The whole, &c. You will, probably, be able to assist me in expressing my idea, and arranging the parts. In the advertisement I intend to mention the letter to Lord Chesterfield, and perhaps the interview with the King, and the names of the correspondents in alphabetical order'. How should chronological order stand in the order of the members of my title? I had at first 'celebrated correspondents,' which I don't like. How would it do to say 'his conversations and epistolary correspondence with eminent (or celebrated) persons?' Shall it be 'different works,' and various particulars'? In short, it is difficult to decide.

Courtenay was with me this morning. What a mystery is his going on at all! Yet he looks well, talks well, dresses well, keeps his mare-in short is in all respects like a parliament man. Do you know that my bad spirits are returned upon me to a certain degree; and such is the sickly fondness for change of place, and imagination of relief, that I sometimes think you are happier by being in Dublin, than one is in this great metropolis, where hardly any man cares for another. I am persuaded I should relish your Irish dinners very much. I have at last got chambers in the Temple, in the very staircase where Johnson lived; and when my Magnum Opus is fairly launched, there shall I make a trial 3.

ANECDOTES

BY THE

REV. DR. THOMAS CAMPBELL1

MARCH 11th [1775]. It rained incessantly from the hour I awoke, that is, eight, till near twelve, that I went to bed, and how much further that night, I know not. This day I dined with the Club at the British Coffee [house]2, introduced by my old College friend Day. The President was a Scotch Member of Parliament, Mayne, and the prevalent interest Scottish. They did nothing but praise Macpherson's new history3, and decry Johnson and Burke. Day humorously gave money to the waiter, to bring him Johnson's Taxation no Tyranny. One of them desired him to save himself the expense, for that he should have it from him, and glad that he would take it away, as it was worse than nothing. Another said it was written in Johnson's manner, but worse than usual, for that there was nothing new in it.

From A Diary of a Visit to England in 1775. By an Irishman (The Reverend Dr. Thomas Campbell, with Notes by Samuel Raymond, M.A., Prothonotary of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Sydney: Waugh & Cox, 1854. For the question of the authenticity of this Diary see Life, ii. 338, n. 2. 'In a marginal note Mrs. Thrale says of Dr. Campbell: "He was a fine showy talking man, Johnson liked him of all things in a year or two." ward's Piozzi, 2nd ed., i. 99.

Hay

3The History of Great Britain from the Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover. 2 vols. quarto, £2. 2s. Gent. Mag. 1775, p. 192. Hume, writing to Strahan, described it as 6 one of the most wretched Productions that ever came from your Press.' Letters of Hume to Strahan, p. 308. For Macpherson,' wrote Horace Walpole, 'I stopped dead short in the first volume; never was such a heap of insignificant trash and lies.' Walpole's Letters, vi. 202.

14th. The first entire fair day, since I came to London. This day I called at Mr. Thrale's, where I was received with all respect by Mr. and Mrs. Thrale. She is a very learned lady', and joyns to the charms of her own sex, the manly understanding of ours. The immensity of the Brewery astonished me. One large house contains, and cannot contain more, only four store vessels, each of which contains fifteen hundred barrels; and in one of which one hundred persons have dined with ease. There are besides in other houses, thirty six of the same construction, but of one half the contents.

15th. A fair day. Dined with Archdeacon Congreve, to whom Dr. S. Johnson was schoolfellow at Litchfield 3. The Doctor had visited the Archdeacon yesterday, by which accident I learned this circumstance.

16th. A fair day. Dined with Mr. Thrale along with Dr. Johnson, and Baretti. Baretti is a plain sensible man, who seems to know the world well. He talked to me of the invitation given him by the College of Dublin, but said it (one hundred pounds a year, and rooms,) was not worth his acceptance; and if it had been, he said, in point of profit, still he would not have accepted it, for that now he could not live out of London. He had returned a few years ago to his own country, but he could not enjoy it; and he was obliged to return to London, to those connections he had been making for near thirty years past. He told me he had several families, with whom, both in town and country, he could go at any time, and spend a month: he is at this time on these terms at Mr. Thrale's, and he knows how to keep his ground. Talking as we were at tea of the magnitude of the beer vessels, he said there was one thing in Mr. Thrale's house, still more extraordinary; meaning his wife. She gulped

the pill very prettily-so much for Baretti'! Johnson, you are the very man Lord Chesterfield describes :-a Hottentot indeed, and tho' your abilities are respectable, you never can be respected yourself. He has the aspect of an Idiot, without the faintest ray of sense gleaming from any one feature-with the most awkward garb, and unpowdered grey wig, on one side only of his head-he is for ever dancing the devil's jig, and sometimes he makes the most driveling effort to whistle some thought in his absent paroxisms 3. He came up to me and took me by the hand, then sat down on a sofa, and mumbled out that he had heard two papers had appeared against him in the course of this week-one of which was-that he was to go to Ireland next summer in order to abuse the hospitality of that place also *. His awkwardness at table is just what Chesterfield described, and his roughness of manners kept pace with that. When Mrs. Thrale quoted something from Foster's Sermons, he flew in a passion and said that Foster was a man of mean ability, and of no original thinking 5. All which tho' I took to be most true, yet I held it not meet to have it so set down. He said that he looked upon Burke to be the author of Junius, and that though he would not take him contra mundum, yet he would take him against any man. Baretti was of the same mind,

I Mrs. Thrale thus ends some lines she wrote on Baretti :'While tenderness, temper and truth he despises,

And only the triumph of victory prizes,

Yet let us be candid, and where shall we find

So active, so able, so ardent a mind?

To your children more soft, more

polite with your servant, More firm in distress, or in friendship more fervent ? '

Hayward's Piozzi, 2nd ed. ii. 177. 2 It was not Johnson that Chesterfield described. Ante, i. 384, 451; Life, i. 267, n. 2.

4 He was charged with having abused the hospitality of the Scotch in his Journey to the Western Islands just published. Life, ii. 305. Of Ireland he said:-'It is the last place where I should wish to travel

Yet he had a kindness for the Irish nation.' Ib. iii. 410.

5 Mr. Beauclerk one day repeated to Dr. Johnson Pope's lines, "Let modest Foster, if he will, excel

Ten metropolitans in preaching well";

then asked the Doctor, "Why did Pope say this?" JOHNSON. "Sir, he hoped it would vex somebody."" Ib. iv. 9.

66

"JOHNSON. "I should have be

tho'

tho' he mentioned a fact which made against the opinion, which was that a paper having appeared against Junius, on this day, a Junius came out in answer to that the very next, when (every body knew) Burke was in Yorkshire. But all the Juniuses were evidently not written by the same hand. Burke's brother is a good writer, tho' nothing like Edward [sic]. The Doctor as he drinks no wine, retired soon after dinner, and Baretti, who I see is a sort of literary toad-eater to Johnson, told me that he was a man nowise affected by praise or dispraise', and that the journey to the Hebrides would never have been published but for himself. The Doctor however returned again, and with all the fond anxiety of an author, I saw him cast out all his nets to know the sense of the town about his last pamphlet, Taxation no Tyranny, which he said did not sell 2. Mr. Thrale told him such and such members of both houses admired it, and why did you not tell me this, quoth Johnson3. Thrale asked him what Sir Joshua Reynolds said of it. Sir Joshua, quoth the Doctor, has not read it. I suppose, quoth Thrale, he has been very busy of late; no, says the Doctor, but I never look at his pictures, so he won't read my writings. Was this like a man insensible to glory! Thrale then asked him if he had got Miss Reynolds' opinion, for she it seems is a politician; as to that, quoth the Doctor, it is no great matter, for she could not tell after she had read it, on which side of the question Mr. Burke's speech was. N.B. We had a great deal of conversation about Archdeacon Congreve, who was his class-fellow at Litchfield School. He talked of him as a man of great coldness of mind, who could be two years in London without letting him know it till a few weeks ago, and then apologising by saying, that he did not know where to enquire for him. This plainly raised his

lieved Burke to be Junius, because I know no man but Burke who is capable of writing these letters; but Burke spontaneously denied it to me." Life, iii. 376. See ante, i. 172.

'He loved praise when it was brought to him; but was too proud to seek for it. He was somewhat

susceptible of flattery.' Life, iv. 427.

2 On April 2, 'his Taxation no Tyranny being mentioned, he said, "I think I have not been attacked enough for it." Ib. ii. 335. Six days later he wrote:-'The patriots pelt me with answers.' Letters, i. 314. 3 See Life, iv. 32.

4

Johnson wrote to Dr. Taylor on Dec. 22, 1774:-'How long Charles indignation

F