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 2i8 Anecdotes and Remarks by Bishop Percy.

��when she made tea for Johnson and his friends, conducted it with so much delicacy, by gently touching the outside of the cup, to feel, by the heat, the tea as it ascended within, that it was rather matter of admiration than of dislike to every attentive observer z. (Page 298.)

This most amiable and worthy gentleman [Mr. Thrale] certainly deserved every tribute of gratitude from Johnson and his literary friends, who were always welcome at his hospitable table ; it must therefore give us great concern to see his origin degraded by any of them, in a manner that might be extremely injurious to his elegant and accomplished daughters, if it could not be contradicted ; for his father is represented to have been a common drayman 2 ; whereas he is well known to have been a respectable citizen, who increased a fortune, originally not contemptible, and proved his mind had been always liberal, by giving a superior education to his son. (Page 407.)

Johnson was fond of disputation, and willing to see what could be said on each side of the question, when a subject was argued 3. At all other times, no man had a more scrupulous regard for truth ; from which, I verily believe, he would not have deviated to save his life 4. (Page 472.)

��their houses, where, from her man ner of eating, in consequence of her blindness, she could not but offend the delicacy of persons of nice sen sations.' Life, i\\. 26.

1 Boswell had not been an atten tive observer, for he says : 'I fancied she put her finger down a certain way till she felt the tea touch it.' Ib. 11. 99.

2 Ib. i. 490. ' The first Independent this flock was pounced upon while privately worshipping in the house of a brewer's clerk, and while eighteen escaped, forty-two were thrown into prison. The site of the edifice used by this Church when it began to worship publicly under the Common

��wealth was afterwards occupied by Thrale's brewery. It was there that the Austrian marshal, Haynau, was mobbed in 1852 for having whipped women in the Hungarian rebellion.' The Pilgrim Republic ', by John A. Goodwin, Boston, 1888, p. 440.

3 ' He would begin thus : " Why, Sir, as to the good or evil of card- playing " Now (said Garrick) he is thinking which side he shall take." ' Life, iii. 23. See ante, ii. 92, where in his praise of a tavern he says : ' I dogmatise and am contra dicted, and in this conflict of opinions and sentiments I find delight.'

4 Ante, i. 225, 297, 458 ; post, p. 223.

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