It was Murphy 'who paid him the highest compliment that ever was paid to a layman, by asking his pardon for repeating some oaths in the course of telling a story' (post, April 12, 1776). Even supposing that at this time he was ignorant of his character, though the supposition is a wild one, he would at once have been set right by Boswell and the Thrales (post, under March 15, 1776). It is curious, that this anecdote imputing profanity to Johnson is not quoted by the Edinburgh reviewer. On the whole I think that the Diary is genuine, and accordingly I have quoted it more than once.
[999] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 173) says that Johnson spoke of Browne as 'of all conversers the most delightful with whom he ever was in company.' Pope's bathos, in his lines to Murray:--
'Graced as thou art with all the power of words, So known, so honoured, at the House of Lords,'
was happily parodied by Browne:--
'Persuasion tips his tongue whene'er he talks, And he has chambers in the King's Bench Walks.'
Pattison's Satires of Pope, pp. 57, 134. See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 5.
[1000] Horace Walpole says of Beckford's Bribery Bill of 1768:--'Grenville, to flatter the country gentlemen, who can ill afford to combat with great lords, nabobs, commissaries, and West Indians, declaimed in favour of the bill.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iii. 159.
[1001] See ante, ii. 167, where he said much the same. Another day, however, he agreed that a landlord ought to give leases to his tenants, and not 'wish to keep them in a wretched dependance on his will. "It is a man's duty," he said, "to extend comfort and security among as many people as he can. He should not wish to have his tenants mere Ephemerae--mere beings of an hour."' Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 10, 1773.
[1002] 'Thomas Hickey is now best remembered by a characteristic portrait of his friend Tom Davies, engraved with Hickey's name to it.' P. CUNNINGHAM.
[1003] See ante, ii. 92. In the Life of Pope (Works, viii. 302), Johnson says that 'the shafts of satire were directed in vain against Cibber, being repelled by his impenetrable impudence.' Pope speaks of Gibber's 'impenetrability.' Elwin's Pope, ix. 231.
[1004] He alludes perhaps to a note on the Dunciad, ii, 140, in which it is stated that 'the author has celebrated even Cibber himself (presuming him to be the author of the Careless Husband).' See post, May 15, 1776, note.
[1005] See ante, ii. 32.
[1006] Burke told Malone that 'Hume, in compiling his History, did not give himself a great deal of trouble in examining records, &c.; and that the part he most laboured at was the reign of King Charles II, for whom he had an unaccountable partiality.' Prior's Malone, p. 368.
[1007] Yet Johnson (Works, vii. 177) wrote of Otway, who was nine years old when Charles II. came to the throne, and who outlived him by only a few weeks:--'He had what was in those times the common reward of loyalty; he lived and died neglected.' Hawkins (Life, p. 51) says that he heard Johnson 'speak of Dr. Hodges who, in the height of the Great Plague of 1665, continued in London, and was almost the only one of his profession that had the courage to oppose his art to the spreading of the contagion. It was his hard fate, a short time after, to die in prison for debt in Ludgate. Johnson related this to us with the tears ready to start from his eyes; and, with great energy, said, "Such a man would not have been suffered to perish in these times."'
[1008] Johnson in 1742 said that William III. 'was arbitrary, insolent, gloomy, rapacious, and brutal; that he was at all times disposed to play the tyrant; that he had, neither in great things nor in small, the manners of a gentleman; that he was capable of gaining money by mean artifices, and that he only regarded his promise when it was his interest to keep it.' Works, vi. 6. Nearly forty years later, in his Life of Rowe (ib. vii. 408), he aimed a fine stroke at that King. 'The fashion of the time,' he wrote, 'was to accumulate upon Lewis all that can raise horrour and detestation; and whatever good was withheld from him, that it might not be thrown away, was bestowed upon King William.' Yet in the Life of Prior (ib. viii. 4) he allowed him great merit. 'His whole life had been action, and none ever denied him the resplendent qualities of steady resolution and personal courage.' See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 24, 1773.
[1009] 'The fact of suppressing the will is indubitably true,' wrote Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 142). 'When the news arrived of the death of George I, my father carried the account from Lord Townshend to the then Prince of Wales. The Council met as soon as possible. There Archbishop Wake, with whom one copy of the will had been deposited, advanced, and delivered the will to the King, who put it into his pocket, and went out of Council without opening it, the Archbishop not having courage or presence of mind to desire it to be read, as he ought to have done. I was once talking to the late Lady Suffolk, the former mistress, on that extraordinary event.