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ple: - The following instance is well attested. Coming home late one night, he found a poor woman lying in the street, so much exhausted that she could not walk; he took her upon his back, and carried her to his house, where he discovered that she was one of those wretched females, who had fallen into the lowest state of vice, poverty, and disease. Instead of harshly upbraiding her, he had her taken care of with all tenderness for a long time, at a considerable expense, till she was restored to health, and endeavoured to put her into a virtuous way of living."

He adds in a note:

"The circumstance, therefore, alluded to in MR COURTENAY'S POETICAL CHARACTER of him, is strictly true; my informer was MRS DESMOULINS, who lived many years in DR JOHNSON'S house."

Now the real story, to which BOSWELL and COURTENAY alluded, and which was unknown to CROKER, is the following:

"The above is a fact well known; the other is an instance which I believe to be equally true, as I had it from very respectable authority:

"Some years since the DOCTOR, coming up FLEET STREET, at about...

that shape, and it will be well worth buying.

82. By the plan laid down the work can proceed regularly, -the compositor will be full-handed.

33. You must return these papers to me, as I have no copy, and they will be guides. It has taken me two days to make out this Statement for you, but it is in fact good matter for a Prospectus of a striking kind.

34. If the plan laid down be nevertheless too extensive for you, then the only articles, which I should suggest to you to leave out, would be

Art. 12. SIR JOHN HAWKINS's Life of JOHNSON. 18. DR ROB. ANDERSON's Life.

*The next leaf is lost.

and in that case I must make what use I can of these Articles 12 and 18 in the way of Extracts:

35. By my taking so large a view of the subject, and setting it before you at once, you will see your way right well, and you will see too what a mess you might have fallen into, if you had not consulted some person as conversant with the different editions and the main points as I am.

E. H. BARKER, THETFORD, Oct. 12, 1834.

P. S. There is a Literary Life of DR JOHNSON by DR DRAKE, which must be sought up and examined.

P. S. I insist on it that the plan of the work, as sketched by me, is far preferable to that pursued by CROKER - Does it not strike you as a very strange proceeding that CROKER should incorporate into BOSWELL's Memoirs a whole volume of his Tour to the Hebrides, the latter published seven years previously to the Memoirs? Is it not still more strange that he should give in Boswell's text, (not in Notes,) large masses of matter from Mss. by Windham, Miss Reynolds, etc. etc. with interlocutory matter of his own, making a complete patch-work of Boswell's own style ?

His plan has the advantage of placing all the matter in continuity, but the impropriety of the proceeding and the offensive nature of it outweigh that advantage.

LII. Sir Wm Jones Porson. &c.

London, July 12, 1835. I accompanied DR HENRY LEE to WALTHAMSTOw. He observed that PARR considered LORD TEIGNMOUTH'S Life of SIR WM JONES to be full of lies; that at the time when he wrote the Prayer, Parr knew him to be a sceptic, and that he had intended to write a pamphlet about the religious opinions of Jones and Romilly. Dr Lee considers that they would have been stated to be like what he has attributed to Fox in his book. The book of Jones, for the publication of which the Dean of St. Asaph was tried, was a Dialogue between a Gentleman and a Farmer.

Mr Cogan said that PORSON said to him, "Bp Pearson would have been a greater man than Bentley, if he had not muddled his head with theology, at least, as great."

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At the Cyder-Cellar as he was drinking a glass of ale, he observed to a gentleman whom he had never met before, that the liquor was known to the ancients; the stranger said, Perhaps theirs was whiskey. This led to a conversation in which the stranger manifested profound learning and judgment, and excited PORSON's surprise and curiosity. He in vain tried to find him out.

Some one mentioned to PORSON WAKEFIELD's ability to repeat Homer, etc. and the latter said that he would undertake to get the Morning Chronicle by heart in a week.

DR BARNES wrote an article on THIRKELD'S the Monthly Repository.

memory

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MR DEWHURST, complimented about his memory, modestly said that he never forgot what he particularly wished to remember.

MR COGAN, referring to a conjecture of the REV. F. Howes, said that DOBREE in his Adversaria bad the same conjecture, KAI MHN. He considered MR HOWES to be a liberal minded man, and said that, if they met, they would quarrel about neither creeds nor cæsuras.

On the digamma he thinks that THIERSCH in his GREEK GRAMMAR has exhausted the subject: he is surprised that SPITZNER should reject the digamma. If HOMER uses 'ergon 100 times with the digamma, and 10 times without, the inference is that the latter are corruptions, or mere exceptions to a general rule. He observed that HOMER is not to be compared with HOMER, but with APOLLONIUS RHODIUS, etc.

LIII. Epitaph on Shakespeare.

"We shall conclude our notice of this interesting volume, by giving the best epitaph on Shakspeare that ever was written ;

by whom composed does not appear: we met with it in a very clever work, and it will form a good motto for Mr Collier's new edition.

IN THIS HERE place the bones of Shakspeare lie,
But THAT ERE form of his shall never die :

A SPEEDY END AND SOON this world may have,

But Shakespeare's name shall BLOOM beyond the grave.”

Notice of J. P. Collier's NEW FACTS regarding the Life of Shakspeare, in Gent. Mag. Sept. 1835. p. 289.

LIV. DR COGAN.

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London, Sept. 11, 1835. I drank tea with the REV. Jos. HUNTER, who said of DR COGAN that he had heard him tell the story about the old lady, who refused to receive him as physician in the place of her regular medical attendant, whom he had engaged to assist during his absence. Oh, said he, I have a wig and cane at home, I will step home and fetch them! In early life he was a Minister to a small congregation of English Presbyterians at Southampton, and he said of them that their souls were so few, that they were not worth saving Some time before MR HUNTER said that DR HARRINGTON got great credit by putting up the Inscription at Bath 'áriston mèn húdor, which was in fact an old Inscription at KNARES

BOROUGH.

!

LV. Gaisford - Burgess, &c.

LONDON, Sept. 21, 1835. At Mr DYCE's rooms I met a Mr JOHNSTONE OF JOHNSON, a Clergyman I think of DORSETSHIRE, who expressed a desire to call on me. He said that the conjecture on HORACE by BP. BURGESS at the end of DAWES about stagna lacusque he had found to be confirmed by the ALDINE edition. DYCE said that WYTTENBACH said of GAISFORD, that

he was the only ENGLISHMAN, whom he had seen, that could not talk Latin or French. GEO. BURGES had said the night before, that, when PORSON was asked his opinion about something, it was not safe to speak, as peradventure eavesdroppers might be present, and he seems to have alluded to ELMSLEY.

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LONDON, Sept. 25, 1835. The REV. ARTHUR JOHNSON, whom I met at MR DYCE's, said that RICHARD SHARP ESQ. told to him this story about TWEDDELL: He took him to a club one night, when he had come up fresh and blooming with University-laurels, and there he met some eminently intellectual men; he was foiled in arguing on every topic. When he came from the club, he said to SHARP with reference to it, that he was considering whether he ought to shut himself up and study hard for 10 years or throw himself into the Thames. So much mortified was his vanity at his defeat.

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LVII. Statues worn away by kissing.

Cicero speaks of a bronze statue of Hercules, which had the features worn away by the frequent osculations of the devout. Several instances of the same have occurred in modern times. The face of the figure of the Saviour, among the bronze bas-reliefs, which adorn the Casa Sancta at Loretto, has in this ways been quite kissed away. The foot of the famous statue of St Peter in the Vatican has lost much of its metal by the continual application of the lips and foreheads of votaries; and it has been found necessary to protect the foot of the statue of the Saviour by Michael, in the Minerva, from similar injury by a brass buskin." The Globe, Oct. 8, 1835.

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