Boswell says that 'Home showed the Lord Chief Baron Orde a pair of pumps he had on, and desired his lordship to observe how well they were made, telling him at the same time that they had been made for Lord Bute, but were rather too little for him, so his lordship had made John a present of them. "I think," said the Lord Chief Baron, "you have taken the measure of Lord Bute's foot."' Boswelliana, p. 252. Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 335), writes:--'With Robertson and Home in London I passed the time very agreeably; for though Home was now [1758] entirely at the command of Lord Bute, whose nod made him break every engagement--for it was not given above an hour or two before dinner--yet, as he was sometimes at liberty when the noble lord was to dine abroad, like a horse loosened from his stake, he was more sportful than usual.'
[1063] Lord North was merely the King's agent. The King was really his own minister at this time, though he had no seat in his own cabinet councils.
[1064] Only thirty-four years earlier, on the motion in the Lords for the removal of Walpole, the Duke of Argyle said:--'If my father or brother took upon him the office of a sole minister, I would oppose it as inconsistent with the constitution, as a high crime and misdemeanour. I appeal to your consciences whether he [Walpole] hath not done this... He hath turned out men lately for differing with him.' Lord Chancellor Hardwicke replied:--'A sole minister is so illegal an office that it is none. Yet a noble lord says, Superior respondeat, which is laying down a rule for a prime minister; whereas the noble Duke was against any.' The Secker MS. Parl. Hist. xi. 1056-7. In the Protest against the rejection of the motion it was stated:--'We are persuaded that a sole, or even a first minister, is an officer unknown to the law of Britain,' &c. Ib p. 1215. Johnson reports the Chancellor as saying:--'It has not been yet pretended that he assumes the title of prime minister, or, indeed, that it is applied to him by any but his enemies ... The first minister can, in my opinion, be nothing more than a formidable illusion, which, when one man thinks he has seen it, he shows to another, as easily frighted as himself,' &c. Johnson's Works, x. 214-15. In his Dictionary, premier is only given as an adjective, and prime minister is not given at all. When the Marquis of Rockingham was forming his cabinet in March 1782, Burke wrote to him:--'Stand firm on your ground--but one ministry. I trust and hope that your lordship will not let one, even but one branch of the state ... out of your own hands; or those which you can entirely rely on.' Burke's Corres. ii. 462. See also post, iii. 46, April 1, 1781, Jan. 20, 1782, and April 10, 1783.
[1065] See ante, p. 300.
[1066] 'As he liberally confessed that all his own disappointments proceeded from himself, he hated to hear others complain of general injustice.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 251. See post, end of May, 1781, and March 23, 1783.
[1067] 'Boswell and I went to church, but came very late. We then took tea, by Boswell's desire; and I eat one bun, I think, that I might not seem to fast ostentatiously.' Pr. and Med. p. 138.
[1068] See ante, i. 433.
[1069] See ante, i. 332.
[1070] The following passages shew that the thought, or something like it, was not new to Johnson:--'Bruyere declares that we are come into the world too late to produce anything new, that nature and life are preoccupied, and that description and sentiment have been long exhausted.' The Rambler, No. 143. 'Some advantage the ancients might gain merely by priority, which put them in possession of the most natural sentiments, and left us nothing but servile repetition or forced conceits.' Ib No. 169. 'My earlier predecessors had the whole field of life before them, untrodden and unsurveyed; characters of every kind shot up in their way, and those of the most luxuriant growth, or most conspicuous colours, were naturally cropt by the first sickle. They that follow are forced to peep into neglected corners.' The Idler, No. 3. 'The first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction.' Rasselas, ch. x. Some years later he wrote:--'Whatever can happen to man has happened so often that little remains for fancy or invention.' Works, vii. 311. See also The Rambler, No. 86. In The Adventurer, No. 95, he wrote:--'The complaint that all topicks are preoccupied is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness.' See post, under Aug. 29, 1783. Dr. Warton (Essay on Pope, i. 88) says that 'St. Jerome relates that Donatus, explaining that passage in Terence, Nihil est dictum quod non sit dictum prius, railed at the ancients for taking from him his best thoughts. Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.'
[1071] Warburton, in the Dedication of his Divine Legation to the Free-thinkers (vol. I. p. ii), says:--'Nothing, I believe, strikes the serious observer with more surprize, in this age of novelties, than that strange propensity to infidelity, so visible in men of almost every condition: amongst whom the advocates of Deism are received with all the applauses due to the inventers of the arts of life, or the deliverers of oppressed and injured nations.' See ante, ii.