Chapter M: DCCC LXXXVII (2)

'You will please to remember that I once asked you to receive an apprentice, who is a scholar, and has always lived in a clergyman's house, but who is mishapen, though I think not so as to hinder him at the case. It will be expected that I should answer his Friend who has hitherto maintained him, whether I can help him to a place. He can give no money, but will be kept in cloaths.

'I have another request which it is perhaps not immediately in your power to gratify. I have a presentation to beg for the blue coat hospital. The boy is a non-freeman, and has both his parents living. We have a presentation for a freeman which we can give in exchange. If in your extensive acquaintance you can procure such an exchange, it will be an act of great kindness. Do not let the matter slip out of your mind, for though I try others I know not any body of so much power to do it.

'I am, Sir, Your most humble Servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'Dec. 22, 1774.'

The apprentice was young William Davenport, the orphan son of a clergyman. His friend was the Rev. W. Langley, the master of Ashbourne School. Strahan received him as an apprentice (_ante_, ii. 334, n. i). See also Nichols' _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. iii. p. 287.

The 'case' is the frame containing boxes for holding type.

X.

_A letter about suppressions in 'Taxation no Tyranny! dated March 1, 1775_.[In the possession of Mr. Frank T. Sabin, 10 & 12, Garrick Street Covent Garden.]

'SIR,

'I am sorry to see that all the alterations proposed are evidences of timidity. You may be sure that I do [? not] wish to publish, what those for whom I write do not like to have published. But print me half a dozen copies in the original state, and lay them up for me. It concludes well enough as it is.

'When you print it, if you print it, please to frank one to me here, and frank another to Mrs. Aston at Stow Hill, Lichfield.

'The changes are not for the better, except where facts were mistaken. The last paragraph was indeed rather contemptuous, there was once more of it which I put out myself.

'I am Sir, Your humble Servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'March 1, 1775.'

This letter refers to _Taxation no Tyranny_, which was published before March 31, 1775, the date of Boswell's arrival in London (_ante_, ii. 311). Boswell says that he had in his possession 'a few proof leaves of it marked with corrections in Johnson's own hand-writing' (ib. p. 313). Johnson, he says,' owned to me that it had been revised and curtailed by some of those who were then in power.' When Johnson writes 'when you print it, if you print it,' he uses, doubtless, _print_ in the sense of _striking off copies_. The pamphlet was, we may assume, in type before it was revised by 'those in power.' The corrections had been made in the proof-sheets. Johnson asks to have six copies laid by for him in the state in which he had wished to publish it. It seems that the last paragraph had been struck out by the reviser, for Johnson says 'it was rather contemptuous.' He does not think it needful to supply anything in its place, for he says 'it concludes well enough as it is.'

Mr. Strahan had the right, as a member of Parliament, to frank all letters and packets. That is to say, by merely writing his signature on the cover he could pass them through the post free of charge. Johnson, when he wrote to Scotland, used to employ him to frank his letters, 'that he might have the consequence of appearing a parliament-man among his countrymen' (_ante_, iii. 364). It was to Oxford that a copy of the pamphlet was to be franked to Johnson. That he was there at the time is shown by a letter from him in Mrs. Piozzi's _Collection_ (vol. i. p. 212), dated 'University College, Oxford, March 3, 1775.' Writing to her, evidently from Bolt Court, on February 3, he had said: 'My pamphlet has not gone on at all' (ib. i. 211). Mrs. Aston (or rather Miss Aston) is mentioned _ante_, ii. 466.

XI

_A letter about 'copy' and a book by Professor Watson, dated Oct. 14, 1776'_.[In the possession of Mr. H. Fawcett, of 14, King Street, Covent Garden.]

'SIR,

'I wrote to you about ten days ago, and sent you some copy. You have not written again, that is a sorry trick.

'I am told that you are printing a Book for Mr. Professor Watson of Saint Andrews, if upon any occasion, I can give any help, or be of any use, as formerly in Dr. Robertson's publication, I hope you will make no scruple to call upon me, for I shall be glad of an opportunity to show that my reception at Saint Andrews has not been forgotten.

'I am Sir, Your humble Servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'Oct. 14, 1776.'

The' copy' or MS. that Johnson sent is, I conjecture, _Proposals for the Rev. Mr. Shaw's Analysis of the Scotch Celtick Language_ (_ante_, iii. 107). This is the only acknowledged piece of writing of his during 1776. The book printing for Professor Watson was _History of the Reign of Philip II_, which was published by Strahan and Cadell in 1777. This letter is of unusual interest, as showing that Johnson had been of some service as regards one of Robertson's books. It is possible that he read some of the proof-sheets, and helped to get rid of the Scotticisms. 'Strahan,' according to Beattie, 'had corrected (as he told me himself) the phraseology of both Mr. Hume and Dr. Robertson' (_ante_, v. 92, n. 3). He is not unlikely, in Robertson's case, to have sought and obtained Johnson's help.

XII.

_The following letter is published in Mr. Alfred Morrison's 'Collection of Autographs', vol. ii. p. 343._

'To Dr. TAYLOR. Dated London, April 20, 1778.'

'The quantity of blood taken from you appears to me not sufficient. Thrale was almost lost by the scrupulosity of his physicians, who never bled him copiously till they bled him in despair; he then bled till he fainted, and the stricture or obstruction immediately gave way and from that instant he grew better.

'I can now give you no advice but to keep yourself totally quiet and amused with some gentle exercise of the mind. If a suspected letter comes, throw it aside till your health is reestablished; keep easy and cheerful company about you, and never try to think but at those stated and solemn times when the thoughts are summoned to the cares of futurity, the only cares of a rational being.

'As to my own health I think it rather grows better; the convulsions which left me last year at Ashbourne have never returned, and I have by the mercy of God very comfortable nights. Let me know very often how you are till you are quite well.'

This letter, though it is dated 1778, must have been written in 1780. Thrale's first attack was in June, 1779, when he was in 'extreme danger' (_ante_, iii. 397, n. 2, 420). Johnson had the remission of the convulsions on June 18, 1779. He recorded on June 18, 1780:--

'In the morning of this day last year I perceived the remission of those convulsions in my breast which had distressed me for more than twenty years. I returned thanks at church for the mercy granted me, which has now continued a year.'--_Prayers and Meditations_, p. 183.

Three days later he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--

'It was a twelvemonth last Sunday since the convulsions in my breast left me. I hope I was thankful when I recollected it; by removing that disorder a great improvement was made in the enjoyment of life.' --_Piozzi Letters_, ii. 163. (See _ante_, iii. 397, n. 1.)

He was at Ashbourne on June 18, 1779 (_ante_, iii. 453).

On April 20, 1778, the very day of which this letter bears the date, he recorded:--

'After a good night, as I am forced to reckon, I rose seasonably.... In reviewing my time from Easter, 1777, I found a very melancholy and shameful blank. So little has been done that days and months are without any trace. My health has, indeed, been very much interrupted. My nights have been commonly not only restless, but painful and fatiguing. ....Some relaxation of my breast has been procured, I think, by opium, which, though it never gives me sleep, frees my breast from spasms.' --_Prayers and Meditations_, p. 169. See _ante_, iii. 317, n. 1.

For Johnson's advice about bleeding, see _ante_, iii. 152; and for possible occasions for 'suspected letters,' _ante_, i. 472, n. 4; and ii. 202, n. 2.

_Mr. Mason's 'sneering observation in his "Memoirs of Mr. William Whitehead"'_

(Vol. i, p. 31.)

I had long failed to find a copy of these _Memoirs_, though I had searched in the Bodleian, the British Museum, and the London Library, and had applied to the University Library at Cambridge, and the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh. By the kindness of Mr. R. H. Soden Smith and Mr. R. F. Sketchley, I have obtained the following extract from a copy in the Dyce and Forster Libraries, in the South Kensington Museum:--

'Conscious, notwithstanding, that to avoid writing what is _unnecessary_ is, in these days, no just plea for silence in a biographer, I have some apology to make for having strewed these pages so thinly with the tittle-tattle of anecdote. I am, however, too proud to make this apology to any person but my bookseller, who will be the only real loser by the 'Those readers, who believe that I do not write immediately under his pay, and who may have gathered from what they have already read, that I am not so passionately enamoured of Dr. Johnson's biographical manner, as to take that for my model, have only to throw these pages aside, and wait till they are new-written by some one of his numerous disciples, who may follow his master's example; and should more anecdote than I furnish him with be wanting (as was the Doctor's case in his life of Mr. Gray), may make amends for it by those acid eructations of vituperative criticism, which are generated by unconcocted taste and intellectual indigestion.'--_Poems by William Whitehead_, York, 1788 (vol. iii, p. 128).

With this 'sneering observation,' which Boswell might surely have passed over in silence, the Memoirs close.

_Michael Johnson as a bookseller._

(Vol. i, p. 36, n. 3.)

Mr. R. F. Sketchley kindly informs me that in the Dyce and Forster Libraries at the South Kensington Museum there is a book with the following title:--

_S. Shaw's 'Grammatica Anglo--Romana', London, printed for Michael Johnson, bookseller: and are to be sold at his shops in Litchfield and Uttoxiter in Stafford-shire; and Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire, 1687._

Mr. C. E. Doble tells me that in the proposals issued in 1690 by Thomas Bennet, St. Paul's Churchyard, for printing Anthony a Wood's _Athenae Oxonienses_ and _Fasti Oxonienses_, among 'the booksellers who take subscriptions, give receipts, and deliver books according to the proposals' is 'Mr. Johnson in Litchfield.'

_The City and County of Lichfield_.

(Vol. i, p. 36, n. 4.)

'The City of Litchfield is a County of itself, with a jurisdiction extending 10 or 12 miles round, which circuit the Sheriff rides every year on Sept. 8.'--_A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain_, ed. 1769, ii. 419.

Balliol College has a copy of this work containing David Garrick's book-plate, with Shakespeare's head at the top of it, and the following quotation from _Menagiana_ at the foot:--

'_La première chose qu'on doit faire quand on a emprunté un livre, c'est de le lire, afin de pouvoir le rendre plutôt' (sic)_.

_Felixmarte of Hircania_.

(Vol. i, p. 49.)

'"He that follows is _Florismarte of Hyrcania_" said the barber. "What! is Signor Florismarte there?" replied the priest; "in good faith he shall share the same fate, notwithstanding his strange birth and chimerical adventures; for his harsh and dry style will admit of no excuse. To the yard with him, therefore." "With all my heart, dear Sir," answered the housekeeper; "and with joyful alacrity she executed the command.'" --_Don Quixote_, ed. 1820, i. 48.

Boswell speaks of _Felixmarte_ as the old Spanish romance. In the _Bibliografia dei Romanzi e Poeini Cavallereschi Italiani_ (2nd ed., Milan, 1838), p. 351, it is stated that in the Spanish edition it is called a translation from the Italian, and in the Italian edition a translation from the Spanish. The Italian title is _Historia di Don Florismante d'Ircania, tradotta dallo Spagnuolo_. Cervantes, in an edition of _Don Quixote_, published in 1605, which I have looked at, calls the book _Florismarte de Hircania_ (not _Florismante_). It should seem that he made his hero read the Italian version.

_Palmerin of England and Don Belianis_.

(Vol. i, p. 49, n. 2; and vol. iii, p. 2.)

'"Let _Palmerin of England_ be preserved," said the licentiate, "and kept as a jewel; and let such another casket be made for it as that which Alexander found among the spoils of Darius appropriated to preserve the works of the poet Homer....Therefore, master Nicholas, saving your better judgment let this and _Amadis de Gaul_ be exempted from the flames, and let all the rest perish without any farther inquiry." "Not so neighbour," replied the barber, "for behold here the renowned _Don Belianis_." The priest replied, "This with the second, third, and fourth parts, wants a little rhubarb to purge away its excessive choler; there should be removed too all that relates to the castle of Fame, and other impertinencies of still greater consequence; let them have the benefit, therefore, of transportation, and as they show signs of amendment they shall hereafter be treated with mercy or justice; in the meantime, friend, give them room in your house; but let nobody read them."' --_Don Quixote_, ed. 1820, i. 50.

_Mr. Taylor, a Birmingham manufacturer_.

(Vol. i, p. 86.)

'John Taylor, Esq. may justly be deemed the Shakspear or Newton of Birmingham. He rose from minute beginnings to shine in the commercial hemisphere, as they in the poetical or philosophical. To this uncommon genius we owe the gilt button, the japanned and gilt snuff-box, with the numerous race of enamels; also the painted snuff-box. ... He died in 1775 at the age of 64, after acquiring a fortune of £200,000. His son was a considerable sufferer at the time of the riots in 1791.' --_A Brief History of Birmingham_, 1797, p. 9.

_Olivia Lloyd._

(Vol. i, p. 92.)

I am, no doubt, right in identifying Olivia Lloyd, the young quaker, with whom Johnson was much enamoured when at Stourbridge School, with Olive Lloyd, the daughter of the first Sampson Lloyd, of Birmingham, and aunt of the Sampson Lloyd with whom he had an altercation (_ante_, ii. 458 and _post_, p. liii). 'A fine likeness of her is preserved by Thomas Lloyd, The Priory, Warwick,' as I learn from an interesting little work called _Farm and its Inhabitants, with some Account of the Lloyds of Dolobran_, by Rachel J. Lowe. Privately printed, 1883, p. 24. Her elder brother married a Miss Careless; ib. p. 23. Johnson's 'first love,' Hector's sister, married a Mr. Careless (_ante_, ii. 459).

_Henry Porter, of Edgbaston_.

(Vol. i, p. 94, n. 3.)

In St. Mary's Church, Warwick, is a monument to--

'Anna Norton, Henrici Porter
Filia
Nuper de Edgberston in Com. Warw. Generosi;
Vidua Thomae Norton....
Haec annis et pietate matura vitam deposuit.
Maii 14, 1698.'

_A Brief Description of the Collegiate Church of St. Mary in Warwick_, published by Grafton and Reddell, Birmingham; no date.

_Mrs. Williams's account of Mrs. Johnson and her sons by her former marriage_. (Vol. i, p. 95.)

The following note by Malone I failed to quote in the right place. It is copied from a paper, written by Lady Knight.

'Mrs. Williams's account of Mrs. Johnson was, that she had a good understanding and great sensibility, but inclined to be satirical. Her first husband died insolvent [this is a mistake, see _ante_, i. 95, n. 3]; her sons were much disgusted with her for her second marriage; ... however, she always retained her affection for them. While they [Mr. and Mrs. Johnson] resided in Gough Square, her son, the officer, knocked at the door, and asked the maid if her mistress was at home. She answered, "Yes, Sir, but she is sick in bed." "Oh," says he, "if it's so, tell her that her son Jervis called to know how she did;" and was going away. The maid begged she might run up to tell her mistress, and, without attending his answer, left him. Mrs. Johnson, enraptured to hear her son was below, desired the maid to tell him she longed to embrace him. When the maid descended the gentleman was gone, and poor Mrs. Johnson was much agitated by the adventure; it was the only time he ever made an effort to see her. Dr. [Mr.] Johnson did all he could to console his wife, but told Mrs. Williams: "Her son is uniformly undutiful; so I conclude, like many other sober men, he might once in his life be drunk, and in that fit nature got the better of his pride."'

_Johnson's application for the mastership of the Grammar School at Solihull in Warwickshire_.

(Vol. i, p. 96.)

Johnson, a few weeks after his marriage, applied for the mastership of Solihull Grammar School, as is shown by the following letter, preserved in the Pembroke College MSS., addressed to Mr. Walmsley, and quoted by Mr. Croker. I failed to insert it in my notes.

_'Solihull, the 30 August 1735._

'SIR,

'I was favoured with yours of the 13th inst. in due time, but deferred answering it til now, it takeing up some time to informe the Foeofees of the contents thereof; and before they would return an Answer, desired some time to make enquiry of the caracter of Mr. Johnson, who all agree that he is an excellent scholar, and upon that account deserves much better than to be schoolmaster of Solihull. But then he has the caracter of being a very haughty, ill-natured gent., and that he has such a way of distorting his Face (which though he can't help) the gent, think it may affect some young ladds; for these two reasons he is not approved on, the late master Mr. Crompton's huffing the Foeofees being stil in their memory. However, we are all exstreamly obliged to you for thinking of us, and for proposeing so good a schollar, but more especially is, dear sir,

'Your very humble servant,

'HENRY GRESWOLD.'

_Johnson's knowledge of Italian_.

(Vol. i, p. 115.)

Boswell says that he does not know 'at what time, or by what means Johnson had acquired a competent knowledge of Italian.' In my note on this I say 'he had read Petrarch "when but a boy."' As Petrarch wrote chiefly in Latin, it is quite possible that Johnson did not acquire his knowledge of Italian so early as I had thought.

_Johnson's deference for the general opinion_.

(Vol. i, p. 200.)

Miss Burney records an interesting piece of criticism by Johnson. 'There are,' he said, 'three distinct kinds of judges upon all new authors or productions; the first are those who know no rules, but pronounce entirely from their natural taste and feelings; the second are those who know and judge by rules; and the third are those who know, but are above the rules. These last are those you should wish to satisfy. Next to them rate the natural judges; but ever despise those opinions that are formed by the rules.'--_Mine. D'Arblay's Diary_, i. 180. Later on she writes: --'The natural feelings of untaught hearers ought never to be slighted; and Dr. Johnson has told me the same a thousand times;' ib. ii. 128.

_Johnson in the Green Room_.

(Vol. i, p. 201.)

Mr. Richard Herne Shepherd, in _Watford's Antiquarian_ for January, 1887, p. 34, asserts that the actual words which Johnson used when he told Garrick that he would no longer frequent his Green Room were indecent; so indecent that Mr. Shepherd can only venture to satisfy those whom he calls students by informing them of them privately. For proof of this charge against the man whose boast it was that 'obscenity had always been repressed in his company' (_ante_, iv. 295) he brings forward John Wilkes. The story, indeed, as it is told by Boswell, is not too trustworthy, for he had it through Hume from Garrick. As it reaches Mr. Shepherd it comes from Garrick through Wilkes. Garrick, no doubt, as Johnson says (_ante_, v. 391), was, as a companion, 'restrained by some principle,' and had 'some delicacy of feeling.' Nevertheless, in his stories, he was, we may be sure, no more on oath than a man is in lapidary inscriptions (_ante_, ii. 407). It is possible that he reported Johnson's very words to Hume, and that Hume did not change them in reporting them to Boswell. Whatever they were, they were spoken in 1749 and published in 1791, when Johnson had been dead six years, Garrick twelve years, and Hume fourteen years. It is idle to dream that they can now be conjecturally emended. But it is worse than idle to bring in as evidence John Wilkes. What entered his ear as purity itself might issue from his mouth as the grossest obscenity. He had no delicacy of feeling. No principle restrained him. When he comes to bear testimony, and aims a shaft at any man's character, the bow that he draws is drawn with the weakness of the hand of a worn-out and shameless profligate.

Mr. Shepherd quotes an unpublished letter of Boswell to Wilkes, dated Rome, April 22, 1765, to show 'that the two men had become familiars, not only long before Wilkes's famous meeting with Dr. Johnson was brought about, but before even the friendship of Boswell himself with Johnson had been consolidated.' It needs no unpublished letters to show that. It must be known to every attentive reader of Boswell. See _ante_, i. 395, and ii. 11.

_Frederick III, King of Prussia_.

(Vol. i, p. 308.)

Boswell should have written Frederick II.

_Boswell's visit to Rousseau and Voltaire_.

(Vol. i, p. 434; and vol. ii, p. 11.)

_Boswell to Andrew Mitchell, Esq., His Britannic Majesty's Minister at Berlin_.

'Berlin, 28 August, 1764.

... 'I have had another letter from my father, in which he continues of opinion that travelling is of very little use, and may do a great deal of harm. ... I esteem and love my father, and I am determined to do what is in my power to make him easy and happy. But you will allow that I may endeavour to make him happy, and at the same time not to be too hard upon myself. I must use you so much with the freedom of a friend as to tell you that with the vivacity which you allowed me I have a melancholy disposition. I have made excursions into the fields of amusement, perhaps of folly. I have found that amusement and folly are beneath me, and that without some laudable pursuit my life must be insipid and wearisome..... My father seems much against my going to Italy, but gives me leave to go from this, and pass some months in Paris. I own that the words of the Apostle Paul, "I must see Rome," are strongly _borne in_ upon my mind. It would give me infinite pleasure. It would give taste for a life-time, and I should go home to Auchinleck with serene contentment.'

After stating that he is going to Geneva, he continues:--

'I shall see Voltaire; I shall also see Switzerland and Rousseau. These two men are to me greater objects than most statues or pictures.' --Nichols's _Literary History_, vii. 318.

_Superficiality of the French writers_.

(Vol. i, p. 454.)

Gibbon, writing of the year 1759, says:--

'In France, to which my ideas [in the _Essay on the Study of Literature_] were confined, the learning and language of Greece and Rome were neglected by a philosophic age. The guardian of those studies, the Academy of Inscriptions, was degraded to the lowest rank among the three royal societies of Paris; the new appellation of _Erudits_ was contemptuously applied to the successors of Lipsius and Casaubon; and I was provoked to hear (see M. d'Alembert, _Discours préliminaire à l'Encyclopedie_) that the exercise of the memory, their sole merit, had been superseded by the nobler faculties of the imagination and the judgment.' --_Memoirs of Edward Gibbon_, ed. 1827, i. 104.

_A Synod of Cooks_.

(Vol. i, p. 470.)

When Johnson spoke of 'a Synod of Cooks' he was, I conjecture, thinking of Milton's 'Synod of Gods,' in Beelzebub's speech in Paradise Lost, book ii. line 391.

_Johnson and Bishop Percy_.

(Vol. i, p. 486.)

Bishop Percy in a letter to Boswell says: 'When in 1756 or 1757 I became acquainted with Johnson, he told me he had lived twenty years in London, but not very happily.' --Nichols's _Literary History_, vii. 307.

_Barclay's Answer to Kenrick's Review of Johnson's 'Shakespeare.'_

(Vol. i, p. 498.)

Neither in the British Museum nor in the Bodleian have I been able to find a copy of this book. _A Defence of Mr. Kenricks Review_, 1766, does not seem to contain any reply to such a work as Barclay's.

_Mrs. Piozzi's 'Collection of Johnson s Letters.'_

(Vol. ii, p. 43, n. 2.)

MR. BOSWELL TO BISHOP PERCY. 'Feb. 9, 1788.

'I am ashamed that I have yet seven years to write of his life. ... Mrs. (Thrale) Piozzi's Collection of his letters will be out soon. ... I saw a sheet at the printing-house yesterday... It is wonderful what avidity there still is for everything relative to Johnson. I dined at Mr. Malone's on Wednesday with Mr. W. G. Hamilton, Mr. Flood, Mr. Windham, Mr. Courtenay, &c.; and Mr. Hamilton observed very well what a proof it was of Johnson's merit that we had been talking of him all the afternoon.' --Nichols's _Literary History_, vii. 309.

_Johnson on romantic virtue_.

(Vol. ii, P. 76.)

'Dr. Johnson used to advise his friends to be upon their guard against romantic virtue, as being founded upon no settled principle. "A plank," said he, "that is tilted up at one end must of course fall down on the other." '--William Seward, _Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons_, ii. 461.'

_'Old' Baxter on toleration_.

(Vol. ii, p. 253.)

The Rev. John Hamilton Davies, B.A., F.R.H.S., Rector of St. Nicholas's, Worcester, and author of _The Life of Richard Baxter of Kidderminster, Preacher and Prisoner_ (London, Kent & Co., 1887), kindly informs me, in answer to my inquiries, that he believes that Johnson may allude to the following passage in the fourth chapter of Baxter's Reformed Pastor:--

'I think the Magistrate should be the hedge of the Church. I am against the two extremes of universal license and persecuting tyranny. The Magistrate must be allowed the use of his reason, to know the cause, and follow his own judgment, not punish men against it. I am the less sorry that the Magistrate doth so little interpose.'

_England barren in good historians_.

(Vol. ii, p. 236, n. 2.)

Gibbon, writing of the year 1759, says:

'The old reproach that no British altars had been raised to the muse of history was recently disproved by the first performances of Robertson and Hume, the histories of Scotland and of the Stuarts.' --_Memoirs of Edward Gibbon_, ed. 1827, i. 103.

_An instance of Scotch nationality_.

(Vol. ii, p. 307.)

Lord Camden, when pressed by Dr. Berkeley (the Bishop's son) to appoint a Scotchman to some office, replied: 'I have many years ago sworn that I never will introduce a Scotchman into any office; for if you introduce one he will contrive some way or other to introduce forty more cousins or friends.' --G. M. _Berkeley's Poems_, p. ccclxxi.

_Mortality in the Foundling Hospital of London_.

(Vol. ii, p. 398.)

'From March 25, 1741, to December 31, 1759, the number of children received into the Foundling Hospital is 14,994, of which have died to December 31, 1759, 8,465.'--_A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain_, ed. 1769, vol. ii, p. 121. A great many of these died, no doubt, after they had left the Hospital.

_Mr. Planta_.

(Vol. ii, p. 399, n. 2.)

The reference is no doubt to Mr. Joseph Planta, Assistant-Librarian of the British Museum 1773, Principal Librarian 1799-1827. See Edwards' _Lives of the Founders of the British Museum_, pp. 517 sqq.; and Nichols's _Illustrations of Literature_, vol. vii, pp. 677-8.

'_Unitarian_'.

(Vol. ii, p. 408, n. 1.)

John Locke in his _Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity_ quotes from Mr. Edwards whom he answers:--'This gentleman and his fellows are resolved to be Unitarians; they are for one article of faith as well as One person in the Godhead.' --Locke's _Works_, ed. 1824, vi, 200.

_The proposed Riding School for Oxford_.

(Vol. ii, p. 424.)

My friend, Mr. C. E. Doble, has pointed out to me the following passage in _Collectanea_, First Series, edited by Mr. C. R. L. Fletcher, Fellow of All Souls College, and printed for the Oxford Historical Society, Oxford, 1885.

'The _Advertisement to Religion and Policy, by Edward Earl of Clarendon_, runs as follows:--

"Henry Viscount Cornbury, who was called up to the House of Peers by the title of Lord Hyde, in the lifetime of his father, Henry Earl of Rochester, by a codicil to his will, dated Aug. 10, 1751, left divers MSS. of his great grandfather, Edward Earl of Clarendon, to Trustees, with a direction that the money to arise from the sale or publication thereof, should be employed as a beginning of a fund for supporting a Manage or Academy for riding and other useful exercises in Oxford; a plan of this sort having been also recommended by Lord Clarendon in his Dialogue on Education. Lord Cornbury dying before his father, this bequest did not take effect. But Catharine, one of the daughters of Henry Earl of Rochester, and late Duchess Dowager of Queensbury, whose property these MSS. became, afterwards by deed gave them, together with all the monies which had arisen or might arise from the sale or publication of them, to [three Trustees] upon trust for the like purposes as those expressed by Lord Hyde in his codicil."

'The preface to the _Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, written by himself_., has words to the same effect. (See also _Notes and Queries_, Ser. I. x. 185, and xi. 32.)

'From a letter in _Notes and Queries_, Ser. II. x. p. 74, it appears that in 1860 the available sum, in the hands of the Trustees of the Clarendon Bequest, amounted to £10,000. The University no longer needed a riding-school, and the claims of Physical Science were urgent; and in 1872 the announcement was made, that by the liberality of the Clarendon Trustees an additional wing had been added to the University Museum, containing the lecture-rooms and laboratories of the department of Experimental Philosophy.' Vol. i. p. 305.

_Boswell and Mrs. Rudd._

(Vol. ii, p. 450, n. 1.)

In Mr. Alfred Morrison's _Collection of Autographs_, vol. i. p. 103, mention is made among Boswell's autographs of verses entitled _Lurgan Clanbrassil_, a supposed Irish song.'

I have learnt, through Mr. Morrison's kindness, that 'on the document itself there is the following memorandum, signed, so far as can be made out, H. W. R.:--

"The enclosed song was written and composed by James Boswell, the biographer of Johnson, in commemoration of a tour he made with Mrs. Rudd whilst she was under his protection, for living with whom he displeased his father so much that he threatened to disinherit him.

"Mrs. Rudd had lived with one of the Perreaus, who were tried and executed for forgery. She was tried at the same time and acquitted.

"My father having heard that Boswell used to sing this song at the Home Circuit, requested it of him, and he wrote it and gave it him. H.W. R."'

"Feb. 1828."

Christopher Smart.

(Vol. ii, p. 454, n. 3.)

Mr. Robert Browning, in his Parleyings with Christopher Smart, under the similitude of 'some huge house,' thus describes the general run of that unfortunate poet's verse:--

'All showed the Golden Mean without a hint
Of brave extravagance that breaks the rule.
The master of the mansion was no fool
Assuredly, no genius just as sure!
Safe mediocrity had scorned the lure
Of now too much and now too little cost,
And satisfied me sight was never lost
Of moderate design's accomplishment
In calm completeness.'

Mr. Browning goes on to liken one solitary poem to a Chapel in the house, in which is found--

'from floor to roof one evidence
Of how far earth may rival heaven.'

_Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day_ (pp. 80-82), London, 1887.

_Johnsons discussion on baptism--with Mr. Lloyd, the Birmingham Quaker_.

(Vol. ii, p. 458.)

In _Farm and its Inhabitants_ (_ante_, p. xlii), a further account is given of the controversy between Johnson and Mr. Lloyd the Quaker, on the subject of Barclay's _Apology_.

'Tradition states that, losing his temper, Dr. Johnson threw the volume on the floor, and put his foot on it, in denunciation of its statements. The identical volume is now in the possession of G. B. Lloyd, of Edgbaston Grove.

'At the dinner table he continued the debate in such angry tones, and struck the table so violently that the children were frightened, and desired to escape.

'The next morning Dr. Johnson went to the bank [Mr. Lloyd was a banker] and by way of apology called out in his stentorian voice, "I say, Lloyd, I'm the best theologian, but you are the best Christian.'" p. 41. It could not have been 'the next morning' that Johnson went to the bank, for he left for Lichfield on the evening of the day of the controversy (_ante_, ii. 461). He must have gone in the afternoon, while Boswell was away seeing Mr. Boulton's great works at Soho (ib. p. 459).

Mr. G. B. Lloyd, the great-grandson of Johnson's host, in a letter written this summer (1886), says: 'Having spent much of my boyhood with my grandfather in the old house, I have heard him tell the story of the stamping on the broad volume.'

Boswell mentions (ib. p. 457) that 'Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd, like their Majesties, had been blessed with a numerous family of fine children, their numbers being exactly the same.' The author of _Farm and its Inhabitants_ says (p. 46): 'There is a tradition that when Sampson Lloyd's wife used to feel depressed by the care of such a large family (they had sixteen children) he would say to her, "Never mind, the twentieth will be the most welcome."' His fifteenth child Catharine married Dr. George Birkbeck, the founder of the Mechanics' Institutes (ib. p. 48).

A story told (p. 50) of one of Mr. Lloyd's sons-in-law, Joseph Biddle, is an instance of that excess of forgetfulness which Johnson called 'morbid oblivion' (_ante_, v. 68). 'He went to pay a call in Leamington. The servant asked him for his name, he could not remember it; in perplexity he went away, when a friend in the street met him and accosted him, "How do you do, Mr. Biddle?" "Oh, Biddle, Biddle, Biddle, that's the name," cried he, and rushed off to pay his call.'

The editor is in error in stating (p. 45, n. 1) that a very poor poem entitled _A bone for Friend Mary to pick_, is by Johnson. It may be found in the _Gent. Mag._ for 1791, p. 948.

_Lichfield in 1783._

(Vol. ii, p. 461.)