'It depends on every collector what and how much he will admit.' Ebert's Bibl. Dict. iii. 1571. See ante, ii. 7.
[167] See post, under Oct. 20, 1784, for 'the learned pig.'
[168] In the first edition Mme. de Sevigne's name is printed Sevigne, in the second Sevige, in the third Sevigne. Authors and compositors last century troubled themselves little about French words.
[169] Milton had put the same complaint into Adam's mouth:--
'Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me man? ... ... As my will Concurred not to my being,' &c.
Paradise Lost, x. 743.
[170] See ante, April 10, 1775.
[171] Fielding in the Covent Garden Journal for June 2, 1752 (Works, x. 80), says of the difficulty of admission at the hospitals:--'The properest objects (those I mean who are most wretched and friendless) may as well aspire at a place at Court as at a place in the Hospital.'
[172] 'We were talking of Dr. Barnard, the Provost of Eton. "He was the only man," says Mr. Johnson quite seriously, "that did justice to my good breeding; and you may observe that I am well-bred to a degree of needless scrupulosity. No man," continued he, not observing the amazement of his hearers, "no man is so cautious not to interrupt another; no man thinks it so necessary to appear attentive when others are speaking; no man so steadily refuses preference on himself, or so willingly bestows it on another, as I do; no man holds so strongly as I do the necessity of ceremony, and the ill effects which follow the breach of it; yet people think me rude; but Barnard did me justice."' Piozzi's Anec. p. 36. On p. 258, Mrs. Piozzi writes:--'No one was indeed so attentive not to offend in all such sort of things as Dr. Johnson; nor so careful to maintain the ceremonies of life; and though he told Mr. Thrale once, that he had never sought to please till past thirty years old, considering the matter as hopeless, he had been always studious not to make enemies by apparent preference of himself.' See Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 27, 1773, where Johnson said:--'Sir, I look upon myself as a very polite man.'
[173] The younger Colman in his boyhood met Johnson and Gibbon. 'Johnson was in his rusty brown and his black worsteds, and Gibbon in a suit of flowered velvet, with a bag and sword. He condescended, once or twice in the course of the evening, to talk with me;--the great historian was light and playful, suiting his matter to the capacity of the boy; but it was done more sua [sic]; still his mannerism prevailed; still he tapped his snuff-box; still he smirked, and smiled, and rounded his periods with the same air of good-breeding, as if he were conversing with men. His mouth, mellifluous as Plato's, was a round hole, nearly in the centre of his visage.' Random Records, i. 121.
[174] Samuel Sharp's Letters from Italy were published in 1766. See ante, ii. 57, note 2, for Baretti's reply to them.
[175] It may be observed, that Mr. Malone, in his very valuable edition of Shakspeare, has fully vindicated Dr. Johnson from the idle censures which the first of these notes has given rise to. The interpretation of the other passage, which Dr. Johnson allows to be disputable, he has clearly shown to be erroneous. BOSWELL. The first note is on the line in Hamlet, act v. sc. 2--
'And many such like as's of great charge.'
Johnson says:--'A quibble is intended between as the conditional particle, and ass the beast of burthen.' On this note Steevens remarked:--'Shakespeare has so many quibbles of his own to answer for, that there are those who think it hard he should be charged with others which perhaps he never thought of.' The second note is on the opening of Hamlet's soliloquy in act iii. sc. i. The line--
'To be, or not to be, that is the question,'
is thus paraphrased by Johnson:--'Before I can form any rational scheme of action under this pressure of distress, it is necessary to decide whether, after our present state, we are to be or not to be.'
[176] See post, March 30, April 14 and 15, 1778, and Boswell's Hebrides, Oct. 25.
[177] Wesley wrote on Jan. 21, 1767 (Journal, iii. 263):--'I had a conversation with an ingenious man who proved to a demonstration that it was the duty of every man that could to be "clothed in purple and fine linen," and to "fare sumptuously every day;" and that he would do abundantly more good hereby than he could do by "feeding the hungry and clothing the naked." O the depth of human understanding! What may not a man believe if he will?' Much the same argument Johnson, thirty-three years earlier, had introduced in one of his Debates (Works, xi. 349). He makes one of the speakers say:--'Our expenses are not all equally destructive; some, though the method of raising them be vexatious and oppressive, do not much impoverish the nation, because they are refunded by the extravagance and luxury of those who are retained in the pay of the court.' See post, March 23, 1783. The whole argument is nothing but Mandeville's doctrine of 'private vices, public benefits.' See post, April 15, 1778.