More's Memoirs, i.2O7.
[240] See ante, iii. 250.
[241] Shakspeare makes Hamlet thus describe his father:--
'See what a grace was seated on this brow: Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself, An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald, Mercury, New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination, and a form, indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man.! [Act iii. sc. 4.]
Milton thus pourtrays our first parent, Adam:--
'His fair large front and eye sublime declar'd Absolute rule; and hyacinthin locks Round from his parted forelock manly hung Clus'tring, but not beneath his shoulders broad.' [P.L. iv. 300.] BOSWELL.
[242] 'Grattan's Uncle, Dean Marlay [afterwards Bishop of Waterford], had a good deal of the humour of Swift. Once, when the footman was out of the way, he ordered the coachman to fetch some water from the well. To this the man objected, that his business was to drive, not to run on errands. "Well, then," said Marlay, "bring out the coach and four, set the pitcher inside, and drive to the well;"--a service which was several times repeated, to the great amusement of the village.' Rogers's Table-Talk, p.176.
[243] See ante, ii. 241, for Johnson's contempt of puns.
[244] 'He left not faction, but of that was left.' Absalom and Achitophel, l. 568.
[245] Boswell wrote of Gibbon in 1779:--'He is an ugly, affected, disgusting fellow, and poisons our Literary Club to me.' Letters of Boswell, p.242. See ante, ii.443, note 1.
[246] The schools in this sense means a University.
[247] See ante, ii.224.
[248] Up to the year 1770, controverted elections had been tried before a Committee of the whole House. By the Grenville Act which was passed in that year they were tried by a select committee. Parl. Hist. xvi. 902. Johnson, in The False Alarm (1770), describing the old method of trial, says;--'These decisions have often been apparently partial, and sometimes tyrannically oppressive.' Works, vi. 169. In The Patriot (1774), he says:--'A disputed election is now tried with the same scrupulousness and solemnity as any other title.' Ib. p.223. See Boswell's Hebrides, Nov.10.
[249] Miss Burney describes a dinner at Mr. Thrale's, about this time, at which she met Johnson, Boswell, and Dudley Long. Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 14.
[250] See ante, ii.171, post, two paragraphs before April 10, 1783, and May 15, 1784.
[251] Johnson wrote on May i, 1780:--'There was the Bishop of St. Asaph who comes to every place.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 111. Hannah More, in 1782, describes an assembly at this Bishop's. 'Conceive to yourself 150 or 200 people met together dressed in the extremity of the fashion, painted as red as Bacchanals...ten or a dozen card-tables crammed with dowagers of quality, grave ecclesiastics and yellow admirals.' Memoirs, i.242. He was elected a member of the Literary Club, 'with the sincere approbation and eagerness of all present,' wrote Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Jones; elected, too, on the same day on which Lord Chancellor Camden was rejected (ante, iii. 311, note 2). Two or three years later Sir William married the Bishop's daughter. Life of Sir W Jones, pp.240, 279.
[252] 'Trust not to looks, nor credit outward show; The villain lurks beneath the cassocked beau.' Churchill's Poems (ed. 1766), ii.41.
[253] No. 2.
[254] See vol. i p. 378. BOSWELL.
[255] Northcote, according to Hazlitt, said of this character with some truth, that 'it was like one of Kneller's portraits--it would do for anybody.' Northcote's Conversations, p.86.
[256] See post, p.98.
[257] London Chronicle, May 2, 1769. This respectable man is there mentioned to have died on the 3rd of April, that year, at Cofflect, the seat of Thomas Veale, Esq., in his way to London. BOSWELL.
[258] Dr. Harte was the tutor of Mr. Eliot and of young Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield's illegitimate son. 'My morning hopes,' wrote Chesterfield to his son at Rome, 'are justly placed in Mr. Harte, and the masters he will give you; my evening ones in the Roman ladies: pray be attentive to both.' Chesterfield's Letters, ii.263. See ante, i.163, note 1, ii.120, and post, June 27, 1784.
[259] Robertson's Scotland is in the February list of books in the Gent. Mag. for 1759; Harte's Gustavus Adolphus and Hume's England under the House of Tudor in the March list. Perhaps it was from Hume's competition that Harte suffered.
[260] Essays on Husbandry, 1764.
[261] See ante, iii. 381.
[262] 'Christmas Day, 1780. I shall not attempt to see Vestris till the weather is milder, though it is the universal voice that he is the only perfect being that has dropped from the clouds, within the memory of man or woman...When the Parliament meets he is to be thanked by the Speaker.' Walpole's Letters, vii. 480.
[263] Here Johnson uses his title of Doctor (ante, ii.332, note 1), but perhaps he does so as quoting the paragraph in the newspaper.