and valuable additions to Dr. Johnfon's work, he justly obtained confiderable reputation :

"Divifum imperium cum Jove Cafar habet."

To JAMES BOSWELL, Efq.

"DEAR SIR,

"I have read your kind letter much more than the elegant Pindar which it accompanied. I am always glad to find myself not forgotten; and to be forgotten by you would give me great uneafinefs. My northern friends have never been unkind to me: I have from you, dear Sir, teftimonies of affection, which I have not often been able to excite; and Dr. Beattie rates the teftimony which I was defirous of paying to his merit, much higher than I should have thought it reasonable to expect.

What

"I have heard of your masquerade. ' fays your fynod to fuch innovations? I am not studiously scrupulous, nor do I think a masquerade either evil in itself, or very likely to be the occafion of evil; yet as the world thinks it a very licentious relaxation of manners, I would not have been one of the first masquers in a country where no masquerade had ever been before 2.

"A new edition of my great Dictionary is printed, from a copy which I was perfuaded to revife; but having made no preparation, I was able to do very little. Some fuperfluities I have ex

* There had been masquerades in Scotland; but not for a very long time.

1773.

Etat. 64.

VOL. II.

F

punged,

1773.

Etat. 64.

punged, and fome faults I have corrected, and here and there have scattered a remark; but the main fabrick of the work remains as it was. I had looked very little into it fince I wrote it, and, I think, I found it full as often better, as worse, than I expected.

"Baretti and Davies have had a furious quarrel; a quarrel, I think, irreconcileable. Dr. Goldsmith has a new cornedy, which is expected in the fpring. No name is yet given it, The chief diverfion arises from a ftratagem by which a lover is made to mistake his future father-in-law's house for an inn. This, you fee, borders upon farce. The dialogue is quick and gay, and the incidents are fo prepared as not to feem improbable.

"I am forry that you loft your cause of Intromiffion, because I yet think the arguments on your fide unanswerable. But you feem, I think, to fay that you gained reputation even by your defeat; and reputation you will daily gain, if you keep Lord Auchinleck's precept in your mind, and endeavour to confolidate in your mind a firm and regular fyftem of law, instead of picking up occafional fragments.

"My health feems in general to improve; but I have been troubled for many weeks with a vexatious catarrh, which is fometimes fufficiently diftressful. I have not found any great effects from bleeding and phyfick; and am afraid, that I must expect help from brighter days and fofter air.

"Write to me now and then; and whenever any good befalls you, make hafte to let

me

me know it, for no one will rejoice at it more than,

"Your most humble fervant,

dear Sir,

"London, Feb. 24, 1773.

"SAM. JOHNSON.

1773.

Etat. 64.

"You continue to stand very high in the favour of Mrs. Thrale."

On Saturday, April 3, the day after my arrival in London this year, I went to his house late in the evening, and fat with Mrs. Williams till he came home. I found in the London Chronicle, Dr. Goldsmith's apology to the publick for beating Evans, a bookfeller, on account of a paragraph in a news-paper published by him, which Goldsmith thought impertinent to him and to a lady of his acquaintance. The apology was written fo much in Dr. Johnson's manner, that both Mrs. Williams and I fuppofed it to be his; but when he came home, he foon undeceived us. When he said to Mrs. Williams, "Well, Dr. Goldfmith's manifefto has got into your paper;" I asked him if Dr. Goldsmith had written it, with an air that made him fee I fufpected it was his, though fubfcribed by Goldfmith. JOHNSON. " Sir, Dr. Goldsmith would no more have asked me to write fuch a thing as that for him, than he would have asked me to feed him with a fpoon, or to do any thing elfe that denoted his imbecillity. I as much believe that he wrote it, as if I had feen him do it. Sir, had he shown it to any one friend, he would not have been allowed to publish it. He has, indeed, done it very well; but it is a foolish thing well

1773.

Etat. 64.

done. I fuppofe he has been fo much elated with the fuccefs of his new comedy, that he has thought every thing that concerned him must be of importance to the publick. BOSWELL. "I fancy, Sir, this is the first time that he has been engaged in fuch an adventure." JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, I believe it is the firft time he has beat; he may have been beaten before. This, Sir, is a new plume to him."

I mentioned Sir John Dalrymple's "Memoirs of Great-Britain and Ireland," and his discoveries to the prejudice of Lord Ruffel and Algernon Sydney. JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, every body who had just notions of government thought them rascals before. It is well that all mankind now fee them to be rafcals." BOSWELL." But, Sir, may not those discoveries be true without their being rafcals." JOHNSON. "Confider, Sir; would any of them have been willing to have had it known that they intrigued with France? Depend upon it, Sir, he who does what he is afraid fhould be known, has fomething rotten about him. This Dalrymple feems to be an honeft fellow; for he tells equally what makes against both fides. But nothing can be poorer than his mode of writing: it is the mere bouncing of a school-boy. Great He! but greater She! and fuch stuff."

I could not agree with him in this criticism; for though Sir John Dalrymple's ftyle is not regularly formed in any refpect, and one cannot help smiling fometimes at his affected grandiloquence, there is in his writing a pointed vivacity, and much of a gentlemanly fpirit.

At

1773.

At Mr. Thrale's, in the evening, he repeated his ufual paradoxical declamation against action in Etat. 64. publick speaking. "Action can have no effect upon reasonable minds. It may augment noife, but it never can enforce argument. If you speak to a dog, you use action; you hold up your hand thus, because he is a brute; and in proportion as men are removed from brutes, action will have the lefs influence upon them." MRS. THRALE. "What then, Sir, becomes of Demofthenes's faying? 'Action, action, action!" JOHNSON. "Demofthenes, Madam, spoke to an affembly of brutes; to a barbarous people."

I thought it extraordinary, that he should deny the power of rhetorical action upon human nature, when it is proved by innumerable facts in all stages of fociety. Reasonable beings are not folely reafonable. They have fancies which may be pleased, paffions which may be roufed.

Lord Chesterfield being mentioned, Johnson remarked, that almost all of that celebrated noblebleman's witty fayings were puns. He, however, allowed the merit of good wit to his Lordship's faying of Lord Tyrawley and himself, when both very old and infirm: "Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years; but we don't choose to have it known."

He talked with approbation of an intended edition of "The Spectator," with notes; two volumes of which had been prepared by a gentleman eminent in the literary world, and the materials which he had collected for the remainder had been transferred to another hand. He obferved, that all works

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