Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/30

 22 Extracts from James Boswell's Letters

��stream x ; at the Club ; at Warren Hastings's 2 ; at Hawkins the Cornish member's 3 ; and at home with a colonel of the guards, &c. This regulation I assure you is of essential advantage in many respects. The Magnum Opus advances. I have revised p. 2i6 4. The additions which I have received are a Spanish quotation from Mr. Cambridge 5 ; an account of Johnson at Warley Camp from Mr. Langton 6 ; and Johnson's letters to Mr. Hastings three in all 7 one of them long and admirable; but what sets the diamonds in pure gold of Ophir is a letter from Mr. Hastings to me, illustrating them and their writer. I had this day the honour of a long visit from the late governor-general of India. There is to be no more impeachment 8. But you will see his character nobly vindicated 9. Depend upon this.

��and best edition of Johnson's Dic tionary, and that his friends are running a race who shall be foremost in giving, or rather selling, to the world some scrap or fragment of our literary Leviathan an anecdote, a letter, or a character, a sermon, a prayer, or a bon-mot.' Letters of Radcliffe and James, p. 266. * I do not quite affect John's friend Barrow,' wrote J. Boucher ; ' he seems too rough and rugged a northern. He would overawe me.' Ib. p. 267.

1 The Coldstream Guards. Bos- well nearly thirty years earlier had described his 'fondness for the Guards.' Life, i. 400.

2 For Hastings's letter to Bos well dated the 2nd of this month see ib. iv. 66.

3 Sir Christopher Hawkins, mem ber for Michell. W. P. Courtney's Parl. Repres. of Cornwall, p. 319.

4 Of the second volume.

5 Life, iii. 25 1. In another passage (ib. iv. 195) Boswell records a con versation between Cambridge and Johnson about a Spanish translation of Sallust. Dr. Franklin wrote to W. Strahan from Passy, on Dec. 4,

��1781 : 'A strong Emulation exists at present between Paris and Madrid with regard to beautiful Printing. Here a M. Didot 1'aine has a Passion for the Art, and besides having pro cured the best Types, he has much improv'd the Press. The utmost Care is taken of his Press-work ; his Ink is black, and his Paper fine and white. He has executed several charming Editions. But the Salust [sic] and the Don Quixote of Madrid are thought to excel them.'

6 Life, iii. 360.

1 Ib. iv. 68.

8 BoswelPs hope was from the new Parliament. ' The friends of Hastings entertained a hope that the new House of Commons might not be disposed to go on with the impeach ment.' Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1843, iii. 455. Their hope was disappointed. Dr. Burney wrote to his daughter on May 7, 1795: 'And so dear Mr. Hastings is honourably acquitted ; and I visited him the next morning, and we cordially shook hands.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, vi. 36.

9 In the Life of Johnson, that is to say. See Life, iv. 66.

And

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