Foss says of Blackstone:--'Ere he had been long on the bench he experienced the bad effects of the studious habits in which he had injudiciously indulged in his early life, and of his neglect to take the necessary amount of exercise, to which he was specially averse.' He died at the age of 56. Foss's Judges, viii. 250. He suffered greatly from his corpulence. His portrait in the Bodleian shews that he was a very fat man. Malone says that Scott (afterwards Lord Stowell) wrote to Blackstone's family to apologise for Boswell's anecdote. Prior's Malone, p. 415. Scott would not have thought any the worse of Blackstone for his bottle of port; both he and his brother, the Chancellor, took a great deal of it. 'Lord Eldon liked plain port; the stronger the better.' Twiss's Eldon, iii. 486. Some one asked him whether Lord Stowell took much exercise. 'None,' he said, 'but the exercise of eating and drinking.' Ib. p. 302. Yet both men got through a vast deal of hard work, and died, Eldon at the age of 86, and Stowell of 90.
[296] See this explained, pp. 52, 53 of this volume. BOSWELL.
[297] See ante, ii. 7.
[298] William Scott was a tutor of University College at the age of nineteen. He held the office for ten years--to 1775. He wrote to his father in 1772 about his younger brother John (afterwards Lord Eldon), who had just made a run-away match:--'The business in which I am engaged is so extremely disagreeable in itself, and so destructive to health (if carried on with such success as can render it at all considerable in point of profit) that I do not wonder at his unwillingness to succeed me in it.' Twiss's Eldon, i. 47, 74.
[299] The account of her marriage given By John Wesley in a letter to his brother-in-law, Mr. Hall, is curious. He wrote on Dec. 22, 1747:--'More than twelve years ago you told me God had revealed it to you that you should marry my youngest sister ... You asked and gained her consent... In a few days you had a counter-revelation, that you was not to marry her, but her sister. This last error was far worse than the first. But you was not quite above conviction. So, in spite of her poor astonished parents, of her brothers, of all your vows and promises, you shortly after jilted the younger and married the elder sister.' Wesley's Journal, ii. 39. Mrs. Hall suffered greatly for marrying a wretch who had so cruelly treated her own sister, Southey's Wesley, i. 369.
[300] See ante, iii. 269.
[301] The original 'Robinhood' was a debating society which met near Temple-Bar. Some twenty years before this time Goldsmith belonged to it, and, it was said, Burke. Forster's Goldsmith, i. 287, and Prior's Burke, p. 79. The president was a baker by trade. 'Goldsmith, after hearing him give utterance to a train of strong and ingenious reasoning, exclaimed to Derrick, "That man was meant by nature for a Lord Chancellor." Derrick replied, "No, no, not so high; he is only intended for Master of the Rolls."' Prior's Goldsmith, i. 420. Fielding, in 1752, in The Covent-Garden Journal, Nos. 8 and 9, takes off this Society and the baker. A fragment of a report of their discussions which he pretends to have discovered, begins thus:--'This evenin the questin at the Robinhood was, whether relidgin was of any youse to a sosyaty; baken bifor mee To'mmas Whytebred, baker.' Horace Walpole (Letters, iv. 288), in 1764, wrote of the visit of a French gentleman to England, 'He has seen ... Jews, Quakers, Mr. Pitt, the Royal Society, the Robinhood, Lord Chief-Justice Pratt, the Arts-and-Sciences, &c.' Romilly (Life, i. 168), in a letter dated May 22, 1781, says that during the past winter several of these Sunday religious debating societies had been established. 'The auditors,' he was assured, 'were mostly weak, well-meaning people, who were inclined to Methodism;' but among the speakers were 'some designing villains, and a few coxcombs, with more wit than understanding.' 'Nothing,' he continues, 'could raise up panegyrists of these societies but what has lately happened, an attempt to suppress them. The Solicitor-General has brought a bill into Parliament for this purpose. The bill is drawn artfully enough; for, as these societies are held on Sundays, and people pay for admittance, he has joined them with a famous tea-drinking house [Carlisle House], involving them both in the same fate, and entitling his bill, A Bill to regulate certain Abuses and Profanations of the Lord's Day.' The Bill was carried; on a division none being found among the Noes but the two tellers. The penalties for holding a meeting were L200 for the master of the house, L100 for the moderator of the meeting, and L50 for each of the servants at the door. Parl. Hist. xxii. 262, 279.
[302] St. Matthew, xxvii. 52.
[303] I Corinthians, xv. 37.
[304] As this subject frequently recurs in these volumes, the reader may be led erroneously to suppose that Dr. Johnson was so fond of such discussions, as frequently to introduce them. But the truth is, that the authour himself delighted in talking concerning ghosts, and what he has frequently denominated the mysterious; and therefore took every opportunity of leading Johnson to converse on such subjects.