Life of Johnson
Chapter 421 : _Superficiality of the French writers_.(Vol. i, p. 454.) Gibbon, writing of the year 1

_Superficiality of the French writers_.

(Vol. i, p. 454.)

Gibbon, writing of the year 1759, says:--

'In France, to which my ideas [in the _Essay on the Study of Literature_]

were confined, the learning and language of Greece and Rome were neglected by a philosophic age. The guardian of those studies, the Academy of Inscriptions, was degraded to the lowest rank among the three royal societies of Paris; the new appellation of _Erudits_ was contemptuously applied to the successors of Lipsius and Casaubon; and I was provoked to hear (see M. d'Alembert, _Discours preliminaire a l'Encyclopedie_) that the exercise of the memory, their sole merit, had been superseded by the n.o.bler faculties of the imagination and the judgment.'

--_Memoirs of Edward Gibbon_, ed. 1827, i. 104.

_A Synod of Cooks_.

(Vol. i, p. 470.)

When Johnson spoke of 'a Synod of Cooks' he was, I conjecture, thinking of Milton's 'Synod of G.o.ds,' in Beelzebub's speech in Paradise Lost, book ii. line 391.

_Johnson and Bishop Percy_.

(Vol. i, p. 486.)

Bishop Percy in a letter to Boswell says: 'When in 1756 or 1757 I became acquainted with Johnson, he told me he had lived twenty years in London, but not very happily.'

--Nichols's _Literary History_, vii. 307.

_Barclay's Answer to Kenrick's Review of Johnson's 'Shakespeare.'_

(Vol. i, p. 498.)

Neither in the British Museum nor in the Bodleian have I been able to find a copy of this book. _A Defence of Mr. Kenricks Review_, 1766, does not seem to contain any reply to such a work as Barclay's.

_Mrs. Piozzi's 'Collection of Johnson s Letters.'_

(Vol. ii, p. 43, n. 2.)

MR. BOSWELL TO BISHOP PERCY.

'Feb. 9, 1788.

'I am ashamed that I have yet seven years to write of his life. ... Mrs.

(Thrale) Piozzi's Collection of his letters will be out soon. ... I saw a sheet at the printing-house yesterday... It is wonderful what avidity there still is for everything relative to Johnson. I dined at Mr.

Malone's on Wednesday with Mr. W. G. Hamilton, Mr. Flood, Mr. Windham, Mr.

Courtenay, &c.; and Mr. Hamilton observed very well what a proof it was of Johnson's merit that we had been talking of him all the afternoon.'

--Nichols's _Literary History_, vii. 309.

_Johnson on romantic virtue_.

(Vol. ii, P. 76.)

'Dr. Johnson used to advise his friends to be upon their guard against romantic virtue, as being founded upon no settled principle. "A plank,"

said he, "that is tilted up at one end must of course fall down on the other."

'--William Seward, _Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons_, ii. 461.'

_'Old' Baxter on toleration_.

(Vol. ii, p. 253.)

The Rev. John Hamilton Davies, B.A., F.R.H.S., Rector of St. Nicholas's, Worcester, and author of _The Life of Richard Baxter of Kidderminster, Preacher and Prisoner_ (London, Kent & Co., 1887), kindly informs me, in answer to my inquiries, that he believes that Johnson may allude to the following pa.s.sage in the fourth chapter of Baxter's Reformed Pastor:--

'I think the Magistrate should be the hedge of the Church. I am against the two extremes of universal license and persecuting tyranny. The Magistrate must be allowed the use of his reason, to know the cause, and follow his own judgment, not punish men against it. I am the less sorry that the Magistrate doth so little interpose.'

_England barren in good historians_.

(Vol. ii, p. 236, n. 2.)

Gibbon, writing of the year 1759, says:

'The old reproach that no British altars had been raised to the muse of history was recently disproved by the first performances of Robertson and Hume, the histories of Scotland and of the Stuarts.'

--_Memoirs of Edward Gibbon_, ed. 1827, i. 103.

_An instance of Scotch nationality_.

(Vol. ii, p. 307.)

Lord Camden, when pressed by Dr. Berkeley (the Bishop's son) to appoint a Scotchman to some office, replied: 'I have many years ago sworn that I never will introduce a Scotchman into any office; for if you introduce one he will contrive some way or other to introduce forty more cousins or friends.'

--G. M. _Berkeley's Poems_, p. ccclxxi.

_Mortality in the Foundling Hospital of London_.

(Vol. ii, p. 398.)

'From March 25, 1741, to December 31, 1759, the number of children received into the Foundling Hospital is 14,994, of which have died to December 31, 1759, 8,465.'--_A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain_, ed. 1769, vol. ii, p. 121. A great many of these died, no doubt, after they had left the Hospital.