34. See ante, p. 56, and post, ii. 36. He told Windham in 1784 'that he read Latin with as much ease when he went to college as at present.' Windham's Diary, p. 17.
[1316] Johnson in 1739 wrote of 'those distempers and depressions, from which students, not well acquainted with the constitution of the human body, sometimes fly for relief to wine instead of exercise, and purchase temporary ease, by the hazard of the most dreadful consequences.' Works, vi. 271. In The Rambler, No. 85, he says:--'How much happiness is gained, and how much misery is escaped, by frequent and violent agitation of the body.' Boswell records (Hebrides, Sept. 24, 1773):--'Dr. Johnson told us at breakfast, that he rode harder at a fox-chace than anybody.' Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 206) says:--'He certainly rode on Mr. Thrale's old hunter with a good firmness, and, though he would follow the hounds fifty miles an end sometimes, would never own himself either tired or amused. I think no praise ever went so close to his heart, as when Mr. Hamilton called out one day upon Brighthelmstone Downs, "Why Johnson rides as well, for aught I see, as the most illiterate fellow in England."' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale in 1777:--'No season ever was finer. Barley, malt, beer and money. There is the series of ideas. The deep logicians call it a sorites. I hope my master will no longer endure the reproach of not keeping me a horse.' Piozzi Letters, i. 360. See post, March 19 and 28, 1776, Sept. 20, 1777, and Nov. 21, 1778.
[1317] This one Mrs. Macaulay was the same personage who afterwards made herself so much known as 'the celebrated female historian.' BOSWELL. Hannah More (Memoirs, i. 234) tells the following story of Mrs. Macaulay's daughter:--'Desirous from civility to take some notice of her, and finding she was reading Shakespeare, I asked her if she was not delighted with many parts of King John. "I never read the Kings, ma'am," was the truly characteristic reply.' See post, April 13, 1773, and May 15, 1776.
[1318] This speech was perhaps suggested to Johnson by the following passage in The Government of the Tongue (p. 106)--a book which he quotes in his Dictionary:--'Lycurgus once said to one who importuned him to establish a popular parity in the state, "Do thou," says he, "begin it first in thine own family."'
[1319] The first volume was published in 1756, the second in 1782.
[1320] Warton, to use his own words, 'did not think Pope at the head of his profession. In other words, in that species of poetry wherein Pope excelled, he is superior to all mankind; and I only say that this species of poetry is not the most excellent one of the art.' He disposes the English poets in four classes, placing in the first only Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. 'In the second class should be ranked such as possessed the true poetical genius in a more moderate degree, but who had noble talents for moral, ethical, and panegyrical poetry.' In this class, in his concluding volume, he says, 'we may venture to assign Pope a place, just above Dryden. Yet, to bring our minds steadily to make this decision, we must forget, for a moment, the divine Music Ode of Dryden; and may, perhaps, then be compelled to confess that though Dryden be the greater genius, yet Pope is the better artist.' Warton's Essay, i. i, vii. and ii. 404. See post, March 31, 1772.
[1321] Mr. Croker believes Joseph Warton was meant. His father, however, had been Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and was afterwards Vicar of Basingstoke and Cobham, and Professor of Poetry in his own University, so that the son could scarcely be described as being 'originally poor.' It is, no doubt, after Boswell's fashion to introduce in consecutive paragraphs the same person once by name and once anonymously; but then the 'certain author who disgusted Boswell by his forwardness,' mentioned just before Warton, may be Warton himself.
[1322] 'When he arrived at Eton he could not make a verse; that is, he wanted a point indispensable with us to a certain rank in our system. But this wonderful boy, having satisfied the Master [Dr. Barnard] that he was an admirable scholar, and possessed of genius, was at once placed at the head of a form. He acquired the rules of Latin verse; tried his powers; and perceiving that he could not rise above his rivals in Virgil, Ovid, or the lyric of Horace, he took up the sermoni propiora, and there overshadowed all competitors. In the following lines he describes the hammer of the auctioneer with a mock sublimity which turns Horace into Virgil:--
'Jam-jamque cadit, celerique recursu Erigitur, lapsum retrahens, perque aera nutat.'
Nichols's Lit. Anec. viii. 547.
Horace Walpole wrote of him in Sept. 1765 (Letters, iv. 411):--'He is a very extraordinary young man for variety of learning. He is rather too wise for his age, and too fond of showing it; but when he has seen more of the world, he will choose to know less.' He died at Rome in the following year. Hume, on hearing the news, wrote to Adam Smith:--'Were you and I together, dear Smith, we should shed tears at present for the death of poor Sir James Macdonald.