gloomy for what I have experienced, though as far as I can remember, I have had more sickness (I do not say more severe, but only more in quantity,) than falls to the lot of most people. But then daily debility and occasional sickness were far overbalanced by intervenient days, and, perhaps, weeks void of pain, and overflowing with comfort. So that in short, to return to the subject, human life, as far as I can perceive from experience or observation, is not that state of constant wretchedness which Johnson always insisted it was; which misrepresentation, (for such it surely is,) his Biographer has not corrected, I suppose, because, unhappily, he has himself a large portion of melancholy in his constitution, and fancied the portrait a faithful copy of life.'

The learned writer then proceeds thus in his letter to me:—

'I have conversed with some sensible men on this subject, who all seem to entertain the same sentiments respecting life with those which are expressed or implied in the foregoing paragraph. It might be added that as the representation here spoken of, appears not consistent with fact and experience, so neither does it seem to be countenanced by Scripture. There is, perhaps, no part of the sacred volume which at first sight promises so much to lend its sanction to these dark and desponding notions as the book of Ecclesiastes, which so often, and so emphatically, proclaims the vanity of things sublunary. But the design of this whole book, (as it has been justly observed,) is not to put us out of conceit with life, but to cure our vain expectations of a compleat and perfect happiness in this world; to convince us, that there is no such thing to be found in mere external enjoyments;—and to teach us to seek for happiness in the practice of virtue, in the knowledge and love of God, and in the hopes of a better life. For this is the application of all; Let us hear, &c. xii. 13. Not only his duty, but his happiness too; _For_ GOD, &c. ver. 14.--See _Sherlock on Providence, p. 299.

'The New Testament tells us, indeed, and most truly, that "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof;" and, therefore, wisely forbids us to increase our burden by forebodings of sorrows; but I think it no where says that even our ordinary afflictions are not consistent with a very considerable degree of positive comfort and satisfaction. And, accordingly, one whose sufferings as well as merits were conspicuous, assures us, that in proportion "as the sufferings of Christ abounded in them, so their consolation also abounded by Christ." 2 Cor. i. 5. It is needless to cite, as indeed it would be endless even to refer to, the multitude of passages in both Testaments holding out, in the strongest language, promises of blessings, even in this world, to the faithful servants of GOD. I will only refer to St. Luke, xviii. 29, 30, and 1 Tim. iv. 8.

'Upon the whole, setting aside instances of great and lasting bodily pain, of minds peculiarly oppressed by melancholy, and of severe temporal calamities, from which extraordinary cases we surely should not form our estimate of the general tenour and complexion of life; excluding these from the account, I am convinced that as well the gracious constitution of things which Providence has ordained, as the declarations of Scripture and the actual experience of individuals, authorize the sincere Christian to hope that his humble and constant endeavours to perform his duty, checquered as the best life is with many failings, will be crowned with a greater degree of present peace, serenity, and comfort, than he could reasonably permit himself to expect, if he measured his views and judged of life from the opinion of Dr. Johnson, often and energetically expressed in the Memoirs of him, without any animadversion or censure by his ingenious Biographer. If he himself, upon reviewing the subject, shall see the matter in this light, he will, in an octavo edition, which is eagerly expected, make such additional remarks or correction as he shall judge fit; lest the impressions which these discouraging passages may leave on the reader's mind, should in any degree hinder what otherwise the whole spirit and energy of the work tends, and, I hope, successfully, to promote,—pure morality and true religion.'

Though I have, in some degree, obviated any reflections against my illustrious friend's dark views of life, when considering, in the course of this Work, his Rambler [ante, i. 213] and his Rasselas [ante, i. 343], I am obliged to Mr. Churton for complying with my request of his permission to insert his Remarks, being conscious of the weight of what he judiciously suggests as to the melancholy in my own constitution. His more pleasing views of life, I hope, are just. Valeant quantum valere possunt.

Mr. Churton concludes his letter to me in these words:—'Once, and only once, I had the satisfaction of seeing your illustrious friend; and as I feel a particular regard for all whom he distinguished with his esteem and friendship, so I derive much pleasure from reflecting that I once beheld, though but transiently near our College gate, one whose works will for ever delight and improve the world, who was a sincere and zealous son of the Church of England, an honour to his country, and an ornament to human nature.'

His letter was accompanied with a present from himself of his Sermons at the Bampton Lecture, and from his friend, Dr. Townson, the venerable Rector of Malpas, in Cheshire, of his Discourses on the Gospels, together with the following extract of a letter from that excellent person, who is now gone to receive the reward of his labours:—'Mr. Boswell is not only very entertaining in his works, but they are so replete with moral and religious sentiments, without an instance, as far as I know, of a contrary tendency, that I cannot help having a great esteem for him; and if you think such a trifle as a copy of the Discourses, ex dono authoris, would be acceptable to him, I should be happy to give him this small testimony of my regard.'

Such spontaneous testimonies of approbation from such men, without any personal acquaintance with me, are truly valuable and encouraging.

BOSWELL.

[924]

Voltaire, Le désastre de Lisbonne. Works, ed. 1819, x. 124. 'Johnson said that, for his part, he never passed that week in his life which he would wish to repeat, were an angel to make the proposal to him.' Ante, ii. 125. Yet Dr. Franklin, whose life overlapped Johnson's at both ends, said:-'I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end, requesting only the advantage authors have of correcting in a second edition the faults of its first. So would I also wish to change some incidents of it for others more favourable Notwithstanding, if this condition was denied, I should still accept the offer of re-commencing the same life.' Franklin's Memoirs, i. 2.

[925] Mackintosh thus sums up this question:—'The truth is, that endless fallacies must arise from the attempt to appreciate by retrospect human life, of which the enjoyments depend on hope.' Life of Mackintosh, ii. 160. See ante, ii. 350.

[926] In the lines on Levett. Ante, p. 137.

[927] AURENGZEBE, act iv. sc. 1. BOSWELL. According to Dr. Maxwell (ante, ii. 124), Johnson frequently quoted the fourth couplet of these lines. Boswell does not give the last—

[928] Johnson, speaking of the companions of his college days, said:— 'It was bitterness which they mistook for frolick.' Ante, i. 73.

[929]

Milton's Paradise Lost, iv. 35.

[930] Yet there is no doubt that a man may appear very gay in company who is sad at heart. His merriment is like the sound of drums and trumpets in a battle, to drown the groans of the wounded and dying. BOSWELL.

[931] Mme. D'Arblay (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii. 103) tells how Johnson was one day invited to her father's house at the request of Mr. Greville, 'the finest gentleman about town,' as she earlier described him (ib. i. 25), who desired to make his acquaintance. This 'superb' gentleman was afraid to begin to speak. 'Assuming his most supercilious air of distant superiority he planted himself, immovable as a noble statue, upon the hearth, as if a stranger to the whole set.' Johnson, who 'never spoke till he was spoken to' (ante, in. 307)—this habit the Burneys did not as yet know—'became completely absorbed in silent rumination; very unexpectedly, however, he shewed himself alive to what surrounded him, by one of those singular starts of vision, that made him seem at times, though purblind to things in common, gifted with an eye of instinct for espying any action that he thought merited reprehension; for all at once, looking fixedly on Mr. Greville, who without much self-denial, the night being very cold, kept his station before the chimney-piece, he exclaimed:—"If it were not for depriving the ladies of the fire, I should like to stand upon the hearth myself." A smile gleamed upon every face at this pointed speech. Mr. Greville tried to smile himself, though faintly and scoffingly. He tried also to hold his post; and though for two or three minutes he disdained to move, the awkwardness of a general pause impelled him ere long to glide back to his chair; but he rang the bell with force as he passed it to order his carriage.'

[932] Page 139. BOSWELL.

[933] On this same day Miss Adams wrote to a friend:—'Dr. Johnson, tho' not in good health, is in general very talkative and infinitely agreeable and entertaining.' Pemb. Coll. MSS.

[934] Johnson said 'Milton was a Phidias, &c.' Ante, p. 99, note 1. In his Life of Milton (Works, vii. 119) he writes:—'Milton never learnt the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the milder excellence of suavity and softness; he was a Lion that had no skill in dandling the kid.'

[935] Cardinal Newman (History of my Religious Opinions, ed. 1865, p. 361) remarks on this:—'As to Johnson's case of a murderer asking you which way a man had gone, I should have anticipated that, had such a difficulty happened to him, his first act would have been to knock the man down, and to call out for the police; and next, if he was worsted in the conflict, he would not have given the ruffian the information he asked, at whatever risk to himself. I think he would have let himself be killed first. I do not think that he would have told a lie.'

[936] See ante, iii. 376.

[937] Book ii. 1. 142.

[938] The annotator calls them 'amiable verses.' BOSWELL. The annotators of the Dunciad were Pope himself and Dr. Arbuthnot. Johnson's Works, viii. 280.

[939] Boswell was at this time corresponding with Miss Seward. See post, June 25.

[940] By John Dyer. Ante, ii. 453.

[941] Lewis's Verses addressed to Pope were first published in a Collection of Pieces on occasion of The Dunciad, 8vo., 1732. They do not appear in Lewis's own Miscellany, printed in 1726.—Grongar Hill was first printed in Savage's Miscellanies as an Ode, and was reprinted in the same year in Lewis's Miscellany, in the form it now bears.

In his Miscellanies, 1726, the beautiful poem,—'Away, let nought to love displeasing,'—reprinted in Percy's Reliques, vol. i. book iii. No. 13, first appeared. MALONE.

[942] See ante, p. 58.

[943] See ante, i. 71, and ii. 226.

[944] Captain Cook's third voyage. The first two volumes by Captain Cook; the last by Captain King.

[945] See ante, ii. 73, 228, 248; iii. 49.

[946]

[947] See ante, i. 71.

[948] See ante, i. 203, note 6.

[949] Boswell began to eat dinners in the Inner Temple so early as 1775. Ante, ii. 377, note 1. He was not called till Hilary Term, 1786. Rogers's Boswelliana, p. 143.

[950] Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Jones wrote two years earlier (Life, p. 268):—'Whether it be a wise part to live uncomfortably in order to die wealthy, is another question; but this I know by experience, and have heard old practitioners make the same observation, that a lawyer who is in earnest must be chained to his chambers and the bar for ten or twelve years together.'

[951] Johnson's Prologue at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre. Works, i. 23.

[952] According to Mr. Seward, who published this account in his Anecdotes, ii. 83, it was Mr. Langton's great-grandfather who drew it up.

[953] 'My Lord said that his rule for his, health was to be temperate and keep himself warm. He never made breakfasts, but used in the morning to drink a glass of some sort of ale. That he went to bed at nine, and rose between six and seven, allowing himself a good refreshment for his sleep. That the law will admit of no rival, nothing to go even with it; but that sometimes one may for diversion read in the Latin historians of England, Hoveden and Matthew Paris, &c. But after it is conquered, it will admit of other studies. He said, a little law, a good tongue, and a good memory, would fit a man for the Chancery.' Seward's Anecdotes, ii. 92.

[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:

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.'