favoured with them, are unwilling should be mentioned, from a too anxious apprehension, as I think, that they might be suspected of having received larger assistance; and some, after all the diligence I have bestowed, have escaped my inquiries. He told me, a great many years ago,

“ he believed he had dedicated to all the royal family round; and it was indifferent to him what was the subject of the work dedicated, provided it were innocent. He once decicated some music for the German flute, to Edward Duke of York. In writing dedications for others, he considered himself as by no means speaking his own sentiments.

Notwithstanding his long silence, I never omitted to write to him, when I had any thing worthy of communicating. I generally kept copies of my letters to him, that I might have a full view of our correspondence, and never be at a loss to understand any reference in his letters. He kept the greater part of mine very carefully ; and a short time before his death was attentive enough to seal them up in bundles, and order them to be delivered to me, which was accordingly done. Amongst them I found one, of which I had not made a copy, and which I own I read with pleasure at the distance of almost twenty years. It is dated November, 1765, at the palace of Pascal Paoli, in Corte, the capital of Corsica, and is full of generous enthusiasm. After giving a sketch of what I had seen and heard in that island, it proceeded thus :“I dare to call this a spirited tour. I dare to challenge your approbation."

This letter produced the following answer, which I found on my arrival at Paris :

" À M. M. BOSWELL, CHEZ MR. WATERS, BANQUILR, À PARIS.
“DEAR SIR,

Johnson's court, Fleet-street, January 14, 1766.
“Apologies are seldom of any use. We will delay till your arrival the reasons,
good or bad, which have made me such a sparing and ungrateful correspondent.
Be assured, for the present, that nothing has lessoned either the esteem or love
with which I dismissed you at Harwich. Both have been increased by all that
I have been told of you by yourself or others; and when you return, you will
return to an unaltered, and, I hope, unalterable friend.

“All that you have to fear from me is the vexation of disappointing me. No man loves to frustrate expectations which have been formed in his favour ; and the pleasure which I promise myself from your journals and remarks is so great, that perhaps no degree of attention or discernment will be sufficient to afford it.

“Come home, however, and take your chance. I long to see you, and to hear you; and hope that we shall not be so long separated again. Come home, and expect such welcome as is due to him, whom a wise and noble curiosity has led, where perhaps no native of this country ever was before.

I have no news to tell you that can deserve your notice; nor would I willingly lessen the pleasure that any novelty may give you at your return. I am afraid we shall find it difficult to keep among us a mind which has been so long feasted with variety. But let us try what esteem and kindness can effect.

“As your father's liberality has indulged you with so long a ramble, I doubt not but you will think his sickness, or even his desire to see you, a sufficient reason for hastening your return. The longer we live, and the more we think, the higher value we learn to put on the friendship and tenderness of parents and of friends. Parents we can have but once; and he promises himself too much, who enters life with the expectation of finding many friends. Upon some motive, I hope, that you will be here soon ; and am willing to think that it will be an inducement to your return, that it is sincerely desired by, dear Sir,

“Your affectionate and humble servant,

“ SAM. Johnson." I returned to London in February, and found Dr. Johnson in a good house in Johnson's-court, Fleet-street, in which he had accommodated Miss Williams with an apartment on the ground floor, while Mr. Levett occupied his post in the

garret ; his faithful Francis was still attending upon him. He received me with much kindness. The fragments of our first conversation, which I have preserved, are these : I told him that Voltaire, in a conversation with me, had distinguished Pope and Dryden thus :—“ Pope drives a handsome chariot, with a couple of neat trim nags ; Dryden a coach, and six stately horses." JOHNSON : “Why, Sir, the truth is, they both drive coaches and six ; but Dryden's horses are either galloping or stumbling : Pope's go at a steady even trot.”ı Ile said of Goldsmith's " Traveller,” which had been published in my absence, “ There has not been so fine a poem since Pope's time.'

And here it is proper to settle, with authentic precision, what has long floated in public report, as to Johnson's being himself the author of a considerable part of that poem. Much, no doubt, both of the sentiments and expression were derived from conversation with him ; and it was certainly submitted to his friendly revision : but in the year 1783, he at my request marked with a pencil the lines which he had furnished, which are only line 420th,

"To stop too fearful, and too faint to go ;' and the concluding ten lines, except the last couplet but one, which I distinguish by the italic character :

“ How small of all that human hearts endure,

That part which kings or laws can cause or cure.
Still to ourselves in every place consign’d,
Our own felicity we make or find ;
With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,
Glides the smooth current of domestic joy :

1 It is remarkable that Mr. Gray (“Ode on the Progress of Poesy ") has employed somewhat the same image to characterise Dryden. He, indeed, furnishes his car with but two horses ; but they are of “ethereal race :"

“ Behold where Dryden's less presumptuous car,

Wide o'er the fields of glory bear
Two coursers of ethereał race,
With necks in thunder cloth’d, and long-resounding pace."_BoStell.

The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,
Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel,
To men remote from power, but rarely known,

Leave reason, faith, and conscience, all our own." He added, “ These are all of which I can be sure. They bear a small proportion to the whole, which consists of four hundred and thirty-eight verses. Goldsmith, in the couplet which he inserted, mentions Luke as a person well known, and superficial readers have passed it over quite smoothly ; while those of more attention have been as much perplexed by Luke as by Lydiat, in “ The Vanity of Human Wishes.” The truth is, that Goldsmith himself was in a mistake. In the “ Respublica Hungarica,” there is an account of a desperate rebellion in the year 1514, headed by two brothers of the name of Zeck, George and Luke. When it was quelled, George, not Luke, was punished by his head being encircled with a red-hot iron crown: “ Coronâ candescente ferreâ coronatur.” The same severity of torture was exercised on the Earl of Athol, one of the murderers of King James I. of Scotland.

Dr. Johnson at the same time favoured me by marking the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith’s “ Deserted Village,” which are only the last four :

“ That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,

As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away :
While self-dependent power can time defy,

As rocks resist the billows and the sky.” Talking of education, “ People have now-a-days,” said he, “ got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shown. You may teach chemistry by lectures :-You might teach making of shoes by lectures !”

At night I supped with him at the Mitre tavern, that we might renew our social intimacy at the original place of meeting. But there was now a considerable difference in his way of living. Having had an illness, in which he was advised to leave off wine, he had, from that period, continued to abstain from it, and drink only water, or lemonade.

I told him that a foreign friend of his, whom I had met with abroad, was so wretchedly perverted to infidelity that he treated the hopes of immortality with brutal levity ; and said, “ As man dies like a dog, let him lie like a dog." JOHNSON : “If he dies like a dog, let him lie like a dog.” I added, that this man said to me, “ I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.” JOHNSON : “Sir, he must be very singular in his opinion if he thinks himself one of the best of men, for none of his friends think him so. He said,

No honest man could be a deist, for no man could be so after a fair examination of the proofs of Christianity.” I named Hume. JOHNSON : “No, Sir; Hume owned to a clergyman in the bishopric of Durham that he had never read the New Testament with attention.”I mentioned Hume’s notion, that all who are happy are equally happy ; a little Miss with a new gown at a dancing-school ball, a general at the head of a victorious army, and an orator, after having made an eloquent speech in a great assembly. JOHNSON : “Sir, that all who are happy are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness. A peasant has not capacity for having equal happiness with a philosopher.” I remember this very question very happily illustrated in opposition to Hume, by the Rev. Mr. Robert Brown, at Utrecht. “A small drinking-glass and a large one,” said he,“ may be equally full ; but the large one holds more than the small."

Dr. Johnson was very kind this evening, and said to me, “ You have now lived five-and-twenty years, and you have employed them well.”

Alas, Sir,” said I, “ I fear not. Do I know history? Do I know mathematics? Do I know law?” JOHNSON: “ Why, Sir, though you may know no science so well as to be able to teach it, and no profession so well as to be able to follow it, your general mass of knowledge of books and men renders you very capable to make yourself master of any science, or fit yourself for any profession.” I mentioned that a gay friend had advised me against being a lawyer, because I should be excelled by plodding blockheads. JOHNSON : “Why, Sir, in the formulary and statutory part of law, a plodding blockhead may excel; but in the ingenious and rational part of it a plodding blockhead can never excel.”

I talked of the mode adopted by some to rise in the world, by courting great men, and asked him whether he had ever submitted to ito JOHNSON : “Why, Sir, I never was near enough to great men to

court them. You may be prudently attached to great 'men, and yet independent. You are not to do what you think wrong; and, Sir, you are to calculate, and not pay too dear for what you get. You must not give a shilling's worth of court for sixpence worth of good. But if you can get a shilling's worth of good for sixpence worth of court, you are a fool if you do not pay court.

He said, “If convents should be allowed at all, they should only be retreats for persons unable to serve the public, or who have served it. It is our first duty to serve society; and, after we have done that, we may attend wholly to the salvation of our own souls. A youthful passion for abstracted devotion should not be encouraged."

I introduced the subject of second sight, and other mysterious manifestations; the fulfilment of which, I suggested, might happen by chance. Johnson: “Yes, Sir, but they have happened so often, that mankind have agreed to think them not fortuitous.

I talked to him a great deal of what I had seen in Corsica, and of my intention to publish an account of it. He encouraged me by saying, “You cannot go to the bottom of the subject; but all that you tell us will be new to us. Give us as many anecdotes as you can.”

Our next meeting at the Mitre was on Saturday the 15th of February, when I presented to him my old and most intimate friend, the Rev. Mr.

Temple, then of Cambridge. I having mentioned that I had passed some time with Rousseau in his wild retreat, and having quoted some remark made by Mr. Wilkes, with whom I had spent many pleasant hours in Italy, Johnson said, sarcastically, It seems, Sir, you have kept very good company abroad, Rousseau and Wilkes!" Thinking it enough to defend one at a time, I said nothing as to my gay friend, but answered with a smile, “My dear Sir, you don't call Rousseau bad company. Doyou really think him a bad man?” Johnson: "Sir, if you are talking jestingly

of this, I don't talk with you. If you mean to be serious, I think him one of the worst of men ; a rascal, who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been. Three or four nations have expelled him, and it is a shame that he is protected in this country.” BOSWELL: “I don't deny, Sir, but that his novel may, perhaps, do harm; but I cannot think his intention was bad.” JOIN

“Sir, that will not do. We cannot prove any man's intention to be bad. You may shoot a man through the head, and say you intended to miss him ; but the judge will order you to be hanged. An alleged want of intention, when evil is committed, will not be

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