Horace Walpole, on Dec. 27, 1775, speaks of these verses as if they were fresh. They are an answer,' he writes, 'to a gross brutality of Dr. Johnson, to which a properer answer would have been to fling a glass of wine in his face. I have no patience with an unfortunate monster trusting to his helpless deformity for indemnity for any impertinence that his arrogance suggests, and who thinks that what he has read is an excuse for everything he says.' Horace Walpole's Letters, vi. 302. It is strange that Walpole should be so utterly ignorant of Johnson's courage and bodily strength. The date of Walpole's letter makes me suspect that Richard Burke dated his Jan. 6, 1775 (he should have written 1776), and that the blunder of a copyist has changed 1775 into 1773.

APPENDIX B.
(Page 238.)

Had Boswell continued the quotation from Priestley's Illustrations of Philosophical Necessity he would have shown that though Priestley could not hate the rioters, he could very easily prosecute them. He

says:

'If as a Necessarian I cease to blame men for their vices in the ultimate sense of the word, though, in the common and proper sense of it, I continue to do as much as other persons (for how necessarily soever they act, they are VOL. IV.

Ff

influenced

influenced by a base and mischievous disposition of mind, against which I must guard myself and others in proportion as I love myself and others),' &c. Priestley's Works, iii. 508.

Of his interview with Johnson, Priestley, in his Appeal to the Public, part ii, published in 1792 (Works, xix. 502), thus writes, answering 'the impudent falsehood that when I was at Oxford Dr. Johnson left a company on my being introduced to it':

'In fact we never were at Oxford at the same time, and the only interview I ever had with him was at Mr. Paradise's, where we dined together at his own request. He was particularly civil to me, and promised to call upon me the next time he should go through Birmingham. He behaved with the same civility to Dr. Price, when they supped together at Dr. Adams's at Oxford. Several circumstances show that Dr. Johnson had not so much of bigotry at the decline of life as had distinguished him before, on which account it is well known to all our common acquaintance, that I declined all their pressing solicitations to be introduced to him.'

Priestley expresses himself ill, but his meaning can be made out. Parr answered Boswell in the March number of the Gent. Mag. for 1795, p. 179. But the evidence that he brings is rendered needless by Priestley's positive statement. May peace henceforth fall on 'Priestley's injured name.' (Mrs. Barbauld's Poems, ii. 243.)

When Boswell asserts that Johnson 'was particularly resolute in not giving countenance to men whose writings he considered as pernicious to society,' he forgets that that very summer of 1783 he had been willing to dine at Wilkes's house (ante, p. 224, note 2).

Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, ed. 1833, iii. 157) wrote to Dr. Price in 1784:— 'It is said that scarce anybody but yourself and Dr. Priestley possesses the art of knowing how to differ decently.' Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 304), describing in 1789 the honestest members of the French Assembly, calls them a set of wild visionaries, like our Dr. Price, who gravely debate, and dream about the establishment of a pure and perfect democracy of five and twenty millions, the virtues of the golden age, and the primitive rights and equality of mankind.' Admiration of Price made Samuel Rogers, when a boy, wish to be a preacher. 'I thought there was nothing on earth so grand as to figure in a pulpit. Dr. Price lived much in the society of Lord Lansdowne [Earl of Shelburne] and other people of rank; and his manners were extremely polished. In the pulpit he was great indeed.' Rogers's Table Talk, p. 3.

The full title of the tract mentioned by Boswell is, A small WholeLength of Dr. Priestley from his Printed Works. It was published in 1792, and is a very poor piece of writing.

Johnson had refused to meet the Abbé Raynal, the author of the Histoire Philosophique et Politique du Commerce des Deux Indes, when

he

he was over in England in 1777. Mrs. Chapone, writing to Mrs. Carter on June 15 of that year, says :

'I suppose you have heard a great deal of the Abbé Raynal, who is in London. I fancy you would have served him as Dr. Johnson did, to whom when Mrs. Vesey introduced him, he turned from him, and said he had read his book, and would have nothing to say to him.' Mrs. Chapone's Posthumous Works, i. 172.

See Walpole's Letters, v. 421, and vi. 444. His book was burnt by the common hangman in Paris. Carlyle's French Revolution, ed.

1857, i. 45.

APPENDIX C.

(Page 253.)

Hawkins gives the two following notes:

'DEAR SIR,

'As Mr. Ryland was talking with me of old friends and past times, we warmed ourselves into a wish, that all who remained of the club should meet and dine at the house which once was Horseman's, in Ivy-lane. I have undertaken to solicit you, and therefore desire you to tell on what day next week you can conveniently meet your old friends.

'In perambulating Ivy-lane, Mr. Ryland found neither our landlord Horseman, nor his successor. The old house is shut up, and he liked not the appearance of any near it; he therefore bespoke our dinner at the Queen's Arms, in St. Paul's Church-yard, where, at half an hour after three, your company will be desired to-day by those who remain of our former society.

'Dec. 3.'

'Your humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

Four met-Johnson, Hawkins, Ryland, and Payne (ante, i. 243).

'We dined,' Hawkins continues, 'and in the evening regaled with coffee. At ten we broke up, much to the regret of Johnson, who proposed staying;

but finding us inclined to separate, he left us with a sigh that seemed to come
from his heart, lamenting that he was retiring to solitude and cheerless
meditation.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 562.

Hawkins is mistaken in saying that they had a second meeting at a
tavern at the end of a month; for Johnson, on March 10, 1784, wrote:-
'I have been confined from the fourteenth of December, and know not
when I shall get out.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 351.

He thus describes these meetings:-

'Dec. 13. I dined about a fortnight ago with three old friends; we had
not met together for thirty years, and one of us thought the other grown
very old. In the thirty years two of our set have died; our meeting may be
supposed to be somewhat tender.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 339.

'Jan. 12, 1784. I had the same old friends to dine with me on Wednes-
day, and may say that since I lost sight of you I have had one pleasant day.'
Ib. p. 346.

'April 15, 1784. Yesterday I had the pleasure of giving another dinner
to the remainder of the old club. We used to meet weekly, about the year
fifty, and we were as cheerful as in former times; only I could not make
quite so much noise, for since the paralytick affliction my voice is sometimes
weak.' Ib. p. 361.

'April 19, 1784. The people whom I mentioned in my letter are the
remnant of a little club that used to meet in Ivy-lane about three and thirty
years ago, out of which we have lost Hawkesworth and Dyer; the rest are
yet on this side the grave. Our meetings now are serious, and I think on
all parts tender.' Ib. 363.

See ante, i. 191, note 5.

APPENDIX D.

(Page 254.)

It is likely that Sir Joshua Reynolds refused to join the Essex Head
Club because he did not wish to meet Barry. Not long before this
time he had censured Barry's delay in entering upon his duties as
Professor of painting.

'Barry answered :-"If I had no more to do in the composition of my
lectures than to produce such poor flimsy stuff as your discourses, I should
soon have done my work, and be prepared to read." It is said this speech
was delivered with his fist clenched, in a menacing posture.' (Northcote's
Life of Reynolds, ii. 146.)

The

The Hon. Daines Barrington was the author of an Essay on the
Migration of Birds (ante, ii. 248) and of Observations on the Statutes
(ante, iii. 314). Horace Walpole wrote on Nov. 24, 1780 (Letters, vii.
464):-

'I am sorry for the Dean of Exeter; if he dies I conclude the leaden mace
of the Antiquarian Society will be given to Judge Barrington.' (He was
'second Justice of Chester.')

For Dr. Brocklesby see ante, pp. 176, 230, 338, 400.

Of Mr. John Nichols, Murphy says that 'his attachment to Dr.
Johnson was unwearied.' Life of Johnson, p. 66. He was the printer
of The Lives of the Poets (ante, p. 36), and the author of Biographical
and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer, Printer, 'the last of the
learned printers,' whose apprentice he had been (ante, p. 369). Horace
Walpole (Letters, viii. 259) says:-

'I scarce ever saw a book so correct as Mr. Nichols's Life of Mr. Bowyer.
I wish it deserved the pains he has bestowed on it every way, and that he
would not dub so many men great. I have known several of his heroes, who
were very little men.'

The Life of Bowyer being recast and enlarged was republished under
the title of Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century. From 1778
till his death in 1826 the Gentleman's Magazine was in great measure
in his hands. Southey, writing in 1804, says :—

'I have begun to take in here at Keswick the Gentleman's Magazine, alias
the Oldwomania, to enlighten a Portuguese student among the mountains;
it does amuse me by its exquisite inanity, and the glorious and intense
stupidity of its correspondents; it is, in truth, a disgrace to the age and the
country.' Southey's Life and Correspondence, ii. 281.

Mr. William Cooke, 'commonly called Conversation Cooke,' wrote
Lives of Macklin and Foote. Forster's Essays, ii. 312, and Gent. Mag.
1824, p. 374. Mr. Richard Paul Joddrel, or Jodrell, was the author of
The Persian Heroine, a Tragedy, which, in Baker's Biog. Dram. i. 400, is
wrongly assigned to Sir R. P. Jodrell, M.D. Nichols's Lit. Anec. ix. 2.
For Mr. Paradise see ante, p. 364, note 2.

Dr. Horsley was the controversialist, later on Bishop of St. David's
and next of Rochester. Gibbon makes splendid mention of him
(Misc. Works, i. 232) when he tells how 'Dr. Priestley's Socinian
shield has repeatedly been pierced by the mighty spear of Horsley.'
Windham, however, in his Diary in one place (p. 125) speaks of him
as having his thoughts intent wholly on prospects of Church pre-
ferment; and in another place (p. 275) says that 'he often lays down
with great confidence what turns out afterwards to be wrong.' In the

House