watch you. It will be a very pleasant journey if I can find you and dear Mrs. Gastrell well. I sent you two barrels of oysters; if you would wish for more, please to send your commands to, Madam, your most humble servant, SAM. JOHNSON."

LETTER 337. TO MRS. THRALE.

March 10. 1779.

"I will come to see you on Saturday, only let me know whether I must come to the Borough, or am to be taken up here.

"I got my Lives, not yet quite printed, put neatly together, and sent them to the king: what he says of them I know not. If the king is a Whig, he will not like them but is any king a Whig?"

243

CHAPTER VIII.

1779.

Mr. Tasker's "Ode."- Man of the World." Vicar of Wakefield."-Junius's Letters.- Parental Au thority. London. "Government of the Tongue.' -Good Friday. Easter Day. - Eel-skinning. Claret, Port, Brandy. Shakspeare's Witches. Lochlomond. Liberty. Hackman. Johnson and Topham Beauclerk. - Mallet. — - Friendship. Eulogy on Garrick."Art of getting drunk." Empirics Parental Affection. Lord Marchmont. Pope. · Parnell's "Hermit." Correspondence.

On the 23d of February I had written to him again, complaining of his silence, as I had heard he was ill, and had written to Mr. Thrale for information concerning him: and I announced my intention of soon being again in London.

LETTER 338. TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

"March 13. 1779.

"DEAR SIR, — Why should you take such delight to make a bustle, to write to Mr. Thrale that I am negligent, and to Francis to do what is so very unnecessary? Thrale, you may be sure, cared not about it; and I shall spare Francis the trouble, by ordering a set both

of the Lives and Poets to dear Mrs. Boswell (), in acknowledgment of her marmalade. Persuade her to

accept them, and accept them kindly. If I thought she would receive them scornfully, I would send them to Miss Boswell, who, I hope, has yet none of her mamma's ill-will to me.

"I would send sets of Lives, four volumes, to some other friends, to Lord Hailes first. His second volume lies by my bed-side; a book surely of great labour, and to every just thinker of great delight. Write me word to whom I shall send besides. Would it please Lord Auchinleck? Mrs. Thrale waits in the coach. I am, dear Sir, &c. SAM. JOHNSON."

This letter crossed me on the road to London, where I arrived on Monday, March 15., and next morning, at a late hour, found Dr. Johnson sitting over his tea, attended by Mrs. Desmoulins, Mr. Levett, and a clergyman, who had come to submit some poetical pieces to his revision. It is wonderful what a number and variety of writers, some of them even unknown to him, prevailed on his goodnature to look over their works, and suggest corrections and improvements. My arrival interrupted, for a little while, the important business of this true representative of Bayes; upon its being resumed, I found that the subject under immediate consideration was a translation, yet in manuscript, of the "Carmen Seculare" of Horace, which had this year been set to music, and performed as a public entertainment in London, for the joint benefit of Monsieur Philidor (2)

(1) He sent a set elegantly bound and gilt, which was received as a very handsome present.

(2) [Andrew Philidor, a musician and chess-player of eminence. In 1777, he published "Analyse du Jeu des Echecs."|

and Signor Baretti. When Johnson had done reading, the author asked him bluntly, "If upon the whole it was a good translation?" Johnson, whose regard for truth was uncommonly strict, seemed to be puzzled for a moment what answer to make, as he certainly could not honestly commend the performance: with exquisite address he evaded the question thus, "Sir, I do not say that it may not be made a very good translation." Here nothing whatever in favour of the performance was affirmed, and yet the writer was not shocked. A printed "Ode to the Warlike Genius of Britain" came next in review. The bard (1) was a lank bony figure, with short black hair; he was writhing himself in agitation, while Johnson read, and, showing his teeth in a grin of earnestness, exclaimed in broken sentences, and in a keen sharp tone, "Is that poetry, Sir? Is it Pindar? JOHNSON. "Why, Sir,

there is here a great deal of what is called poetry." Then, turning to me, the poet cried, " My muse has not been long upon the town, and (pointing to the Ode) it trembles under the hand of the great critic." Johnson, in a tone of displeasure, asked him, "Why do you praise Anson ?" I did not trouble him by asking his reason for this question. (2)

(1) This was a Mr. Tasker. Mr. D'Israeli informs me that this portrait is so accurately drawn, that being, some years after the publication of this work, at a watering-place on the coast of Devon, he was visited by Mr. Tasker, whose name, however, he did not then know, but was so struck with his resemblance to Boswell's picture, that he asked him whether he had not had an interview with Dr. Johnson, and it appeared that he was indeed the author of "The Warlike Genius of Britain." — C.

(2) He disliked Lord Anson probably from local politics

He proceeded: -"Here is an error, Sir; you have made Genius feminine." 66 Palpable, Sir (cried the enthusiast); I know it. But (in a lower tone) it was to pay a compliment to the Duchess of Devonshire, with which her grace was pleased. She is walking across Coxheath in the military uniform, and I suppose her to be the Genius of Britain." JOHNSON. "Sir, you are giving a reason for it; but that will not make it right. You may have a reason why two and two should make five; but they will still make but four."

Although I was several times with him in the course of the following days, such it seems were my occupations, or such my negligence, that I have preserved no memorial of his conversation till Friday, March 26., when I visited him. He said he expected to be attacked on account of his "Lives of the Poets." "However," said he, "I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse; an assault may be unsuccessful, you may have more men killed than you kill; but if you starve the town, you are sure of victory."

Talking of a friend (1) of ours associating with

On one occasion he visited Lord Anson's seat, and although, as he confessed, "well received and kindly treated, he, with the true gratitude of a wit, ridiculed the master of the house before he had left it an hour." In the grounds there is a Temple of the Winds, on which he made the following epigram:

Gratum animum laudo; Qui debuit omnia ventis,

Quam bene ventorum surgere templa jubet! Piozzi's Anecdotes.-C.

(1) Probably Sir Joshua Reynolds. See antè, p. 96. — C.