[982]
'Who'er offends, at some unlucky time Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.'
Pope, Imitations of Horace, 2 Satires, i. 78.
[983] On March 14, 1770, in a debate on the licentiousness of the press, Townshend joined together Johnson and Shebbeare. Burke, who followed him, said nothing about Johnson. Fitzherbert, speaking of Johnson as 'my friend,' defended him as 'a pattern of morality.' Cavendish Debates, i.514. On Feb. 16, 1774, when Fox drew attention to a 'vile libel' signed A South Briton, Townshend said 'Dr. Shebbeare and Dr. Johnson have been pensioned, but this wretched South Briton is to be prosecuted.' It was Fox, and not Burke, who on this occasion defended Johnson. Parl. Hist. xvii.1054. As Goldsmith was writing Retaliation at the very time that this second attack was made, it is very likely that it was the occasion, of the change in the line.
[984] In the original yet.
[985]
'Sis pecore et multa dives tellure licebit, Tibique Pactolus fluat.' 'Though wide thy land extends, and large thy fold, Though rivers roll for thee their purest gold.'
FRANCIS. Horace, Epodes, xv. 19.
[986] See Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1843, i. 404, for Macaulay's appropriation and amplification of this passage.
[987] See ante, ii. 168.
[988] Mr. Croker suggests the Rev. Martin Sherlock, an Irish Clergyman, 'who published in 1781 his own travels under the title of Letters of an English Traveller translated from the French.' Croker's Boswell, p. 770. Mason writes of him as 'Mister, or Monsieur, or Signor Sherlock, for I am told he is both [sic] French, English, and Italian in print.' Walpole's Letters, viii. 202. I think, however, that Dr. Thomas Campbell is meant. His Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland Boswell calls 'a very entertaining book, which has, however, one fault;--that it assumes the fictitious character of an Englishman.' Ante, ii. 339.
[989] See ante, iv. 49.
[990] This anecdote is not in the first two editions.
[991] See ante, in. 369.
[992] 'I have heard,' says Hawkins (Life, p. 409), 'that in many instances, and in some with tears in his eyes, he has apologised to those whom he had offended by contradiction or roughness of behaviour.' See ante, ii. 109, and 256, note 1.
[993] Johnson (Works, viii. 131) describes Savage's 'superstitious regard to the correction of his sheets ... The intrusion or omission of a comma was sufficient to discompose him, and he would lament an errour of a single letter as a heavy calamity.'
[994] Compositor in the Printing-house means, the person who adjusts the types in the order in which they are to stand for printing; and arranges what is called the form, from which an impression is taken. BOSWELL.
[995] This circumstance therefore alluded to in Mr. Courtenay's Poetical Character of him is strictly true. My informer was Mrs. Desmoulins, who lived many years in Dr. Johnson's house. BOSWELL. The following are Mr. Courtenay's lines:--
'Soft-eyed compassion with a look benign, His fervent vows he offered at thy shrine; To guilt, to woe, the sacred debt was paid, And helpless females blessed his pious aid; Snatched from disease, and want's abandoned crew, Despair and anguish from their victims flew; Hope's soothing balm into their bosoms stole, And tears of penitence restored the soul.'
[996] The Cross Readings were said to be formed 'by reading two columns of a newspaper together onwards,' whereby 'the strangest connections were brought about,' such as:--
'This morning the Right Hon. the Speaker was convicted of keeping a disorderly house. Whereas the said barn was set on fire by an incendiary letter dropped early in the morning. By order of the Commissioners for Paving An infallible remedy for the stone and gravel. The sword of state was carried before Sir John Fielding and committed to Newgate.'
The New Foundling Hospital for Wit, i. 129. According to Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 217), 'Dr. Goldsmith declared, in the heat of his admiration of these Cross Readings, it would have given him more pleasure to have been the author of them than of all the works he had ever published of his own.' Horace Walpole (Letters, v. 30) writes:-- 'Have you seen that delightful paper composed out of scraps in the newspapers? I laughed till I cried. I mean the paper that says:--
"This day his Majesty will go in great state to fifteen notorious common prostitutes."'
[997] One of these gentlemen was probably Mr. Musgrave (ante, ii. 343, note 2), who, says Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 295), when 'once he was singularly warm about Johnson's writing the lives of our famous prose authors, getting up and entreating him to set about the work immediately, he coldly replied, "Sit down, Sir."' Miss Burney says that 'the incense he paid Dr. Johnson by his solemn manner of listening, by the earnest reverence with which he eyed him, and by a theatric start of admiration every time he spoke, joined to the Doctor's utter insensibility to all these tokens, made me find infinite difficulty in keeping my countenance.' Mme.