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character was increased by knowing him personally. He had talked of publishing an edition of Walton's Lives, but had laid aside that design, upon Dr. Johnson's telling him, from mistake, that Lord Hailes intended to do it. I had wished to negotiate between Lord Hailes and him, that one or other should perform so good a work. JOHNSON. "In order to do it well, it will be necessary to collect all the editions of Walton's Lives. By way of adapting the book to the taste of the present age, they have, in a late edition, left out a vision which he relates Dr. Donne had, but it should be restored (1); and there should be a critical catalogue given of the works of the different persons whose lives were written by Walton, and therefore their works must be carefully read by the editor."

We then went to Trinity College, where he introduced me to Mr. Thomas Warton, with whom we passed a part of the evening. We talked of biography. JOHNSON. "It is rarely well executed. They only who live with a man can write his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination; and few people who have lived with a man know what to remark about him. The chaplain of a late bishop (2), whom I was to assist in writing some

(1) The vision which Johnson speaks of was not in the original publication of Walton's "Life of Dr. Donne," in 1640. It is not found in the three earliest editions; but was first introduced into the fourth, in 1765. I have not been able to discover what modern republication is alluded to in which it was omitted. It has very properly been restored by Dr. Zouch.J BOSWELL, jun.

(2) The Bishop was Zachary Pearce, and the Chaplain, Mr. Derby. See post, sub May, 1777.-C.

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memoirs of his lordship, could tell me scarcely any thing." (')

I said, Mr. Robert Dodsley's life should be written, as he had been so much connected with the wits of his time, and by his literary merit had raised himself from the station of a footman. Mr. Warton said, he had published a little volume under the title of "The Muse in Livery." JOHNSON. "I doubt whether Dodsley's brother would thank a man who should write his life; yet Dodsley himself was not unwilling that his original low condition should be recollected. When Lord Lyttelton's Dialogues of the Dead' came out, one of which is between Apicius, an ancient epicure, and Dartineuf (2), a modern epicure, Dodsley said to me, 'I knew Dartineuf well, for I was once his footman.'

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Biography led us to speak of Dr. John Campbell, who had written a considerable part of the " Biographia Britannica." Johnson, though he valued him highly, was of opinion that there was not so

(1) It has been mentioned to me by an accurate English friend, that Dr. Johnson could never have used the phras almost nothing, as not being English; and therefore I have put another in its place. At the same time, I am not quite convinced it is not good English. For the best writers use this phrase, "little or nothing," i. e. almost so little as to be nothing.

(2) This gentleman, whose proper name was Charles Dartiquenave (pronounced and commonly written Darteneuf), is now only recollected as a celebrated epicure; but he was a man of wit, pleasure, and political importance at the beginning

of the last century. the associate of Swift, Pope, Addison,

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and Steele a contributor to the Tatler, and a member of the Kit-Cat Club, of which collection his portrait is one of the best. He was Paymaster of the Board of Works, and Surveyor of the royal gardens; and died in 1737. It was suspected that he was a natural son of Charles the Second, by a foreign lady; and his physiognomy seems to evidence a foreign origin. C.

much in his great work, "A Political Survey of Great Britain," as the world had been taught to expect(); and had said to me that he believed Campbell's disappointment on account of the bad success of that work had killed him. He this evening observed of it, "That work was his death." Mr. Warton, not adverting to his meaning, answered, "I believe so, from the great attention he bestowed on it." JOHNSON. "Nay, Sir, he died of want of attention, if he died at all by that book."

We talked of a work much in vogue at that time, written in a very mellifluous style, but which, under pretext of another subject, contained much artful infidelity. I said it was not fair to attack us unexpectedly; he should have warned us of our danger, before we entered his garden of flowery eloquence, by advertising, "Spring-guns and men-traps set here." The author had been an Oxonian, and was remembered there for having "turned Papist." I observed, that as he had changed several times— from the church of England to the church of Rome -from the church of Rome to infidelity,—I did not despair yet of seeing him a methodist preacher. JOHNSON (laughing). "It is said that his range has been more extensive, and that he has once been 'Mahometan. However, now that he has published his infidelity, he will probably persist in it." (2) BOSWELL. "I am not quite sure of that, Sir."

(1) Yet surely it is a very useful work, and of wonderful research and labour for one man to have executed.

(2) As there can be no doubt that Gibbon and his History are the author and the work here alluded to, I once thought

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