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 202 Anecdotes.

��let us not fancy like Swift that we are exalting a woman's character by telling how she

Could name the ancient heroes round, Explain for what they were renown'd, c. x '

I must not however lead my readers to suppose that he meant to reserve such talk for men's company as a proof of pre-eminence. while he lived : such conversation was lost time (he said), and carried one away from common life, leaving no ideas behind which could serve living wight 1 " as warning or direction.'

How I should act is not the case, But how would Brutus in my place ?

' And now (cries Mr. Johnson, laughing with obstreperous vio lence), if these two foolish lines can be equalled in folly, except by the two succeeding ones 4 shew them me/

I asked him once concerning the conversation powers of a gentleman with whom I was myself unacquainted 5 * He

selves, what we can turn to use.' leteer in the Garret to the Patriot in

Life, v. 79. the Senate as extremely worthy of the

All this shows little of ' the fierce Imitation of Britons' Four Tracts

and boisterous contempt of ignor- by Josiah Tucker, D.D., 1774, p. 60.

ance' with which, according to Lord 3 Paradise Lost, ii. 613.

Macaulay, Johnson spoke of history. 4 How shall I act is not the

Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1843, i. 403. case ;

1 'She nam'd the ancient heroes But how would Brutus in my

round, place ?

Explain'd for what they were In such a case would Cato

renown'd ; bleed ?

Then spoke with censure or And how would Socrates pro- applause ceed ? ' Of foreign customs, rites and To Stella, 1720. Swift's Works, x.

laws.' 187.

Cademis and Vanessa. Swift's 5 Mrs. Piozzi, in a marginal note,

Works, ed. 1803, x. 128. says it was Charles James Fox.

2 Writing to Mrs. Thrale in July, Hayward's Piozzi, i. 292.

1775, he says : ' Therefore wherever ' I have heard Mr. Gibbon remark,'

you are and whatever you see talk writes Boswell, ' that Mr. Fox could

not of the Punick War.' Letters, not be afraid of Dr. Johnson ; yet

i. 343. he certainly was very shy of saying

' The example of the Romans is anything in Dr. Johnson's presence.'

eternally quoted from the Pamph- Life, iii. 267. See also ib. iv. 167.

talked

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