Works, ii. 74. Evelina, in Miss Burners novel (vol. i. Letter xxiii.) contrasts the Pantheon and Ranelagh:--'I was extremely struck on entering the Pantheon with the beauty of the building, which greatly surpassed whatever I could have expected or imagined. Yet it has more the appearance of a chapel than of a place of diversion; and, though I was quite charmed with the magnificence of the room, I felt that I could not be as gay and thoughtless there as at Ranelagh; for there is something in it which rather inspires awe and solemnity than mirth and pleasure.' Ranelagh was at Chelsea, the Pantheon was in Oxford-street. See ante, ii. 119, and post, Sept. 23, 1777.
[499] Her husband, Squire Godfrey Bosville, Boswell (post, Aug. 24, 1780), calls 'my Yorkshire chief.' Their daughter was one of the young ladies whom he passes in review in his letters to Temple. 'What say you to my marrying? I intend next autumn to visit Miss Bosville in Yorkshire; but I fear, my lot being cast in Scotland, that beauty would not be content. She is, however, grave; I shall see.' Letters of Boswell, p. 81. She married Sir A. Macdonald, Johnson's inhospitable host in Sky (ante, ii. 157).
[500] In The Adventurer, No. 120, Johnson, after describing 'a gay assembly,' continues:--'The world in its best state is nothing more than a larger assembly of beings, combining to counterfeit happiness which they do not feel.' Works, iv. 120.
[501] 'Sir Adam Fergusson, who by a strange coincidence of chances got in to be member of Parliament for Ayrshire in 1774, was the great-grandson of a messenger. I was talking with great indignation that the whole (? old) families of the county should be defeated by an upstart.' Boswelliana, p. 283.
[502] See ante, ii. 60.
[503] See ante, i. 424. Hume wrote of the judgment of Charles I. (Hist. of Eng. vii. 148):--'If ever, on any occasion, it were laudable to conceal truth from the populace, it must be confessed that the doctrine of resistance affords such an example; and that all speculative reasoners ought to observe with regard to this principle the same cautious silence which the laws in every species of government have ever prescribed to themselves.'
[504] 'All foreigners remark that the knowledge of the common people of England is greater than that of any other vulgar. This superiority we undoubtedly owe to the rivulets of intelligence [i. e. the newspapers] which are continually trickling among us, which every one may catch, and of which every one partakes.' Idler, No. 7. In a later number (30), he speaks very contemptuously of news-writers. 'In Sir Henry Wotton's jocular definition, an ambassador is said to be a man of virtue sent abroad to tell lies for the advantage of his country. A newswriter is a man without virtue, who writes lies at home for his own profit.'
[505] See post, April 3, 1773.
[506] Probably Mr. Elphinston. See ante, i. 210, post, April 19, 1773, and April i, 1779. Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 493) wrote of a friend:--'He had overcome many disadvantages of his education, for he had been sent to a Jacobite seminary of one Elphinstone at Kensington, where his body was starved and his mind also. He returned to Edinburgh to college. He had hardly a word of Latin, and was obliged to work hard with a private tutor.'
[507] 'In progress of time Abel Sampson, probationer of divinity, was admitted to the privileges of a preacher.' Guy Mannering, chap. ii.
[508] In his Dictionary he defines heinous as atrocious; wicked in a high degree.
[509] Ephesians, v. 5.
[510] His second definition of whoremonger is one who converses with a fornicatress.
[511] It must not be presumed that Dr. Johnson meant to give any countenance to licentiousness, though in the character of an Advocate he made a just and subtle distinction between occasional and habitual transgression. BOSWELL.
[512] Erskine was born in 1750, entered the navy in 1764, the army in 1768, he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1776, was called to the Bar in 1778, was made a King's counsel in 1783, and Lord Chancellor in 1806. He died in 1823. Campbell's Chancellors, vi. 368-674.
[513] Johnson had called Churchill 'a blockhead.' Ante, i. 419. 'I have remarked,' said Miss Reynolds, 'that his dislike of anyone seldom prompted him to say much more than that the fellow is a blockhead.' Croker's Boswell, p. 834. In like manner Goldsmith called Sterne a blockhead; for Mr. Forster (Life of Goldsmith, i. 260) is, no doubt, right in saying that the author of Tristram Shandy is aimed at in the following passage in The Citizen of the World (Letter, 74):--'In England, if a bawdy blockhead thus breaks in on the community, he sets his whole fraternity in a roar; nor can he escape even though he should fly to nobility for shelter.' That Johnson did not think so lowly of Fielding's powers is shown by a compliment that he paid Miss Burney, on one of the characters in Evelina. '"Oh, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith is the man!" cried he, laughing violently. "Harry Fielding never drew so good a character!"' Mme.