LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. COMPREHENDING AN ACCOUNT of his STUDIES, IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER; A SERIES OF HIS EPISTOLARY CORRESPONDENCE AND CONVERSATIONS WITH MANY EMINENT PERSONS; AND Various Original Pieces of his Composition, NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED: THE WHOLE EXHIBITING A VIEW OF LITERATURE AND LITERARY PRINTED FOR J. RICHARDSON AND CO.; G. OFFOR; J. SHARPE AND 1821. THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL. D. ON Saturday, June 2, I set out for Scotland, and had promised to pay a visit, in my way, as I. sometimes did, at Southill, in Bedfordshire, at the hospitable mansion of 'Squire Dilly, the elder brother of my worthy friends, the booksellers in the Poultry. Dr. Johnson agreed to be of the party this year, with Mr. Charles Dilly and me, and to go and see Lord Bute's seat at Luton Hoe. He talked little to us in the carriage, being chiefly occupied in reading Dr. Watson's second volume of "Chemical Essays," which he liked very well, and his own "Prince of Abyssinia," on which he seemed to be intensely fixed; having told us, that he had not looked at it since it was first 1 Now Bishop of Llandaff, one of the poorest Bishopricks in this Kingdom. His Lordship has written with much zeal to shew the propriety of equalizing the revenues of Bishops. He has informed us that he has burnt all his Chemical papers. The friends of our excellent constitution, now assailed on every side by innovators and levellers, would have less regretted the suppression of some of his Lordship's other writings. VOL. V. B |