LIST OF ENGRAVINGS

IN VOLUME III.

JAMES BOSWELL, from the painting by Sir J. Reynolds Frontispiece
DR. JOHNSON, from the bust by Nollekens

E. CAVE, founder of the "Gentleman's Magazine"
DR. JOHNSON'S SITTING-ROOM IN BOLT Court.
TOPHAM BEAUCLERK .

RESIDENCE OF CATHARINE Clive

Title

to face page 36

50

92

146

THE LIFE

ON

OF

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

N Tuesday, April 14, I dined with him at General Oglethorpe's, with General Paoli and Mr. Langton. General Oglethorpe declaimed against luxury. JOHNSON. “Depend upon it, Sir, every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get." OGLETHORPE. "But the best depends much upon ourselves; and if we can be as well satisfied with plain things, we are in the wrong to accustom our palates to what is high seasoned and expensive. What says Addison in his 'Cato,' speaking of the Numidian?

"Coarse are his meals, the fortune of the chase;
Amid the running stream he slakes his thirst,
Toils all the day, and at the approach of night,
On the first friendly bank he throws him down,
Or rests his head upon a rock till morn;
And if the following day he chance to find
A new repast, or an untasted spring,
Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury.'

Let us have that kind of luxury, Sir, if you will." JOHNSON. "But hold, Sir; to be merely satisfied is not enough. It is in refinement and elegance that the civilised man differs from the savage. A great part of our industry, and all our ingenuity, is exercised in procuring pleasure; and, Sir, a hungry man has not the same pleasure in eating a plain dinner, that a hungry man has in eating a luxurious dinner. You see I put the case

fairly. A hungry man may have as much, nay, more pleasure in eating a plain dinner, than a man grown fastidious has in eating a luxurious dinner. But I suppose the man who decides between the two dinners to be equally a hungry man."

Talking of the different governments,-JOHNSON. "The more contracted power is, the more easily it is destroyed. A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone. Government there cannot be so firm as when it rests upon a broad basis gradually contracted, as the government of Great Britain, which is founded on the parliament, then is in the privy council, then in the king." BOSWELL. "Power, when contracted into the person of a despot, may be easily destroyed, as the prince may be cut off. So Caligula wished that the people of Rome had but one neck, that he might cut them off at a blow." OGLETHORPE. "It was of the senate he wished that.' The senate by its usurpation controlled both the emperor and the people. And don't you think that we see too much of that in our own parliament ?"

Dr. Johnson endeavoured to trace the etymology of Maccaronic verses, which he thought were of Italian invention, from Maccaroni; but on being informed that this would infer that they were the most common and easy verses, maccaroni being the most ordinary and simple food, he was at a loss; for he said, "He rather should have supposed it to import in its primitive signification, a composition of several things ;'

1 Boswell was right, and Oglethorpe wrong; the exclamation in Suetonius is, "Utinam populus Romanus unam cervicem haberet.”—Calig. XXX.- -Croker.

2 Dr. Johnson was right in supposing that this kind of poetry derived its name from maccherone. "Ars ista poetica (says Merlin Coccaie, whose true name was Theophilo Folengo) nuncupatur ars macaronica, a macaronibus derivata ; qui macarones sunt quoddam pulmentum, farina, caseo, butyro compaginatum, grossum, rude, et rusticanum. Ideo macaronica nil nisi grossedinem, ruditatem, et vocabulazzos debet in se continere." -Warton's Hist. of Eng. Poet. ii. 357, 4to ed. Lond. 1778. Folengo's assumed name was taken up in consequence of his having been instructed in his youth by Virago Coccaio. He died in 1544.—Malone.