Mrs. Piozzi's Collection of Johnson's Letters.' (Vol. ii. p. 49, n. 1.) 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. 87.) '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. 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 passage 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 England barren in good historians. (Vol. ii. p. 271, 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. 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 will never 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. '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. Mr. Planta. (Vol. ii. p. 457, n. 4.) The reference is no doubt to Mr. Joseph Planta, Assistant-Librarian of the British Museum 1773, Principal Librarian 1799-1827. See Edwards's Lives of the Founders of the British Museum, pp. 517 sqq.; and Nichols's Illustrations of Literature, vol. vii. pp. 677–8. 'Unitarian.' (Vol. ii. p. 468, n. 1.) John Locke in his Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity Christianity quotes from Mr. Edwards whom he answers:-'This gentleman and his fellows are resolved to be unitarians: they are for one article of faith as well as One person in the Godhead.'Locke's Works, ed. 1824, vi. 200. The proposed Riding School for Oxford. (Vol. ii. p. 485.) My friend, Mr. C. E. Doble, has pointed out to me the following passage in Collectanea, First Series, edited by Mr. C. R. L. Fletcher, Fellow of All Souls College, and printed for the Oxford Historical Society, Oxford, 1885. 'The Advertisement to Religion and Policy, by Edward Earl of Clarendon, runs as follows: "Henry Viscount Cornbury, who was called up to the House of Peers by the title of Lord Hyde, in the lifetime of his father, Henry Earl of Rochester, by a codicil to his will, dated Aug. 10, 1751, left divers MSS. of his great grandfather, Edward Earl of Clarendon, to Trustees, with a direction that the money to arise from the sale or publication thereof, should be employed as a beginning of a fund for supporting a Manage or Academy for riding and other useful exercises in Oxford; a plan of this sort having been also recommended by Lord Clarendon in his Dialogue on Education. Lord Cornbury dying before his father, this bequest did not take effect. But Catharine, one of the daughters of Henry Earl of Rochester, and late Duchess Dowager of Queensbury, whose property these MSS. became, afterwards by deed gave them, together with all the monies which had arisen or might arise from the sale or publication of them, to [three Trustees] upon trust for the like purposes as those expressed by Lord Hyde in his codicil." 'The preface to the Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, written by himself, has words to the same effect. (See also Notes and Queries, Ser. I. x. 185, and xi. 32.) 'From a letter in Notes and Queries, Ser. II. x. p. 74, it appears that in 1860 the available sum, in the hands of the Trustees of the Clarendon Bequest, amounted to £10,000. The University no longer needed a riding-school, and the claims of Physical Science were urgent; and in 1872 the announcement was made, that by the liberality of the Clarendon Trustees an additional wing had VI.-4 been been added to the University Museum, containing the lecturerooms and laboratories of the department of Experimental Philosophy.' Vol. i. p. 305. Boswell and Mrs. Rudd. (Vol. ii. p. 515, n. 1.) In Mr. Alfred Morrison's Collection of Autographs, vol. i. p. 103, mention is made among Boswell's autographs of 'verses entitled Lurgan Clanbrassil, a supposed Irish song.' I have learnt, through Mr. Morrison's kindness, that 'on the document itself there is the following memorandum, signed, so far as can be made out, H. W. R. :— ""The enclosed song was written and composed by James Boswell, the biographer of Johnson, in commemoration of a tour he made with Mrs. Rudd whilst she was under his protection, for living with whom he displeased his father so much that he threatened to disinherit him. "Mrs. Rudd had lived with one of the Perreaus, who were tried and executed for forgery. She was tried at the same time and acquitted. "My father having heard that Boswell used to sing this song at the Home Circuit, requested it of him, and he wrote it and gave it him. H. W. R." "Feb. 1828."' Christopher Smart. (Vol. ii. p. 520, n. 2.) Mr. Robert Browning, in his Parleyings with Christopher Smart, under the similitude of 'some huge house,' thus describes the general run of that unfortunate poet's verse : 'All showed the Golden Mean without a hint Of brave extravagance that breaks the rule. The master of the mansion was no fool Assuredly, no genius just as sure! Safe mediocrity had scorned the lure. Of now too much and now too little cost, Mr. Browning Mr. Browning goes on to liken one solitary poem to a Chapel in the house, in which is found— 'from floor to roof one evidence Of how far earth may rival heaven.' Parleyings with certain People of Importance in their Day (pp. 80-82), London, 1887. Johnson's discussion on baptism with Mr. Lloyd, the Birmingham Quaker. (Vol. ii. p. 524.) In Farm and its Inhabitants (ante, p. 559), a further account is given of the controversy between Johnson and Mr. Lloyd the Quaker, on the subject of Barclay's Apology. 'Tradition states that, losing his temper, Dr. Johnson threw the volume on the floor, and put his foot on it, in denunciation of its statements. The identical volume is now in the possession of G. B. Lloyd, of Edgbaston Grove. 'At the dinner table he continued the debate in such angry tones, and struck the table so violently that the children were frightened, and desired to escape. 'The next morning Dr. Johnson went to the bank [Mr. Lloyd was a banker] and by way of apology called out in his stentorian. voice, "I say, Lloyd, I'm the best theologian, but you are the best Christian." p. 41. It could not have been 'the next morning' that Johnson went to the bank, for he left for Lichfield on the evening of the day of the controversy (ante, ii. 528). He must have gone in the afternoon, while Boswell was away seeing Mr. Boulton's great works at Soho (ib. p. 525). Mr. G. B. Lloyd, the great-grandson of Johnson's host, in a letten written this summer (1886), says: 'Having spent much of my boyhood with my grandfather in the old house, I have heard him tell the story of the stamping on the broad volume.' Boswell mentions (ib. p. 524) that Mr. and Mrs. Lloyd, like their Majesties, had been blessed with a numerous family of fine children, their numbers being exactly the same.' The author of Farm and its Inhabitants says (p. 46): 'There is a tradition that when Sampson Lloyd's wife used to feel depressed by the care of such a large family (they had sixteen children) he would say to her, |