Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/29

 EXTRACTS

FROM JAMES BOSWELLS LETTERS

��DEC. 4. 1790. Let me begin with myself. On the day after your departure, that most friendly fellow Courtenay 2 (begging the pardon of an M.P. for so free an epithet) called on me, and took my word and honour that, till the ist of March, my allowance of wine per diem should not exceed four good glasses at dinner, and a pint after it 3 : and this I have kept, though I have dined with Jack Wilkes 4 ; at the London Tavern, after the launch of an Indiaman ; with dear Edwards ; Dilly 5 ; at home with Courtenay ; Dr. Barrow 6 ; at the mess of the Cold-

��1 Published in Croker's Boswell, x. 209, from the MSS. in Mr. Upcott's collection.

2 John Courtenay. In the new Parliament which met on Nov. 25 he sat for Tamworth. For his Moral and Literary Character of Dr. John son see Life, i. 222.

3 ' Under the solemn yew,' fifteen years earlier, he had promised his friend Temple not to exceed a bottle of old Hock a day. The following year he wrote : ' General Paoli has taken my word of honour that I shall not taste fermented liquor for a year.' Life, ii. 436, n. I.

4 Boswell complacently recorded in his Journal : ' When Wilkes and I sat together, each glass of wine produced a flash of wit, like gun powder thrown into the fire. Puff ! puff ! ' Rogers's Boswelliana, p. 322.

��5 Charles Dilly, Boswell's pub lisher, at whose house * Johnson owned that he always found a good dinner.' Life, iii. 285.

6 Boswell wrote to Temple on Nov. 28, 1789 : ' My second son is an extraordinary boy ; he is much of his father (vanity of vanities). . . . He is still in the house with me ; indeed he is quite my companion, though only eleven in September. He goes in the day to the academy in Soho Square, kept by the Rev. Dr. Barrow, formerly of Queen's, Oxford, a coarse north-countryman, but a very good scholar.' Letters of Boswell, p. 315.

Barrow wrote to John James on Jan. 26, 1786: 'The reviews and papers will tell you better than I can, that the booksellers are engaged in a contest who shall publish the first stream ;

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