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 380 A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Johnson

��sit in judgment upon his papers x. Thuanus, Buchanan, Huetius, and others, have been their own historians.

The memory of some people, says Mably 2 very lately, * is their understanding V This may be thought, by some readers, to be the case in point. Whatever anecdotes were furnished by memory, this pen did not choose to part with to any compiler. His little bit of gold he has worked into as much gold-leaf as he could. T. T.

[The following anecdote, with some others, was given by Tyers in the Gentleman 's Magazine y 1785,. p. 85, The rest, so far as they were of any value, I have incorporated in my notes.]

Dr. Johnson had a large, but not a splendid library 4, near 5,000 volumes. Many authors, not in hostility with him, pre sented him with their works. But his study did not contain half his books. He possessed the chair that belonged to the

��ticular account of his own life, from his earliest recollection.' Life, iv. 405. One of these volumes Hawkins car ried off, but was forced to bring back. Ante, i. 127 ; ii. 129.

1 His executors were Hawkins, Reynolds, and William Scott (Lord Stowell). Life> iv. 402, n. 2.

2 Prescott wrote in 1841 : ' Have read for the tenth time Mably sur V Etude de VHistoire, full of admirable reflections and hints. Pity that his love of the ancients made him high gravel-blind to the merits of the moderns.' Ticknor's Life of Prescott > Boston, 1864, p. 91, n. 6.

3 Tyers probably did not know that he had been ' described by Johnson in The Idler, No. 48, under the name of Tom Restless; "a cir cumstance," says Mr. Nichols, " pointed out to me by Dr. Johnson himself.'" Lit. Anec. viii. 81. 'When Tom Restless rises he goes into a coffee-house, where he creeps so near to men whom he takes to be

��reasoners, as to hear their discourse, and endeavours to remember some thing which, when it has been strained through Tom's head, is so near to nothing, that what it once was can not be discovered. This he carries round from friend to friend through a circle of visits, till, hearing what each says upon the question, he be comes able at dinner to say a little himself; and as every great genius relaxes himself among his inferiors, meets with some who wonder how so young a man can talk so wisely.'

4 ' His library, though by no means handsome in its appearance, was sold by Mr. Christie for ^247 9.$-. Life, iv. 402, n. 2. See also ib. i. 188, n. 3, 435-

My friend, Mr. Edward J. Leveson, the Scribe of the Johnson Club, re printed a facsimile of the sale cata logue of Dr. Johnson's Library for the meeting of the Johnson Club at Oxford, June II, 1892.

Ciceronian

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