royalty at home, and propagating here the dangerous doctrine of resistance; the distance of America may secure its inhabitants from your arts, though active: but I will unfold to you the gay profpects of futurity. This people, now so innocent and harınless, shall draw the sword against their mother country, and bathe its point in the blood of their benefactors: this people, now contented with a little, shall then refuse to spare, what they themselves confess they could not miss; and these men, now so honest and so grateful, shall, in return for peace and for protection, see their vile agents in the house of parliament, there to fow the feeds of sedition, and propagate confufion, perplexity, and pain. Be not dispirited then at the contemplation of their present happy state: I promise you that anarchy, poverty, and death shall, by my care, be carried even across the spacious Atlantic, and settle in America itself, the fure consequences of our beloved whiggism." : This I thought a thing so very particular, that I begged his leave to write it down directly, before any thing could intervene that might make me forget the force of the expressions: a trick, which I have however seen played on common occafions, of fitting steadily down at the other end of the room to write at the moment what should be faid in company, either by Dr. Johnson or to him, I never practised myself, nor approved of in another. There is something so ill-bred, and so inclining to treachery in this conduct, that were it commonly adopted, all confidence would foon be exiled from fociety, and a conversation assembly-room would become tremendous as a court of justice. A fet of acquaintance joined in familiar chat may say a thousand things, which (as the phrafe is) pass well enough at the time, though they cannot stand the test of critical examination; and as all talk beyond that which is necessary to the purposes of actual business is a kind of game, there will be ever found ways of playing fairly or unfairly at it, which diftinguish the gentleman from the juggler. Dr. Johnson, as well as many of my acquaintance, knew that I kept a common-place book; and he one day said to me good-humouredly, that he would give me something to write in my repository. " I warrant (faid he) there is a great deal about me in it: you shall have at least one thing worth your pains; so if you will get the pen and ink, I will repeat to you Anacreon's Dove directly; but tell at the fame time, that as I never was struck with any thing in the Greek language till I read that, so I never read any thing in the fame language since, that pleased me as much. I hope my translation (continued he) is not worse than that of Frank Fawkes." Seeing me disposed to laugh, "Nay nay (faid he), Frank Fawkes has done them very finely." 1 LOVELY courier of the sky, "Grac'd with all that charms the heart, 66 Blushing nature, smiling art. "Venus, courted by an ode, "On the bard her Dove bestow'd. "Vested with a master's right "Now my better lot bestows "From his fingers snatch his bread, Then with luscious plenty gay, "Round his chamber dance and play; "Or from wine, as courage springs, "O'er his face extend my wings; "And when feast and frolic tire, Drop afleep upon his lyre. "This is all, be quick and go, "More than all thou canst not know; "Let me now my pinions ply, When I had finished, "But you must remember to add (fays Mr. Johnson) that though these verses were planned, and even begun, when I was fixteen years old, I never could find time to make an end of them before I was fixty-eight." This facility of writing, and this dilatoriness ever to write, Mr. Johnson always retained, from the days that he lay a bed |