It concluded with the description of the Westminster election, in these or some such words:--"And here let us leave this young nobleman struggling for the dying liberties of his country."'
[622] Five days earlier Johnson made the following entry in his Diary:--'1783, April 5. I took leave of Mrs. Thrale. I was much moved. I had some expostulations with her. She said that she was likewise affected. I commended the Thrales with great good-will to God; may my petitions have been heard.' Hawkins's Life, p. 553. This was not 'a formal taking of leave,' as Hawkins says. She was going to Bath (Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 264). On May-day he wrote to her on the death of one of her little girls:--'I loved her, for she was Thrale's and yours, and, by her dear father's appointment, in some sort mine: I love you all, and therefore cannot without regret see the phalanx broken, and reflect that you and my other dear girls are deprived of one that was born your friend. To such friends every one that has them has recourse at last, when it is discovered and discovered it seldom fails to be, that the fortuitous friendships of inclination or vanity are at the mercy of a thousand accidents.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 255. He was sadly thinking how her friendship for him was rapidly passing away.
[623] Johnson modestly ended his account of the tour by saying:--'I cannot but be conscious that my thoughts on national manners are the thoughts of one who has seen but little.' Works, ix. 161. See Boswell's Hebrides, Nov. 22.
[624] See ib. Oct. 21.
[625] She says that he was 'the genuine author of the first volume. An ingenious physician,' she continues, 'with the assistance of several others, continued the work until the eighth volume.' Mrs. Manley's History of her own Life and Times, p. 15--a gross, worthless book. Swift satirised her in Corinna, a Ballad. Swift's Works (1803), x. 94.
[626] The real authour was I. P. Marana, a Genoese, who died at Paris in 1693. John Dunton in his Life says, that Mr. William Bradshaw received from Dr. Midgeley forty shillings a sheet for writing part of the Turkish Spy; but I do not find that he any where mentions Sault as engaged in that work. MALONE.
[627] See ante, ii. 355, iii. 46, and iv. 139.
[628] This was in June, 1783, and I find in Mr. Windham's private diary (which it seems this conversation induced him to keep) the following memoranda of Dr. Johnson's advice: 'I have no great timidity in my own disposition, and am no encourager of it in others. Never be afraid to think yourself fit for any thing for which your friends think you fit. You will become an able negotiator--a very pretty rascal. No one in Ireland wears even the mask of incorruption; no one professes to do for sixpence what he can get a shilling for doing. Set sail, and see where the winds and the waves will carry you. Every day will improve another. Dies diem docet, by observing at night where you failed in the day, and by resolving to fail so no more.' CROKER. The Whigs thought he made 'a very pretty rascal' in a very different way. On his opposition to Whitbread's bill for establishing parochial schools, Romilly wrote (Life, ii. 2l6), 'that a man so enlightened as Windham should take the same side (which he has done most earnestly) would excite great astonishment, if one did not recollect his eager opposition a few months ago to the abolition of the slave trade.' He was also 'most strenuous in opposition' to Romilly's bill for repealing the act which made it a capital offence to steal to the amount of forty shillings in a dwelling-house, Ib. p. 316.
[629] We accordingly carried our scheme into execution, in October, 1792; but whether from that uniformity which has in modern times, in a great degree, spread through every part of the Metropolis, or from our want of sufficient exertion, we were disappointed. BOSWELL.
[630] Piozzi's Anecdotes, p. 193. See post, under June 30, 1784.
[631] Northcote (Life of Reynolds, ii. 139-143) says that the picture, which was execrable beyond belief, was exhibited in an empty room. Lowe, in 1769 (not in 1771 as Northcote says), gained the gold medal of the Academy for the best historical picture. (Gent. Mag. 1770, p. 587.) Northcote says that the award was not a fair one. He adds that Lowe, being sent to Rome by the patronage of the Academy, was dissatisfied with the sum allowed him. 'When Sir Joshua said that he knew from experience that it was sufficient, Lowe pertly answered "that it was possible for a man to live on guts and garbage."' He died at an obscure lodging in Westminster, in 1793. There is, wrote Miss Burney, 'a certain poor wretch of a villainous painter, one Mr. Lowe, whom Dr. Johnson recommends to all the people he thinks can afford to sit for their picture. Among these he applied to Mr. Crutchley [one of Mr. Thrale's executors]. "But now," said Mr. Crutchley to me, "I have not a notion of sitting for my picture--for who wants it? I may as well give the man the money without; but no, they all said that would not do so well, and Dr.