Mr. Shepherd quotes an unpublished letter of Boswell to Wilkes, dated Rome, April 22, 1765, to show 'that the two men had become familiars, not only long before Wilkes's famous meeting with Dr. Johnson was brought about, but before even the friendship of Boswell himself with Johnson had been consolidated.' It needs no unpublished letters to show that. It must be known to every attentive reader of Boswell. See ante, i. 395, and ii. 11.
Frederick III, King of Prussia.
(Vol. i, p. 308.)
Boswell should have written Frederick II.
Boswell's visit to Rousseau and Voltaire.
(Vol. i, p. 434; and vol. ii, p. 11.)
Boswell to Andrew Mitchell, Esq., His Britannic Majesty's Minister at Berlin.
'Berlin, 28 August, 1764.
... 'I have had another letter from my father, in which he continues of opinion that travelling is of very little use, and may do a great deal of harm. ... I esteem and love my father, and I am determined to do what is in my power to make him easy and happy. But you will allow that I may endeavour to make him happy, and at the same time not to be too hard upon myself. I must use you so much with the freedom of a friend as to tell you that with the vivacity which you allowed me I have a melancholy disposition. I have made excursions into the fields of amusement, perhaps of folly. I have found that amusement and folly are beneath me, and that without some laudable pursuit my life must be insipid and wearisome..... My father seems much against my going to Italy, but gives me leave to go from this, and pass some months in Paris. I own that the words of the Apostle Paul, "I must see Rome," are strongly borne in upon my mind. It would give me infinite pleasure. It would give taste for a life-time, and I should go home to Auchinleck with serene contentment.'
After stating that he is going to Geneva, he continues:--
'I shall see Voltaire; I shall also see Switzerland and Rousseau. These two men are to me greater objects than most statues or pictures.' --Nichols's Literary History, vii. 318.
Superficiality of the French writers.
(Vol. i, p. 454.)
Gibbon, writing of the year 1759, says:--
'In France, to which my ideas [in the Essay on the Study of Literature] were confined, the learning and language of Greece and Rome were neglected by a philosophic age. The guardian of those studies, the Academy of Inscriptions, was degraded to the lowest rank among the three royal societies of Paris; the new appellation of Erudits was contemptuously applied to the successors of Lipsius and Casaubon; and I was provoked to hear (see M. d'Alembert, Discours preliminaire a l'Encyclopedie) that the exercise of the memory, their sole merit, had been superseded by the nobler faculties of the imagination and the judgment.' --Memoirs of Edward Gibbon, ed. 1827, i. 104.
A Synod of Cooks.
(Vol. i, p. 470.)
When Johnson spoke of 'a Synod of Cooks' he was, I conjecture, thinking of Milton's 'Synod of Gods,' in Beelzebub's speech in Paradise Lost, book ii. line 391.
Johnson and Bishop Percy.
(Vol. i, p. 486.)
Bishop Percy in a letter to Boswell says: 'When in 1756 or 1757 I became acquainted with Johnson, he told me he had lived twenty years in London, but not very happily.' --Nichols's Literary History, vii. 307.
Barclay's Answer to Kenrick's Review of Johnson's 'Shakespeare.'
(Vol. i, p. 498.)
Neither in the British Museum nor in the Bodleian have I been able to find a copy of this book. A Defence of Mr. Kenricks Review, 1766, does not seem to contain any reply to such a work as Barclay's.
Mrs. Piozzi's 'Collection of Johnson s Letters.'
(Vol. ii, p. 43, n. 2.)
MR. BOSWELL TO BISHOP PERCY. 'Feb. 9, 1788.
'I am ashamed that I have yet seven years to write of his life. ... Mrs. (Thrale) Piozzi's Collection of his letters will be out soon. ... I saw a sheet at the printing-house yesterday... It is wonderful what avidity there still is for everything relative to Johnson. I dined at Mr. Malone's on Wednesday with Mr. W. G. Hamilton, Mr. Flood, Mr. Windham, Mr. Courtenay, &c.; and Mr. Hamilton observed very well what a proof it was of Johnson's merit that we had been talking of him all the afternoon.' --Nichols's Literary History, vii. 309.
Johnson on romantic virtue.
(Vol. ii, P. 76.)
'Dr. Johnson used to advise his friends to be upon their guard against romantic virtue, as being founded upon no settled principle. "A plank," said he, "that is tilted up at one end must of course fall down on the other." '--William Seward, Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons, ii. 461.'
'Old' Baxter on toleration.
(Vol. ii, p. 253.)
The Rev. John Hamilton Davies, B.A., F.R.H.S., Rector of St. Nicholas's, Worcester, and author of The Life of Richard Baxter of Kidderminster, Preacher and Prisoner (London, Kent & Co., 1887), kindly informs me, in answer to my inquiries, that he believes that Johnson may allude to the following passage in the fourth chapter of Baxter's Reformed Pastor:--
'I think the Magistrate should be the hedge of the Church.