It is well known to Mr Barker's friends, that he was accustomed to make written memoranda of all anecdotes and curious narratives which were told him during the day. These were generally written on scraps of paper, of all forms and sizes. After his death a large number of these papers were found among the effects which he left at the Globe Coffee-House, and from those papers the anecdotes now published have been selected. Together with these original anecdotes, which are mostly prefaced by the time and place at which they were related, were found, intermixed, a miscellaneous assemblage of poems, original and select, jokes, charades, conundrums, extracts from newspapers, and, in short, every thing curious or interesting, which arrested Mr B's attention in the course of his daily reading or public intercourse with mankind. Besides these Anecdotes, of a more general nature, there is a separate bundle of papers, which will be published hereafter, under the name of PORSONIANA or Anecdotes of Professor Porson: also, another bundle which no one has yet had the courage to examine, apparently containing a mass of matter concerning the origin, use, and abuse of the Christian Sabbath. AUTHENTIC ANECDOTES AND CONTEMPORARY REMINISCENCES. I. Warburton and Sherlock. Hatton, Febr. 16, 1814. Mr J. Bartlam, Dr Parr, and myself had a long chat after having returned from Kenilworth. In the course of it the Doctor said in his usual earnest and impressive manner. "If ever you or Barker, after I am dead, hear it dogmatically said that Warburton was an unbeliever, I charge you to remember my words: his belief in Christianity was unfeigned. If ever you hear it said that Sherlock, who often took the orthodox side, was a believer-it may be, but I pause: he was a wise man, but I think that he was sceptical. Sir Robert Walpole wished to have made him Chancellor, and in that high office he would have dug out great principles of equity, and have been next to Yorke." See Warburtonian Tracts, p. 185 n. 186 n. Wilkes's Correspondence, 3, 78. II. Potter, Johnson, and Parr. April 24, 1814.* Potter, the Translator of Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, who was a tall man about 6 feet high very handsome, with an aquiline nose, went up to London, and This date, as is evident, denotes the day when Mr Barker was told the anecdote which follows, not the day on which the circumstance happened. Compare Anecdotes of Bowyer, p. 300. was introduced by Mrs Montagu of Shakspearian celebrity to a party of blue stockings. At length Dr Johnson's name was announced. Mrs Montagu with all due form took Mr Potter by the hand, and introduced him to Dr Johnson, by saying-Dr Johnson, Mr Potter.' Dr J. muttered out something like, 'Well, well.' Mrs M. thought that Dr J. did not hear, and again said, 'Mr Potter, Dr Johnson.' Dr Johnson in the same sort of tone repeated his mutterings. Mrs M. was irritated at Dr J.'s apparent neglect of what she said, and still supposing that he did not hear the name of Potter mentioned, again said 'Dr Johnson, Mr Potter the Translator of Eschylus." Dr J. then said ‘Well, Madam, and what then?' Dr Parr thought that Dr J. had, on the first entrance of Mr Potter, seen something in his manner, which he did not like. When Potter saw Dr Parr after this circumstance, he in the simplicity of his heart said to him—'Well, I have seen your friend, Dr Johnson,’— he described him as a very cold-hearted man, of heartless manners, and then himself told the story, and scious of Dr J.'s secret contempt for him. the Eschylus Potter established his fame and lost some of it by the Euripides. Potter once told the Doctor that, as he had begun, he should finish the three Tragedians. The Doctor replied that it was not very likely that one man should succeed in turning into English three Poets of such opposite characters, and he reminded him how carelessly he had done the Euripides. When a part of the Sophocles was shewn to him, Dr Parr, who had nothing to say in its praise, adroitly and wittily turned the conversation by saying that he liked no translation but from one Bishopric to another, as he once did, when he was pestered by a silly prattler about the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. "Come," said he, "Qui suspenderunt, suspendantur." seemed quite unconDr Parr said that by |