242. Pope (Imitations of Horace, Epist. I. vi. 126) refers to these lines:--
'If, after all, we must with Wilmot own, The cordial drop of life is love alone.'
[1175] Garrick wrote in 1776:--'Gout, stone, and sore throat! Yet I am in spirits.' Garrick Corres, ii. 138.
[1176] See ante, p. 70.
[1177] In The Life of Edmund Smith (Works, vii. 380). See ante, i. 81.
[1178] Johnson wrote of Foote's death:--'The world is really impoverished by his sinking glories.' Piozzi Letters, i. 396. See ante, p. 185, note 1.
[1179] 'Allowance must be made for some degree of exaggerated praise,' he said in speaking of epitaphs. 'In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.' Ante, ii. 407.
[1180] Garrick retired in January 1776, three years before his death. He visited Ireland in 1742, and again in 1743. Davies's Garrick, i. 57, 91.
[1181] In the original impoverished.
[1182] Certainly not Horace Walpole, as had been suggested to Mr. Croker. He and Johnson can scarcely be said to have known each other (post, under June 19, 1784, note). A sentence in one of Walpole's Letters (iv. 407) shews that he was very unlike the French wit. On Sept. 22, 1765, he wrote from Paris:--'The French affect philosophy, literature, and free-thinking: the first never did, and never will possess me; of the two others I have long been tired. Free-thinking is for one's self, surely not for society.' Perhaps Richard Fitzpatrick is meant, who later on joined in writing The Rolliad, and who was the cousin and 'sworn brother' of Charles Fox. Walpole describes him as 'an agreeable young man of parts,' and mentions his 'genteel irony and badinage.' Journal of the Reign of George III, i. 167 and ii. 560. He was Lord Shelburne's brother-in-law, at whose house Johnson might have met him, as well as in Fox's company. There are one or two lines in The Rolliad which border on profanity. Rogers (Table-Talk, p. 104) said that 'Fitzpatrick was at one time nearly as famous for his wit as Hare.' Tickell in his Epistle from the Hon. Charles Fox to the Hon. John Townshend, p. 13, writes:--
'Oft shall Fitzpatrick's wit and Stanhope's ease, And Burgoyne's manly sense unite to please.'
[1183] See ante, i. 379, note 2.
[1184] According to Mr. Wright (Croker's Boswell, p. 630), this physician was Dr. James. I have examined, however, the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, and 7th editions of his Dissertation on Fevers, but can find no mention of this. In the 7th edition, published in 1770, he complains (p. 111) of 'the virulence and rancour with which the fever-powder and its inventor have been traduced and persecuted by the vendors of medicines and their abettors.'
[1185] According to Mr. Croker this was Andrew Millar, but I doubt it. See ante, i. 287, note 3.
[1186] 'The Chevalier Taylor, Ophthalmiator Pontifical, Imperial, and Royal,' as he styled himself. Gent. Mag. xxxi. 226. Lord Eldon said that--'Taylor, dining with the barristers upon the Oxford circuit, having related many wonderful things which he had done, was asked by Bearcroft, "Pray, Chevalier, as you have told us of a great many things which you have done and can do, will you be so good as to try to tell us anything which you cannot do?" "Nothing so easy," replied Taylor, "I cannot pay my share of the dinner bill: and that, Sir, I must beg of you to do."' Twiss's Eldon, i 321.
[1187] Pope mentions Ward in the Imitations of Horace, 2 Epistle, i. 180:--
'He serv'd a 'prenticeship who sets up shop; Ward try'd on puppies, and the poor, his drop.'
Fielding, in Tom Jones, bk. viii. ch. 9, says that 'interest is indeed a most excellent medicine, and, like Ward's pill, flies at once to the particular part of the body on which you desire to operate.' In the introduction to the Voyage to Lisbon he speaks very highly of Ward's remedies and of Ward himself, who 'endeavoured, he says, 'to serve me without any expectation or desire of fee or reward.'
[1188] 'Every thing,' said Johnson, 'comes from Beauclerk so easily. It appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing.' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21. See post, under May 2, 1780. Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 219) mentions another great-grandson of Charles II. (Commissioner Cardonnel) who was 'the most agreeable companion that ever was. He excelled in story-telling, like his great-grandfather, Charles II., but he seldom or ever repeated them.'
[1189] No doubt Burke. Ante, ii. 222, note 4.
[1190] General Paoli's house, where for some years Boswell was 'a constant guest while he was in London.' Ante, p. 35
[1191] Allan Ramsay's residence: No. 67, Harley-street. P. CUNNINGHAM.
[1192] It is strange that he does not mention their visit in a letter in which he tells Temple that he is lame, and that his 'spirits sank to dreary dejection;' and utters what the editor justly calls an ambiguous prayer:--'Let us hope for gleams of joy here, and a blaze hereafter.' This letter, by the way, and the one that follows it, are both wrongly dated. Letters of Boswell, p. 237.
[1193] See p. 344 of this Volume.