348.
[381] Goldsmith (Present Slate of Polite Learning, chap. 13) thus wrote of servitorships: 'Surely pride itself has dictated to the fellows of our colleges the absurd passion of being attended at meals, and on other public occasions, by those poor men who, willing to be scholars, come in upon some charitable foundation. It implies a contradiction for men to be at once learning the liberal arts, and at the same time treated as slaves; at once studying freedom and practising servitude.' Yet a young man like Whitefield was willing enough to be a servitor. He had been a waiter in his mother's inn; he was now a waiter in a college, but a student also. See my Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics, p. 27.
[382] Dr. Johnson did not neglect what he had undertaken. By his interest with the Rev. Dr. Adams, master of Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was educated for some time, he obtained a servitorship for young M'Aulay. But it seems he had other views; and I believe went abroad. BOSWELL. See ante, ii. 380.
[383] 'I once drank tea,' writes Lamb, 'in company with two Methodist divines of different persuasions. Before the first cup was handed round, one of these reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity, whether he chose to say anything. It seems it is the custom with some sectaries to put up a short prayer before this meal also. His reverend brother did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with little less importance he made answer that it was not a custom known in his church.' Essay on Grace before Meat.
[384] He could not bear to have it thought that, in any instance whatever, the Scots are more pious than the English. I think grace as proper at breakfast as at any other meal. It is the pleasantest meal we have. Dr. Johnson has allowed the peculiar merit of breakfast in Scotland. BOSWELL. 'If an epicure could remove by a wish in quest of sensual gratification, wherever he had supped he would breakfast in Scotland.' Johnson's Works, ix. 52.
[385] Bruce, the Abyssinian Traveller, found in the annals of that region a king named Brus, which he chooses to consider the genuine orthography of the name. This circumstance occasioned some mirth at the court of Gondar. WALTER SCOTT.
[386] See ante, ii. 169, note 2, and post, Sept. 2. Johnson, so far as I have observed, spelt the name Boswel.
[387] Sir Eyre Coote was born in 1726. He took part in the battle of Plassey in 1757, and commanded at the reduction of Pondicherry in 1761. In 1770-71 he went by land to Europe. In 1780 he took command of the English army against Hyder Ali, whom he repeatedly defeated. He died in 1783. Chalmers's Biog. Dict. x. 236. There is a fine description of him in Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1843, iii. 385.
[388] See ante, iii. 361.
[389] Reynolds wrote of Johnson:--'He sometimes, it must be confessed, covered his ignorance by generals rather than appear ignorant' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 457.
[390] 'The barracks are very handsome, and form several regular and good streets.' Pennant's Tour, p. 144.
[391] See ante, p. 45.
[392] Here Dr. Johnson gave us part of a conversation held between a Great Personage and him, in the library at the Queen's Palace, in the course of which this contest was considered. I have been at great pains to get that conversation as perfectly preserved as possible. It may perhaps at some future time be given to the publick. BOSWELL. For 'a Great Personage' see ante, i. 219; and for the conversation, ii. 33.
[393] See ante, ii. 73, 228, 248; iii. 4 and June 15, 1784.
[394] See ante, i. 167, note 1.
[395] Booth acted Cato, and Wilks Juba when Addison's Cato was brought out. Pope told Spence that 'Lord Bolingbroke's carrying his friends to the house, and presenting Booth with a purse of guineas for so well representing the character of a person "who rather chose to die than see a general for life," carried the success of the play much beyond what they ever expected.' Spence's Anec. p. 46. Bolingbroke alluded to the Duke of Marlborough. Pope in his Imitations of Horace, 2 Epist. i. 123 introduces 'well-mouth'd Booth.'
[396] See ante, iii. 35, and under Sept. 30, 1783.
[397] 'Garrick used to tell, that Johnson said of an actor who played Sir Harry Wildair at Lichfield, "There is a courtly vivacity about the fellow;" when, in fact, according to Garrick's account, "he was the most vulgar ruffian that ever went upon boards."' Ante, ii. 465.
[398] Mrs. Cibber was the sister of Dr. Arne the musical composer, and the wife of Theophilus Cibber, Colley Cibber's son. She died in 1766, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. Baker's Biog. Dram. i. 123.
[399] See ante, under Sept. 30, 1783.
[400] See ante, i. 197, and ii. 348.
[401] Johnson had set him to repeat the ninth commandment, and had with great glee put him right in the emphasis. Ante, i. 168.
[402] Act iii. sc. 2.
[403] Boswell's suggestion is explained by the following passage in Johnson's Works, viii. 463:--'Mallet was by his original one of the Macgregors, a clan that became about sixty years ago, under the conduct of Robin Roy, so formidable and so infamous for violence and robbery, that the name was annulled by a legal abolition.'
[404] See ante, iii.