He spoke with much contempt of the notice taken of Woodhouse, the poetical shoemaker. He said, it was all vanity and childishness; and that such objects were, to those who patronized them, mere mirrors of their own superiority. They had better,' said he, 'furnish the man with good implements for his trade, than raise subscriptions for his poems. He may make an excellent shoemaker, but can never make a good poet. A schoolboy's exercise may be a pretty thing for a schoolboy; but it is no treat for a man.'

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Speaking of Boetius, who was the favourite writer of the middle ages, he said, it was very surprising that upon such a subject, and in such a situation, he should be 'magis philosophus quam christianus.'

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Speaking of Arthur Murphy, whom he very much loved, I don't know,' said he, that Arthur can be classed with the very first dramatick writers; yet at present I doubt much whether we have any thing superiour to Arthur.'

"Speaking of the national debt, he said, it was an idle dream to suppose that the country could sink under it. Let the publick creditors be ever so clamorous, the interest of millions must ever prevail over that of thousands.

"Of Dr. Kennicott's Collations he observed, that though the text should not be much mended thereby, yet it was no small advantage to know that we had as good a text as the most consummate industry and diligence could procure.

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Johnson observed, that so many objections might be made to every thing, that nothing could overcome them but the necessity of doing something. No man would be of any profession, as simply opposed to not being of it; but every one must do something m.

m We do not burthen our pages with notes explanatory of passages that need no comment, and indicative of beauties that every reader must recognize; but we cannot refrain from pointing attention to this observation, as one pregnant with as wholesome and conclusive advice to the wavering mind of youth as any that can be derived from tedious and expanded essays on the choice of a profession.-ED.

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'He remarked, that a London parish was a very comfortless thing; for the clergyman seldom knew the face of one out of ten of his parishioners.

"Of the late Mr. Mallet he spoke with no great respect: said, he was ready for any dirty job; that he had wrote against Byng at the instigation of the ministry, and was equally ready to write for him, provided he found his account in it".

"A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over experience.

"He observed, that a man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It was a miserable thing when the conversation could only be such as, whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that,

"He did not approve of late marriages, observing that more was lost in point of time, than compensated for by any possible advantages. Even ill-assorted marriages were preferable to cheerless celibacy.

"Of old Sheridan he remarked, that he neither wanted parts nor literature; but that his vanity and Quixotism obscured his merits.

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He said, foppery was never cured; it was the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, were never rectified: once a coxcomb, and always a coxcomb.

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Being told that Gilbert Cowper called him the Caliban of literature; Well,' said he, I must dub him the Punchinello.'

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'Speaking of the old earl of Cork, and Orrery, he said,

n Johnson's indignation against Mallet was chiefly aroused by his editing lord Bolingbroke's works, of the pernicious tendency of which he ever had the fullest conviction. "He pronounced," says Boswell in a former part of these memoirs, under the year 1754, "this memorable sentence upon the noble author and his editor. Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had no resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death!'"—Ed.

'that man spent his life in catching at an object, [literary eminence,] which he had not power to grasp.'

"To find a substitution for violated morality, he said, was the leading feature in all perversions of religion. "He often used to quote, with great pathos, those fine lines of Virgil:

Optima quæque dies miseris mortalibus ævi

Prima fugit; subeunt morbi, tristisque senectus,
Et labor, et duræ rapit inclementia mortis.

"Speaking of Homer, whom he venerated as the prince of poets, Johnson remarked, that the advice given to Diomed by his father, when he sent him to the Trojan war, was the noblest exhortation that could be instanced in any heathen writer, and comprised in a single line:

Α εν ἀριστεύειν, καὶ ὑπείροχον ἔμμεναι ἄλλων:

which, if I recollect well, is translated by Dr. Clarke thus: 'semper appetere præstantissima, et omnibus aliis antecellere.'

"He observed, it was a most mortifying reflection for any man to consider, what he had done, compared with what he might have done.

He said few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forego the pleasures of wine. They could not otherwise contrive how to fill the interval between dinner

and supper.

"He went with me, one Sunday, to hear my old master, Gregory Sharpe, preach at the Temple. In the prefatory prayer, Sharpe ranted 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.

• Dr. Maxwell's memory has deceived him. Glaucus is the person who received this counsel; and Clarke's translation of the passage, Il. vi. 1. 208, is as follows:

Ut semper fortissime rem gererem, et superior virtute essem aliis.-Boswell.

"One evening at Mrs. Montagu's, where a splendid company was 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.'

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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 civilization'-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 dramatick 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.'

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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 P.

Speaking of economy, he remarked, it was hardly worth while to save anxiously twenty 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.

p By "familiarly" Johnson must have meant frequently, not practically, since the general complaint against Burke s speeches was their lofty, didactic, or rather dictatorial character. In his life of R. B. Sheridan, Mr. Moore observes on Burke's manner of delivery as follows: "There was a something which those who have but read him can with difficulty conceive, that marred the impression of his most sublime and glowing displa s. In vain did his genius put forth its superb plumage, glittering all over with the hundred eyes of fancy-the gait of the bird was heavy and awkward, and its voice seemed rather to scare than attract. Accordingly many of those masterly discourses which, in their present form, may proudly challenge comparison with all the written eloquence upon record, were, at the time when they were pronounced, either coldly listened to, or only welcomed as a signal and excuse for not listening at all. To such a length was the indifference carried, that, on the evening when he delivered his great speech on the nabob of Arcot's debts, so faint was the impression it produced upon the house, that Mr. Pitt and lord Grenville, as I have heard, not only consulted with each other as to whether it was necessary that they should take the trouble of answering it, but decided in the negative. Yet, doubtless, at the present moment, if lord Grenville, master as he is of all the knowledge that belongs to a statesman and a scholar, was asked to point out from the stores of his reading the few models of oratorical composition, to the perusal of which he could most frequently and with unwearied admiration return, this slighted and unanswered speech would be among the number." The interesting nature of the above quotation must atone for its length. A ludicrous instance of the weariness felt by Burke's auditors may be found in M'Cormick's life of that orator, p. 249.

Burke once remarked to sir Philip Francis, that he did not believe an Athenian audience could have understood the orations of Demosthenes had they been delivered in the condensed form in which we peruse them; but to the magic effect produced by Demosthenes's delivery every schoolboy remembers the testimony borne by his rival. Between the styles of Burke and Demosthenes there exists a greater similarity, perhaps, than between any other two orators removed from each other so widely by language, time, and country. But that practical speech which wins its reward in immediate effect, must surely be pronounced to have performed the legitimate office of eloquence more completely, than that which has to wait for its meed of applause from a future generation. But the great adversary of Philip "wielded at will the fierce democracy," and his "matchless eloquence" has not been surpassed in successive ages.-ED.