[944] See ante, ii. 208, note 5.
[945] See ante, i. 416.
[946] 'This play, written in ridicule of the musical Italian drama, was first offered to Cibber and his brethren at Drury Lane, and rejected; it being then carried to Rich had the effect, as was ludicrously said, of making Gay rich and Rich gay.' Johnson's Works, viii. 66. See ante, ii. 368.
[947] See ante, i. 112.
[948] In opposition to this Mr. Croker quotes Horace:---
'Populus me sibilat; at mihi plaudo Ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in arca.' 'I'm hissed in public; but in secret blest, I count my money and enjoy my chest.' Horace, Sat. i. I. 66.
See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 26.
[949] The anecdote is told in Menagiana, iii. 104, but not of a 'maid of honour,' nor as an instance of 'exquisite flattery.' 'M. d'Uzes etait chevalier d'honneur de la reine. Cette princesse lui demanda un jour quelle heure il etait; il repondit, "Madame, l'heure qu'il plaira a votre majeste."' Menage tells it as a pleasantry of M. d'Uzes; but M. de la Monnoye says, that this duke was remarkable for naivetes and blunders, and was a kind of butt, to whom the wits of the court used to attribute all manner of absurdities. CROKER.
[950] Horace, Odes, iv. 2. II. The common reading is solutis. Boswell (Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773) says:--'Mr. Wilkes told me this himself with classical admiration.'
[951] See this question fully investigated in the Notes upon my Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, edit. 3, p. 21, et seq. [Aug. 15]. And here, as a lawyer mindful of the maxim Suum cuique tribuito, I cannot forbear to mention, that the additional Note beginning with 'I find since the former edition,' is not mine, but was obligingly furnished by Mr. Malone, who was so kind as to superintend the press while I was in Scotland, and the first part of the second edition was printing. He would not allow me to ascribe it to its proper authour; but, as it is exquisitely acute and elegant, I take this opportunity, without his knowledge, to do him justice. BOSWELL. See also ante, i. 453, and post, May 15, 1784.
[952] Horace, Sat. i. I. 106. Malone points out that this is the motto to An Enquiry into Customary Estates and Tenants' Rights, &c., with some considerations for restraining excessive fines. By Everard Fleetwood, 8vo, 1737.
[953] A modus is something paid as a compensation for tithes on the supposition of being a moderate equivalent. Johnson's Dictionary. It was more desirable for the landlord than the Parson. Thus T. Warton, in his Progress of Discontent, represents the Parson who had taken a college living regretting his old condition,
'When calm around the common-room I puffed my daily pipe's perfume; ... And every night I went to bed, Without a modus in my head.'
T. Warton's Poems, ii. 197.
[954] Fines are payments due to the lord of a manor on every admission of a new tenant. In some manors these payments are fixed by custom; they are then fines certain; in others they are not fixed, but depend on the reasonableness of the lord and the paying capacity of the tenant; they are fines uncertain. The advantage of fines certain, like that of a modus in tithes, is that a man knows what he shall get.
[955] Ante, iii. 35.
[956] Mr. P. Cunningham has, I think, enabled us to clear up Boswell's mystery, by finding in the Garrick Corres, ii. 305, May 1778, that Johnson's poor friend, Mauritius Lowe, the painter, lived at No. 3, Hedge Lane, in a state of extreme distress. CROKER. See post, April 3, 1779, and April 12, 1783.
[957] 'In all his intercourse with mankind, Pope had great delight in artifice, and endeavoured to attain all his purposes by indirect and unsuspected methods. "He hardly drank tea without a stratagem." ["Nor take her tea without a stratagem." Young's Universal Passion, Sat. vi.] He practised his arts on such small occasions that Lady Bolingbroke used to say, in a French phrase, that "he played the politician about cabbages and turnips."' Johnson's Works, viii. 311.
[958] Johnson, post, under March 30, 1783, speaks of 'the vain ostentatious importance of many persons in quoting the authority of dukes and lords.' In his going to the other extreme, as he said he did, may be found the explanation of Boswell's 'mystery.' For of mystery--'the wisdom of blockheads,' as Horace Walpole calls it (Letters, iii. 371)--Johnson was likely to have as little as any man. As for Grosvenor-square, the Thrales lived there for a short time, and Johnson had a room in the house (post, March 20, 1781).
[959] Tacitus, Agricola, ch. xxx. 'The unknown always passes for something peculiarly grand.'
[960] Johnson defines toy-shop as 'a shop where playthings and little nice manufactures are sold.'
[961] See ante, ii. 241.
[962] Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 237) says that 'the fore-top of all his wigs were (sic) burned by the candle down to the very net-work. Mr. Thrale's valet, for that reason, kept one always in his own hands, with which he met him at the parlour door when the bell had called him down to dinner.' Cumberland (Memoirs, i.