about liberty, as a blessing most fervently to be implored, and its continuance prayed for. Johnson observed, that our liberty was in no sort of danger :-he would have done much better to pray against our licentiousness.

"One evening at Mrs. Montagu's, where a splendid company had assembled, consisting of the most eminent literary characters, I thought he seemed highly pleased with the respect and attention that were shown him, and asked him, on our return home, if he was not highly gratified by his visit. No, Sir,' said he, 'not highly gratified; yet I do not recollect to have passed many evenings with fewer objections.'

"Though of no high extraction himself, he had much respect for birth and family, especially among ladies. He said, 'adventitious accomplishments may be possessed by all ranks; but one may easily distinguish the born gentlewoman.'

"He said, 'the poor in England were better provided for than in any other country of the same extent: he did not mean little cantons, or petty republics. Where a great proportion of the people,' said he, 'are suffered to languish in helpless misery, that country must be ill policed, and wretchedly governed: a decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation. Gentlemen of education,' he observed, 'were pretty much the same in all countries; the condition of the lower orders, the poor especially, was the true mark of national discrimination.'

"When the corn laws were in agitation in Ireland, by which that country has been enabled not only to feed itself, but to export corn to a large amount, Sir Thomas Robinson observed, that those laws might be prejudicial to the corn-trade of England. 'Sir Thomas,' said he, 'you talk the language of a savage: what, Sir, would you prevent any people from feeding themselves, if by any honest means they can do it?'

"It being mentioned, that Garrick assisted Dr. Browne,' the author of the Estimate,' in some dramatic composition, 'No, Sir,' said Johnson; he would no more suffer Garrick to write a line in his play, than he would suffer him to mount his pulpit.'

1 Dr. John Browne, born in 1715; B.A. of St. John's, Cambridge, in 1735, and D.D. in 1755; besides his celebrated Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times,-a work which, in one year, ran through seven editions, and is now forgotten, and several religious and miscellaneous works, he was the author of two tragedies, Barbarossa and Athelstan. He was a man of considerable, but irregular genius; and died insane, by his own hand, in 1766.—Croker.

"Speaking of Burke, he said, 'It was commonly observed he spoke too often in parliament; but nobody could say he did not speak well, though too frequently and too familiarly.'

"Speaking of economy, he remarked, it was hardly worth while to save anxiously twenty a pounds a year. If a man could save to that degree, so as to enable him to assume a different rank in society, then, indeed, it might answer some purpose.

"He observed, a principal source of erroneous judgment was viewing things partially and only on one side; as for instance, fortunehunters, when they contemplated the fortunes singly and separately, it was a dazzling and tempting object; but when they came to possess the wives and their fortunes together, they began to suspect they had not made quite so good a bargain.

"Speaking of the late Duke of Northumberland1 living very magnificently when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, somebody remarked, it would be difficult to find a suitable successor to him: 'Then,' exclaimed, Johnson, he is only fit to succeed himself?

"He advised me, if possible, to have a good orchard. He knew, he said, a clergyman of small income, who brought up a family very reputably, which he chiefly fed with apple dumplings.

"He said he had known several good scholars among the Irish gentlemen; but scarcely any of them correct in quantity. He extended the same observation to Scotland.

"Speaking of a certain prelate,' who exerted himself very laudably

Sir Hugh Smithson, who, by his marriage with the daughter of Algernon, last Duke of Somerset, of that branch, became second Earl of Northumberland of the new creation, was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1763 to 1765; he was created a duke in 1766. I suppose Johnson's phrase was meant as an Hibernicism, imitated from Theobald's celebrated blunder, in the περὶ βάθους,

"None but himself can be his parallel !"

which, however, Warton discovered to be itself borrowed from Seneca's Hercules Furens

-Croker.

66 Queris Alcidæ parem? Nemo, nise ipse." i. 84.

2 Probably Dr. Richard Robinson, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland from 1765 to 1795. He was created Lord Rokeby in 1777, with remainder to the issue of his cousin, Matthew Robinson, of West Layton. He built what is called Canterbury Gate, and the adjacent quadrangle, in Christ Church, Oxford.-Croker.

in building churches and parsonage houses; however,' said he,' I do not find that he is esteemed a man of much professional learning, or a liberal patron of it ;-yet, it is well where a man possesses any strong positive excellence. Few have all kinds of merit belonging to their character. We must not examine matters too deeply. No, Sir, a fallible being will fail somewhere.

"Talking of the Irish clergy, he said, 'Swift was a man of great parts, and the instrument of much good to his country. Berkeley was a profound scholar, as well as a man of fine imagination; but Usher,' he said, 'was the great luminary of the Irish church: and a greater,' he added, 'no church could boast of; at least in modern times.'

"We dined tête-à-tête at the Mitre, as I was preparing to return to Ireland, after an absence of many years. I regretted much leaving London, where I had formed many agreeable connections; Sir,' said he, 'I don't wonder at it: no man, fond of letters, leaves London without regret. But remember, Sir, you have seen and enjoyed a great deal ;-you have seen life in its highest decorations, and the world has nothing new to exhibit. No man is so well qualified to leave public life as he who has long tried it and known it well. are always hankering after untried situations, and imagining greater felicity from them than they can afford. No, Sir, knowledge and virtue may be acquired in all countries, and your local consequence will make you some amends for the intellectual gratifications you relinquish.' Then he quoted the following lines with great pathos :

1

"He who has early known the pomps of state,

(For things unknown 'tis ignorance to condemn ;) And having view'd the gaudy bait,

Can boldly say, the trifle I contemn;

With such a one contented could I live,

Contented could I die.'1

We

Being desirous to trace these verses to the fountain head, after having in vain turned over several of our elder poets with the hope of lighting on them, I applied to Dr. Maxwell, now resident at Bath, for the purpose of ascertaining their author: but that gentleman could furnish no aid on this occasion. At length the lines have been discovered by the author's second son, Mr. James Boswell, in the London Magazine for July 1732, where they form part of a poem on Retirement, there published anonymously, but in fact (as he afterwards found) copied, with some slight variations, from one of Walsh's smaller poems, entitled The Retirement; and they exhibit another proof of what has been elsewhere observed by the author of the work before us, that Johnson retained in his memory fragments of obscure

"He then took a most affecting leave of me; said, he knew it was a point of duty that called me away.-'We shall all be sorry to lose you,' said he: 'laudo tamen.'"

or neglected poetry. In quoting verses of that description, he appears by a slight deviation to have sometimes given them a moral turn, and to have dexterously adapted them to his own sentiments, where the original had a very different tendency. Thus, in the present instance (as Mr. J. Boswell observes to me), "the author of the poem above mentioned exhibits himself as having retired to the country, to avoid the vain follies of a town life,—ambition, avarice, and the pursuit of pleasure, contrasted with the enjoyments of the country, and the delightful conversations that the brooks, &c. furnish; which he holds to be infinitely more pleasing and instructive than any which towns afford. He is then led to consider the weakness of the human mind, and, after lamenting that he (the writer,) who is neither enslaved by avarice, ambition, or pleasure, has yet made himself a slave to love, he thus proceeds :

666

"If this dire passion never will be gone,

If beauty always must my heart enthral,
O, rather let me be confined by one,

Than madly thus become a slave to all :

"One who has early known the pomp of state
(For things unknown 'tis ignorance to condemn),
And after having view'd the gaudy bait,

Can coldly say, the trifle I contemn;

"In her blest arms contented could I live,
Contented could I die. But O, my mind,

Imaginary scenes of bliss deceive

With hopes of joys impossible to find.'"

Another instance of Johnson's retaining in his memory verses by obscure authors is given post, Aug. 27, 1773.

In the autumn of 1782, when he was at Brighthelmstone, he frequently accompanied Mr. Philip Metcalfe in his chaise, to take the air; and the conversation in one of their excursions happening to turn on a celebrated historian, [no doubt Gibbon], since deceased, he repeated, with great precision, some verses, as very characteristic of that gentleman. These furnish another proof of what has been above observed; for they are found in a very obscure quarter, among some anonymous poems appended to the second volume of a collection frequently printed by Lintot, under the title of Pope's Miscellanies :

"See how the wand'ring Danube flows,

Realms and religions parting;

A friend to all true christian foes,

To Peter, Jack, and Martin.

In 1771 he published another political pamphlet, entitled "Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands," in which, upon materials furnished to him by the ministry, and upon general topics, expanded in his rich style, he successfully endeavoured to persuade the nation that it was wise and laudable to suffer the question of right to remain undecided, rather than involve our country in another war. It has been suggested by some, with what truth I shall not take upon me to decide, that he rated the consequence of those islands to Great Britain too low. But however this may be, every humane mind must surely applaud the earnestness with which he averted the calamity of war: a calamity so dreadful, that it is astonishing how civilised, nay, Christian nations, can deliberately continue to renew it. His description of its miseries, in this pamphlet, is one of the finest pieces of eloquence in the English language. Upon this occasion, too, we find Johnson lashing the party in opposition with unbounded severity, and making the fullest use of what he ever reckoned a most effectual argumentative instrument,-contempt. His character of their very able mysterious champion, Junius, is executed with all the force of his genius, and finished with the highest care. He seems to have exulted in sallying forth to single combat against the boasted and formidable hero, who bade defiance to "principalities and powers, and the rulers of this world."

This pamphlet, it is observable, was softened in one particular, after the first edition; for the conclusion of Mr. George

"Now Protestant, and Papist now,

Not constant long to either,

At length an infidel does grow,

And ends his journey neither.

Thus many a youth I've known set out,

Half Protestant, half Papist,

And rambling long the world about,

Turn infidel or atheist."

In reciting these verses, I have no doubt that Johnson substituted some word for infidel [perhaps Mussulman] in the second stanza, to avoid the disagreeable repetition of the same expression.-Malone.