I was saucy, and said I was obliged to be civil for two, meaning himself and me. He replied nobody would thank me for compliments they did not understand. At Gwaynynog he was flattered, and was happy of course.' Hayward's Piozzi, i. 75. Sept. 21, 1778. Mrs. Thrale. 'I remember, Sir, when we were travelling in Wales, how you called me to account for my civility to the people. "Madam," you said, "let me have no more of this idle commendation of nothing. Why is it that whatever you see, and whoever you see, you are to be so indiscriminately lavish of praise?" "Why I'll tell you, Sir," said I, "when I am with you, and Mr. Thrale, and Queeny [Miss Thrale], I am obliged to be civil for four."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 132. On June 11, 1775, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield:--'Everybody remembers you all: you left a good impression behind you. I hope you will do the same at------. Do not make them speeches. Unusual compliments, to which there is no stated and prescriptive answer, embarrass the feeble, who know not what to say, and disgust the wise, who knowing them to be false suspect them to be hypocritical.' Piozzi Letters, i. 232. She records that he once said to her:--'You think I love flattery, and so I do, but a little too much always disgusts me. That fellow Richardson [the novelist] on the contrary could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation, without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 184. See ante, iii. 293, for Johnson's rebuke of Hannah More's flattery.
[1203] Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines calamine or lapis calaminaris as a kind of fossile bituminous earth, which being mixed with copper changes it into brass. It is native siliceous oxide of zinc. The Imperial Dictionary.
[1204] See ante, iii. 164.
[1205] 'No' or 'little' is here probably omitted. CROKER.
[1206] The name of this house is Bodryddan; formerly the residence of the Stapyltons, the parents of five co-heiresses, of whom Mrs. Cotton, afterwards Lady Salusbury Cotton, was one. DUPPA.
[1207] 'Dr. Johnson, whose ideas of anything not positively large were ever mingled with contempt, asked of one of our sharp currents in North Wales, "Has this brook e'er a name?" and received for answer, "Why, dear Sir, this is the River Ustrad." "Let us," said he, turning to his friend, "jump over it directly, and shew them how an Englishman should treat a Welsh river."' Piozzi's Synonymy, i. 82.
[1208] See ante, i. 313, note 4.
[1209] On Aug. 16 he wrote to Mr. Levett:--'I have made nothing of the Ipecacuanha.' Ante, ii. 282. Mr. Croker suggests that up is omitted after 'I gave.'
[1210] See post, p. 453.
[1211] F.G. are the printer's signatures, by which it appears that at this time four sheets (B, C, D, E), or 64 pages had already been printed. The MS. was 'put to the press' on June 20. Ante, ii. 278.
[1212] The English version Psalm 36 begins,--'My heart sheweth me the wickedness of the ungodly,' which has no relation to 'Dixit injustus.'
[1213] This alludes to 'A prayer by R.W., (evidently Robert Wisedom) which Sir Henry Ellis, of the British Museum, has found among the Hymns which follow the old version of the singing Psalms, at the end of Barker's Bible of 1639. It begins,
'Preserve us, Lord, by thy deare word, From Turk and Pope, defend us Lord, Which both would thrust out of his throne Our Lord Jesus Christ, thy deare son.'
CROKER.
[1214] 'Proinde quum dominus Matth. 6 docet discipulos suos ne in orando multiloqui sint, nihil aliud docet quam ne credant deum inani verborum strepitu flecti rem eandem subinde flagitantium. Nam Graecis est [Greek: battologaesate]. [Greek: Battologein] autem illis dicitur qui voces easdem frequenter iterant sine causa, vel loquacitatis, vel naturae, vel consuetudinis vitio. Alioqui juxta precepta rhetorum nonnunquam laudis est iterare verba, quemadmodum et Christus in cruce clamitat. Deus meus, deus meus: non erat illa [Greek: battologia], sed ardens ac vehemens affectus orantis.' Erasmus's Works, ed. 1540, v. 927.
[1215] This alludes to Southwell's stanzas 'Upon the Image of Death,' in his Maeonia, [Maeoniae] a collection of spiritual poems:--
'Before my face the picture hangs, That daily should put me in mind Of those cold names and bitter pangs That shortly I am like to find: But, yet, alas! full little I Do thinke hereon that I must die.' &c.
Robert Southwell was an English Jesuit, who was imprisoned, tortured, and finally, in Feb. 1598 [1595] executed for teaching the Roman Catholic tenets in England. CROKER.
[1216] This work, which Johnson was now reading, was, most probably, a little book, entitled Baudi Epistolae. In his Life of Milton [Works, vii. 115], he has made a quotation from it. DUPPA.
[1217] Bishop Shipley had been an Army Chaplain. Ante, iii. 251.
[1218] The title of the poem is [Greek: Poiaema nouthetikon]. DUPPA.
[1219] This entry refers to the following passage i