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This 'keen atmosphere of wholesome severities' reappears by the way in Mason's continuation of Gray's Ode to Vicissitude:

'That breathes the keen yet wholesome air

Of rugged penury.'

:

And later in the first book of Wordsworth's Excursion (ed. 1857, vi. 29) :— 'The keen, the wholesome air of poverty.'

Johnson said of Warburton: 'His abilities gave him an haughty confidence, which he disdained to conceal or mollify; and his impatience of opposition disposed him to treat his adversaries with such contemptuous superiority as made his readers commonly his enemies, and excited against the advocate the wishes of some who favoured the cause. He seems to have adopted the Roman Emperour's determination, oderint dum metuant; he used no allurements of gentle language, but wished to compel rather than persuade.' Johnson's Works, viii. 288. See ante, ii. 36, and iv. 46.

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Johnson's use of the word big, where he says 'I wish thy books were twice as big,' enables me to explain a passage in The Life of Johnson (ante, iii. 348) which had long puzzled me. Boswell there represents him as saying:-'A man who loses at play, or who runs out his fortune at court, makes his estate less, in hopes of making it bigger.' Boswell adds in a parenthesis :-'I am sure of this word, which was often used by him.' He had been criticised by a writer in the Gent. Mag. 1785, p. 968, who quoting from the text the words 'a big book,' says :— -' Mr. Boswell has made his friend (as in a few other passages) guilty of a Scotticism. An Englishman reads and writes a large book, and wears a great (not a big or bag) coat.' When Boswell came to publish The Life of Johnson, he took the opportunity to justify himself, though he did not care to refer directly to his anonymous critic. This explanation I discovered too late to insert in the text.

A JOURNEY

A

JOURNEY

INTO

NORTH WALES,

IN

THE YEAR 1774'.

TUESDAY, JULY 5.

WE left Streatham II a.m.
Price of four horses 2s. a mile.

A

Boswell, briefly mentioning the tour which Johnson made to Wales in the year 1774 with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, says :-'I do not find that he kept any journal or notes of what he saw there' (ante, ii. 285). journal had been kept however, which in 1816 was edited and published by Mr. Duppa. Mrs. Piozzi, writing in October of that year, says that three years earlier she had been shewn the MS. by a Mr. White, and that it was genuine. The gentleman who possessed it seemed shy of letting me read the whole, and did not, as it appeared, like being asked how it came into his hands.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 177. According to Mr. Croker (Croker's Boswell, p. 415) 'it was preserved by Johnson's servant, Barber. How it escaped Boswell's research is not known.' A

fragment of Johnson's Annals, also preserved by Barber, had in like manner never been seen by Boswell; ante, i. 35, note 1. The editor of these Annals says (Preface, p. v) :— 'Francis Barber, unwilling that all the MSS. of his illustrious master should be utterly lost, preserved these relicks from the flames. By purchase from Barber's widow they came into the possession of the editor.' It seems likely that Barber was afraid to own what he had done; though as he was the residuary legatee he was safe from all consequences, unless the executors of the will who were to hold the residue of the estate in trust for him had chosen to proceed against him. Mr. Duppa in editing this Journal received assistance from Mrs. Piozzi, 'who,' he says (Preface, p. xi),

explained JULY 6.

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Dr. Darwin's3. I went again to Mrs. Aston's. She was sorry to part.

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many facts which could not otherwise have been understood.' A passage in one of her letters dated Bath, Oct. 11, 1816, shows how unfriendly were the relations between her and her eldest daughter, Johnson's Queeny, who had married Admiral Lord Keith. I am sadly afraid,' she writes, of Lady K.'s being displeased, and fancying I promoted this publication. Could I have caught her for a quarter-of-an-hour, I should have proved my innocence, and might have shown her Duppa's letter; but she left neither note, card, nor message, and when my servant ran to all the inns in chase of her, he learned that she had left the White Hart at twelve o'clock. Vexatious! but it can't be helped. I hope the pretty little girl my people saw with her will pay her more tender attention.' Three days later she wrote:-'Johnson's Diary is selling rapidly, though the contents are bien maigre, I must confess. Mr. Duppa has politely suppressed some sarcastic expressions about my

family, the Cottons, whom we visited at Combermere, and at Lleweney.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 176-9. Mr. Croker in 1835 was able to make ‘a collation of the original MS., which has supplied many corrections and some omissions in Mr. Duppa's text.' Mr. Croker's text I have generally followed.

'When I went with Johnson to Lichfield, and came down to breakfast at the inn, my dress did not please him, and he made me alter it entirely before he would stir a step with us about the town, saying most satirical things concerning the appearance I made in a riding-habit ; and adding, "Tis very strange that such eyes as yours cannot discern propriety of dress; if I had a sight only half as good, I think I should see to the centre."' Piozzi's Anec. p. 288. 2 For Mrs. (Miss) Porter, Mrs. (Miss) Aston, Mr. Green, Mrs. Cobb, Mr. (Peter) Garrick, Miss Seward, and Dr. Taylor, see ante, ii. 462-473. 3 Dr. Erasmus Darwin, the physiologist and poet, grandfather of JULY 9.

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