fey Cibber. "It is wonderful (said he) that à man who for forty years had lived with the great and the witty should have acquired so ill the talents of conversation: and he had but half to furnish; for one half of what he said was oaths." He, however, allowed considerable merit to some of his comedies, and said, there was no reason to believe that the Careless Husband' was not written by himself. Mr. Davies said, he was the first dramatic writer who introduced genteel ladies upon the stage. Johnson refuted his observation by instancing several such characters in comedies before his time. DAVIES. (trying to defend himself from a charge of ignorance) "I mean genteel moral characters."—" I think (said Mr. Hicky), gentility and morality are inseparable."-BOSWELL. "By no means, Sir. The genteelest characters are often the most immoral. Does not Lord Chesterfield give precepts for uniting wickedness and the graces? A man indeed is not genteel when he gets drunk; but most vices may be committed very genteelly: a mán may debauch his friend's wife genteelly; he may cheat at cards genteelly."-HICKY. "I do not think that is genteel."-B. "Sir, it may not be like a gentleman; but it may be genteel."-J. "You are meaning two different things. One means exterior grace; the other honour. It is

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certain that a man may be very immoral with exterior grace. Lovelace, in Clarissa,' is a very genteel and a very wicked character.

Tom

Hervey, who died t'other day, though a vicious man, was one of the genteelest men that ever lived."-B. "Cibber was a man of observation?" -J. "I think not."-B. "You will allow his 'Apology' to be well done."-J. "Very well done, to be sure, Sir.-That book is a striking proof of the justice of Pope's remark:

"Each might his several province well command,
"Would all but stoop to what they understand."

-B. " And his plays are good."-J. "Yes; but that was his trade; l'esprit du corps; he had been all his life among players and play-writers. I wonder that he had so little to say in conversation, for he had kept the best company, and learnt all that can be got by the ear. He abused Pindar to me, and then shewed me an Ode of his own, with an absurd couplet, making a linnet soar on an eagle's wings. I told him that when the ancients made a simile, they always made it like something real."

Of old Sheridan he remarked, that he neither wanted parts nor literature; but that his vanity and Quixotism obscured his merits. He said, foppery was never cured; it was the bad stamina

of the mind, which, like those of the body, were never rectified: once a coxcomb, and always a coxcomb.

When the Rev. Mr. Horne (now Horne Tooke, Esq.) published his 'Letter to Mr. Dunning on the English Particle,' Johnson read it; and, though not treated in it with sufficient respect, he had candour enough to say to Mr. Seward, "Were I to make a new edition of my Dictionary, I would adopt several of Mr. Horne's etymologies; I hope they did not put the dog into the pillory for his libels, he has too much literature for that."

He said, that Bacon was a favourite author with him; but he had never read his works till he was compiling the English Dictionary, in which, he said, we might see Bacon very often quoted. He observed, that a Dictionary of the English language might be compiled from Bacon's writings alone, and that he had once an intention of giving an edition of Bacon, at least of his English works, and writing the Life of that great man. Had he executed this intention, there can be no doubt that he would have done it in a most masterly manner.

Of his fellow-collegian, the celebrated Mr George Whitefield, he said "Whitefield never drew so much attention as a mountebank does he did not draw attention by doing better than

others, but by doing what was strange. Were Astley to preach a sermon standing upon his head on a horse's back, he would collect a mul titude to hear him; but no wise man would say he had made a better sermon for that. I never treated Whitefield's ministry with contempt; I believe he did good. He had devoted himself to the lower classes of mankind, and among them he was of use; but when familiarity and noise claim the praise due to knowledge, art, and ele gance, we must beat down such pretensions." He would not allow much merit to Whitefield's oratory. "His popularity, Sir (said he), is chiefly owing to the peculiarity of his manner. He would be followed by crowds were he to wear a night-cap in the pulpit, or were he to preach from a tree."

He said," John Wesley's conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and have out his talk, as I do."

At another time he said, "I have read Dr. Blair's sermon on Devotion, from the text Cornelius, a devout man.' His doctrine is the best limited, the best expressed; there is the most Warmth without fanaticisin, the most rational transport. There is one part of it which I disapprove, and I'd have him correct it; which is, that

he who does not feel joy in religion is far from the kingdom of Heaven!' There are many good men whose fear of God predominates over their love. It may discourage. It was rashly said. A noble sermon it is indeed. I wish Blair would come over to the church of England."

He talked of Lord Lyttelton's extreme anxiety as an author, observing, that "he was thirty years in preparing his History, and that he employed a man to point it for him; as if (laughing) another man could point his sense better than himself." Mr. Murphy said, he understood his history was kept back several years for fear of Smollet. JOHNSON. "This seems strange to Murphy and me, who never felt that anxiety, but sent what we wrote to the press, and let it take its chance."-MRS. THRALE. "The time has been, Sir, when you felt it."-J. “Why really, Madam, I do not recollect a time when that was the case."

Lord Lyttelton's Dialogues he deemed a nugatory performance. "That man (said he) sat down to write a book, to tell the world what the world had all his life been telling him."

He attacked Lord Monboddo's strange spe culation on the primitive state of human nature; observing, "Sir, it is all conjecture about a thing useless, even were it known to be true. Knowledge of all kinds is good: conjecture as to