windows, as I thought, alone, and turning my head saw Sally dancing. I went on without notice, and had finished almost without perceiving that any time had elapsed. This close attention I have seldom in my whole life obtained.

In the upper-school, I first began to point my exercise, which we made noon's business. Of the method I have not so distinct

a remembrance as of the foregoing system. On Thursday morning we had a lesson, as on other mornings. On Thursday afternoon, and on Saturday morning, we commonly made examples to the Syntax.

We were soon raised from Æsop to Phædrus, and then said our repetition on Friday afternoon to Hunter. I remember the fable of the wolf and lamb, to my draught—that I may drink. At what time we began Phædrus, I know not. It was the only book which we learned to the end. In the latter part thirty lines were expected for a lesson. What reconciles masters to long lessons is the pleasure of tasking.

Helvicus was very difficult: the dialogue Vestitus, Hawkins directed us to omit, as being one of the hardest in the book. AsI remember, there was another upon food, and another upon fruits, which we began, and were ordered not to pursue. In the dialogue of Fruits, we perceived that Holbrook did not know the meaning of Uva Crispa1. That lesson gave us great trouble. I observed that we learned Helvicus a long time with very little progress. We learned it in the afternoon on Monday and Wednesday.

Gladiolus Scriptorius.-A little lapse', we quitted it. I got an English Erasmus.

In Phædrus we tried to use the interpretation, but never attempted the notes. Nor do I remember that the interpreta

tion helped us.

In Phædrus we were sent up twice to the upper master to be punished. The second time we complained that we could not get the passage. Being told that we should ask, we informed him that we had asked, and that the assistant would not tell us.

I In the British Museum there are some of Helvicus's works, but not, I think, this one. Neither is there a

copy of Gladiolus Scriptorius.

2

This seems an unusual expression.

ANECDOTES

OF THE LATE

SAMUEL JOHNSON

LL.D.

DURING THE LAST TWENTY YEARS OF HIS LIFE

BY

HESTHER LYNCH PIOZZI

[The Fourth Edition. LONDON: Printed for T. Cadell in the Strand. MDCCLXXXVI]

PIOZZI'S ANECDOTES

[MRS. PIOZZI writing in 1815, says:-'At Rome we received letters saying the book was bought with such avidity, that Cadell hadnot one copy left when the King sent for it at ten o'clock at night, and he was forced to beg one from a friend to supply his Majesty's impatience, who sate up all night reading it. I received £300, a sum unexampled in those days for so small a volume.' Hayward's Piozzi, ed. 1861, ii. 305.

Horace Walpole wrote on March 28, 1786 (Letters, ix. 46) :— 'Two days ago appeared Madame Piozzi's Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. I am lamentably disappointed-in her, I mean; not in him. I had conceived a favourable opinion of her capacity. But this new book is wretched; a high-varnished preface to a heap of rubbish, in a very vulgar style, and too void of method even for such a farrago.' On April 30 he wrote:'As she must have heard that the whole first impression was sold the first day, no doubt she expects, on her landing, to be received like the Governor of Gibraltar [after the siege], and to find the road strewed with branches of palm. She, and Boswell, and their Hero are the joke of the public.' Ib. p. 49. According to the Gentleman's Magazine for March, 1786, p. 244-On the third morning after the book was published not a copy of it could be obtained.' At least four editions were issued in the first year of publication.

Hannah More wrote in April, 1786 :— The Bozzi &c. subjects are not yet exhausted though everybody seems heartily sick of them. Everybody, however, conspires not to let them drop. That, and the Cagliostro and the Cardinal's Necklace spoil all conversation; and destroyed a very good evening at Mr. Pepys's last night.' H. More's Memoirs, ii. 16. For the Cagliostro and the Cardinal's Necklace sce Carlyle's Essays.

Malone says of these Anecdotes:-'On the whole the public is indebted to her for her lively, though very inaccurate and artful account of Dr. Johnson.' Prior's Malone, p. 364.]

PREFACE

I HAVE Somewhere heard or read, that the Preface before a book, like the portico before a house, should be contrived, so as to catch, but not detain the attention of those who desire admission to the family within, or leave to look over the collection of pictures made by one whose opportunities of obtaining them we know to have been not unfrequent. I wish not to keep my readers long from such intimacy with the manners of Dr. Johnson, or such knowledge of his sentiments as these pages can convey. To urge my distance from England as an excuse for the book's being ill written, would be ridiculous; it might indeed serve as a just reason for my having written it at all; because, though others may print the same aphorisms and stories, I cannot here be sure that they have done so. As the Duke says however to the Weaver, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, 'Never excuse; if your play be a bad one, keep at least the excuses to yourself'.'

I am aware that many will say, I have not spoken highly enough of Dr. Johnson; but it will be difficult for those who say so, to speak more highly, If I have described his manners as they were, I have been careful to shew his superiority to the common forms of common life. It is surely no dispraise to an oak that it does not bear jessamine; and he who should plant honeysuckle round Trajan's column, would not be thought to adorn, but to disgrace it.

When I have said, that he was more a man of genius than of learning, I mean not to take from the one part of his character that which I willingly give to the other. The erudition of Mr. Johnson proved his genius; for he had not acquired it by long or profound study: nor can I think those characters the greatest which have most learning driven into their heads, any

''Never excuse; for when the players are all dead there need none to be blamed.' Act v, sc. I, 1. 363.

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