Le poete, dit-il, dedaigne ces distinctions accidentelles de conditions et de pays, comme un peintre qui, content d'avoir peint la figure, neglige la draperie. La comparaison serait plus juste, s'il parlait d'un peintre qui, dans un sujet noble, introduirait des grotesques ridicules, peindrait dans la bataille d'Arbelles Alexandre-le Grand monte sur un ane, et la femme de Darius buvant avec des goujats dans un cabaret.' Johnson, perhaps, had this attack in mind when, in his Life of Pope (Works, viii. 275), he thus wrote of Voltaire:--'He had been entertained by Pope at his table, when he talked with so much grossness, that Mrs. Pope was driven from the room. Pope discovered by a trick that he was a spy for the court, and never considered him as a man worthy of confidence.'
[1463] See post, under May 8, 1781.
[1464] See post, ii. 74.
[1465] He was probably proposing to himself the model of this excellent person, who for his piety was named the Seraphic Doctor. BOSWELL.
[1466]
'E'en in a bishop I can spy desert, Secker is decent, Rundel has a heart.'
Pope. Epil, Sat. II. 70.
[1467] So Smollett calls him in his History of England, iii. 16.
[1468] Six of these twelve guineas Johnson appears to have borrowed from Mr. Allen, the printer. See Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 366 n. MALONE.
[1469] Written by mistake for 1759. On the outside of the letter of the 13th was written by another hand--'Pray acknowledge the receipt of this by return of post, without fail.' MALONE.
[1470] Catherine Chambers, Mrs. Johnson's maid-servant. She died in October, 1767. MALONE. See post, ii. 43.
[1471] This letter was written on the second leaf of the preceding, addressed to Miss Porter. MALONE.
[1472] Mrs. Johnson probably died on the 20th or 21st January, and was buried on the day this letter was written. MALONE. On the day on which his mother was buried Johnson composed a prayer, as being 'now about to return to the common comforts and business of the world.' Pr. and Med. p. 38. After his wife''s death he had allowed forty days to pass before his 'return to life.' See ante, p. 234, note 2.
[1473] See ante, p. 80.
[1474] Barnaby Greene had just published The Laureat, a Poem, in which Johnson is abused. It is in the February list of books in the Gent. Mag. for 1765.
[1475] Sir Cloudesly Shovel's monument is thus mentioned by Addison in The Spectator, No. 26:--'It has very often given me great offence; instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions under a canopy of state.'
[1476]
'That live-long wig, which Gorgon's self might own, Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone.'
Pope's Moral Essays, iii. 295.
[1477] Milton's Epigram is in his Sylvarum Liber, and is entitled In Effigiei ejus Sculptorem.
[1478] Johnson's acquaintance, Bishop Newton (post, June 3, 1784), published an edition of Milton.
[1479] It was no doubt by the Master of Emanuel College, his friend Dr. Farmer (ante, p. 368), that Johnson was promised 'an habitation' there.
THE END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.