"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; 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 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

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 1675. 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.

The Bishop was Zachary Pearce, and the Chaplain, Mr. Derby.— Croker.

* It has been mentioned to me by an accurate English friend, that Dr. Johnson could never have used the phrase almost nothing, which was the phrase used in the first edition, 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.

Mr. Boswell's friend was surely hypercritical.—Croker.

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, a modern epicure, Dodsley said to me, 'I knew Dartineuf well, for I was once his footman.'"

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 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."

1

We talked of a work much in vogue at that time, written in

James Dodsley, many years a bookseller in Pall Mall. He died 19 Feb., 1797, aged 74, and was buried in the church of St. James', Piccadilly, where there is a tablet erected to his memory.-P. Cunningham.

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, 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 as well as his name evidences a foreign origin.-Croker.

3

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

The first volume of Gibbon's great work was published Feb. 1, 1776. Its success was immediate. See the Memoirs of my Life and Writings. Miscell. Works, vol. i., p. 148.-Editor.