Chancellor Hardwicke, had merit. He said, "it was quite vulgar, and had nothing luminous."

Johnson mentioned Dr. Barry's1 "System of Physic." "He was a man," said he, "who had acquired a high reputation in Dublin, came over to England, and brought his reputation with him; but had not great success. His notion was, that pulsation occasions death by attrition; and that, therefore, the way to preserve life is to retard pulsation. But we know that pulsation is strongest in infants, and that we increase in growth while it operates in its regular course; so it cannot be the cause of destruction." Soon after this, he said something very flattering to Mrs. Thrale, which I do not recollect; but it concluded with wishing her long life. "Sir,” said I, “if Dr. Barry's system be true, you have now shortened Mrs. Thrale's life, perhaps some minutes, by accelerating her pulsation."

On Thursday, April 11,2 I dined with him at General Paoli's, 1 Sir Edward Barry, Baronet.

2 It was on this day that Johnson applied to Lord Hertford, Lord Chamberlain, for rooms in Hampton Court, in a letter which was brought to light by Sir James Prior, in his Life of Malone, London, 1860. This application had apparently escaped the researches of Boswell, of Malone, and of Croker: for it is hardly possible to conceive that any of them would have suppressed the fact, had it fallen within his cognisance. The answer to it has also been preserved so that it may be seen, and will no doubt be noted, how a great official of 1776 received and dealt with the petition of a great man.

"MY LORD,-Being wholly unknown to your Lordship, I have only this apology to make for presuming to trouble you with a request, that a stranger's petition, if it cannot be easily granted, can be easily refused.

"Some of the apartments are now vacant in which I am encouraged to hope that by application to your Lordship, I may obtain a residence. Such a grant would be considered by me as a great favour; and I hope that to a man, who has had the honour of vindicating his Majesty's Government, a retreat in one of his houses may not be improperly or unworthily allowed.

"I therefore request that your Lordship will be pleased to grant such rooms in Hampton Court as shall seem proper to

"My Lord,

"Your Lordship's most obedient,

"And most faithful humble servant,

"April 11, 1776.”

"SAM. JOHNSON.

in whose house I now resided, and where I had ever afterwards the honour of being entertained with the kindest attention as his constant guest, while I was in London, till I had a house of my own there. I mentioned my having that morning introduced to Mr. Garrick, Count Neni, a Flemish nobleman of great rank and fortune, to whom Garrick talked of Abel Drugger as a small part; and related, with pleasant vanity, 'that a Frenchman, who had seen him in one of his low characters, exclaimed "Comment! je ne le crois pas. Ce n'est pas Monsieur Garrick, ce grand homme !" Garrick added, with an appearance of grave recollection, "If I were to begin life again, I think I should not play those low characters." Upon which I observed, "Sir, you would be in the wrong, for your great excellence is your variety of playing, your representing so well characters so very different. JOHNSON. "Garrick, Sir, was not in earnest in what he said: for, to be sure, his peculiar excellence is his variety; and, perhaps, there is not any one character which has not been as well acted by somebody else, as he could do it." BOSWELL. "Why, then, Sir, did he talk so?" JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, to make you answer as you did." BOSWELL. "I don't know, Sir; he seemed to dip deep into his mind for the reflection." JOHNSON. "He had not far to dip, Sir; he had said the same thing, probably, twenty times before."

Of a nobleman raised at a very early period to high office, he said, "His parts, Sir, are pretty well for a lord; but would not be distinguished in a man who had nothing else but his parts."

A journey to Italy was still in his thoughts. He said, "A man who has not been in Italy is always conscious of an inferiority, from his not having seen what it is expected a man should see. The grand object of travelling is to see the shores

Indorsed "Mr. Saml. Johnson to the Earl of Hertford, requesting apartments at Hampton Court 11th May, 1776." And within, a memorandum of the answer.

"Lord C. presents his compliments to Mr. Johnson, and is sorry he cannot obey his commands, having already on his hands many engagements unsatisfied." Prior's Life of Malone, p. 337.—Editor.

of the Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great empires of the world; the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman. All our religion, almost all our law, almost all our arts, almost all that sets us above savages, has come to us from the shores of the Mediterranean." The General observed, that "THE MEDITERRANEAN would be a noble subject for a poem." 1

We talked of translation. I said, I could not define it, nor could I think of a similitude to illustrate it; but that it appeared to me the translation of poetry could be only imitation. JOHNSON. "You may translate books of science exactly. You may also translate history, in so far as it is not embellished with oratory, which is poetical. Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language, if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language."

A gentleman maintained that the art of printing had hurt real learning, by disseminating idle writings. JOHNSON. "Sir, if it had not been for the art of printing, we should now have no learning at all; for books would have perished faster than they could have been transcribed." This observation seems not just, considering for how many ages books were preserved by writing alone.

The same gentleman maintained, that a general diffusion of knowledge among a people was a disadvantage; for it made the vulgar rise above their humble sphere. JOHNSON. "Sir, while knowledge is a distinction, those who are possessed of it will naturally rise above those who are not. Merely to read

1

Soon after Boswell's work appeared, Lady Hesketh recommended the Mediterranean to Cowper as the subject of a poem, but he modestly excused himself, adding, that "it was a subject not for one poem but twenty," to which Southey subjoins, " a noble subject indeed, but about as practicable for a poem as for a panorama.”—Life of Cowper, iii., 16.—P. Cunningham.

and write was a distinction at first; but we see when reading and writing have become general, the common people keep their stations. And so, were higher attainments to become general, the effect would be the same."

"Goldsmith," he said, "referred every thing to vanity; his virtues and his vices too were from that motive. He was not a social man. He never exchanged mind with you."

We spent the evening at Mr. Hoole's. Mr. Mickle, the excellent translator of "The Lusiad," was there. I have preserved little of the conversation of this evening. Dr. Johnson said, "Thomson had a true poetical genius, the power of viewing every thing in a poetical light. His fault is such a cloud of words sometimes, that the sense can hardly peep through. Shiels, who compiled 'Cibber's Lives of the Poets,' was one day sitting with me. I took down Thomson, and read aloud a large portion of him, and then asked,-Is not this fine? Shiels having expressed the highest admiration—'Well, Sir,' said I, 'I have omitted every other line.""

I related a dispute between Goldsmith and Mr. Robert Dodsley, one day when they and I were dining at Tom Davies's, in 1762. Goldsmith asserted, that there was no poetry produced in this age. Dodsley appealed to his own collection, and maintained, that though you could not find a palace like Dryden's "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," you had villages composed of very pretty houses; and he mentioned particularly "The Spleen." JOHNSON. "I think Dodsley gave up the question. He and Goldsmith said the same thing; only he said it in a softer manner than Goldsmith did; for he acknowledged there was no poetry, nothing that towered above the common mark. You may find wit and humour in verse, and yet no poetry. 'Hudibras' has a profusion of these; yet it is not to be reckoned a poem. 'The Spleen,' in Dodsley's collection, on which you say he chiefly rested, is not poetry." BOSWELL. "Does not Gray's poetry, Sir, tower above the common mark?" JOHNSON. "Yes, Sir; but we must attend to the difference between what men in general cannot do if they would, and what every man may do if he would. Sixteen

string Jack towered above the common mark." BOSWELL. “Then, Sir, what is poetry?" JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is." "

3

On Friday, April 12, I dined with him at our friend Tom Davies's, where we met Mr. Cradock, of Leicestershire, author of "Zobeide," a tragedy; a very pleasing gentleman, to whom my friend Dr. Farmer's very excellent "Essay on the Learning of Shakspeare" is addressed; and Dr. Harwood, who has written and published various works, particularly a fantastical translation of the New Testament, in modern phrase, and with a Socinian twist.1

I introduced Aristotle's doctrine, in his "Art of Poetry," of κάθαρσις τῶν παθήματων, the purging of the passions,” as the purpose of tragedy." "But how are the passions to be purged by terror and pity?" said I, with an assumed air of ignorance, to incite him to talk, for which it was often necessary to employ

1 A noted highwayman [by name John Rann] who, after having been several times tried and acquitted, was at last hanged [on Nov. 30, 1774]. He was remarkable for foppery in his dress, and particularly for wearing a bunch of sixteen strings at the knees of his breeches.

2 "Gray, Johnson said, was the very Torré of poetry; he played his coruscations so speciously, that his steel dust is mistaken by many for a shower of gold."-Hawkins's Apophths. Torré was a foreigner who exhibited a variety of splendid fire-works at Marylebone Gardens.— Croker.

3 Who published, in 1826, Memoirs of his own Times. Works, vol. xi., p. 214.-Croker.

He is more advantageously known by a work on the classics. This poor man had, about 1783, a stroke of the palsy, which rendered him a cripple, and, in 1788, he published in the European Magazine, a letter, written to him in 1773 by Bishop Lowth, to show that the bishop, though no friend to dissenters, was kind and liberal towards him, and contributed, he says, to the last year of his life, to relieve his wants.-European Magazine, 1788, p. 413.—Croker.

5

See an ingenious essay on this subject by the late Dr. Moor, Greek professor at Glasgow.

See also a learned note on this passage of Aristotle, by Mr. Twining, in his admirable translation of the Poetics, in which the various explanations of other critics are considered, and in which Dr. Moor's essay is particularly discussed.-7. Boswell, jun.