Perhaps Johnson saw Durandi Rationale Officiorum Divinorum, which was printed in 1459, one year later than Johnson mentions. A copy of this he had seen at Blenheim in 1774. His Journey into North Wales, Sept. 22.
[1192] He means, I suppose, that he read these different pieces while he remained in the library. BOSWELL.
[1193] Johnson in his Dictionary defines Apartment as A room; a set of rooms.
[1194] Smollett (Travels, i. 85) writes of these temporary servants:--'You cannot conceive with what eagerness and dexterity these rascally valets exert themselves in pillaging strangers. There is always one ready in waiting on your arrival, who begins by assisting your own servant to unload your baggage, and interests himself in your own affairs with such artful officiousness that you will find it difficult to shake him off.'
[1195] Livres--francs we should now say.
[1196] It was here that Rousseau got rid of his children. 'Je savais que l'education pour eux la moins perilleuse etait celle des enfans trouves; et je les y mis.' Les Reveries, ix'me promenade.
[1197] Dr. Franklin, in 1785, wrote:--'I am credibly informed that nine-tenths of them die there pretty soon.' Memoirs, iii. 187. Lord Kames (Sketches of the History of Man, iii. 91) says:--'The Paris almanac for the year 1768 mentions that there were baptised 18,576 infants, of whom the foundling-hospital received 6025.'
[1198] St. Germain des Pres. Better known as the Prison of the Abbaye.
[1199] I have looked in vain into De Bure, Meerman, Mattaire, and other typographical books, for the two editions of the Catholicon, which Dr. Johnson mentions here, with names which I cannot make out. I read 'one by Latinius, one by Boedinus.' I have deposited the original MS. in the British Museum, where the curious may see it. My grateful acknowledgements are due to Mr. Planta for the trouble he was pleased to take in aiding my researches. BOSWELL. A Mr. Planta is mentioned in Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, v. 39.
[1200] Friar Wilkes visited Johnson in May 1776. Piozzi Letters, i. 336. On Sept. 18, 1777, Mrs. Thrale wrote to Johnson:--'I have got some news that will please you now. Here is an agreeable friend come from Paris, whom you were very fond of when we were there--the Prior of our English Benedictine Convent, Mr. Cowley ... He inquires much for you; and says Wilkes is very well, No. 45, as they call him in the Convent. A cell is always kept ready for your use he tells me.' Ib p. 373.
[1201] The writing is so bad here, that the names of several of the animals could not be decyphered without much more acquaintance with natural history than I possess.--Dr. Blagden, with his usual politeness, most obligingly examined the MS. To that gentleman, and to Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, who also very readily assisted me, I beg leave to express my best thanks. BOSWELL
[1202] It is thus written by Johnson, from the French pronunciation of fossane. It should be observed, that the person who shewed this Menagerie was mistaken in supposing the fossane and the Brasilian weasel to be the same, the fossane being a different animal, and a native of Madagascar. I find them, however, upon one plate in Pennant's Synopsis of Quadrupeds. BOSWELL.
[1203] How little Johnson relished this talk is shewn by his letter to Mrs. Thrale of May 1, 1780, and by her answer. He wrote:--'The Exhibition, how will you do, either to see or not to see? The Exhibition is eminently splendid. There is contour, and keeping, and grace, and expression, and all the varieties of artificial excellence.' Piozzi Letters, ii. III. She answered:--'When did I ever plague about contour, and grace, and expression? I have dreaded them all three since that hapless day at Compiegne when you teased me so.' Ib p. 116
[1204] 'Nef, (old French from nave) the body of a church.' Johnson's Dictionary.
[1205] My worthy and ingenious friend, Mr. Andrew Lumisden, by his accurate acquaintance with France, enabled me to make out many proper names, which Dr. Johnson had written indistinctly, and sometimes spelt erroneously. Boswell. Lumisden is mentioned in Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 13.
[1206] Baretti, in a marginal note on Piozzi Letters, i. 142, says that 'Johnson saw next to nothing of Paris.' On p. 159 he adds:--'He noticed the country so little that he scarcely spoke of it ever after.' He shews, however, his ignorance of Johnson's doings by saying that 'in France he never touched a pen.'
[1207] Hume's reception in 1763 was very different. He wrote to Adam Smith:--'I have been three days at Paris, and two at Fontainebleau, and have everywhere met with the most extraordinary honours which the most exorbitant vanity could wish or desire.' The Dauphin's three children, afterwards Lewis XVI, Lewis XVIII, and Charles X, had each to make a set speech of congratulation. He was the favourite of the most exclusive coteries. J.H. Burton's Hume, ii. 168, 177, 208. But at that date, sceptical philosophy was the rage.
[1208] Horace Walpole wrote from Paris in 1771 (Letters, v. 317-19):--'The distress here is incredible, especially at Court....