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 62 Anecdotes by Joseph Cradock.

serious business with him x ; between six and seven he will look about him, and see who remains, and, if he then at all likes the party, he will be very civil and communicative. He exactly fulfilled what my friend had prophesied. Mrs. Davies 2 did the honours of the table : she was a favourite with Johnson, who sat betwixt her and Dr. Harwood ; I sat next, below, to Mr. Boswell opposite. Nobody could bring Johnson forward more civilly or properly than Davies. The subject of conversation turned upon the tragedy of CEdipus*. This was particularly interesting to me, as I was then employed in endeavouring to make such alterations in Dryden's play 4, as to make it suitable to a revival at Drury Lane theatre. Johnson did not seem to think favourably of it ; but I ventured to plead, that Sophocles wrote it expressly for the theatre, at the public cost, and that it was one of the most celebrated dramas of all antiquity. Johnson said, * CEdipus was a poor miserable man, subjected to the greatest distress, without any degree of culpability of his own.' I urged, that Aristotle, as well as most of the Greek poets, were [sic] partial to this character ; that Addison considered that, as terror and pity were particularly excited, he was the properest 5 here Johnson suddenly becoming loud, I paused,

1 'When at table he was totally him to talk, for which it was often absorbed in the business of the necessary to employ some address." ' moment ; his looks seemed rivetted Ib. iii. 39. Boswell does not mention to his plate ; nor would he, unless any talk about CEdipus.

when in very high company, say one 4 l CEdipus is a tragedy formed by

word, or even pay the least attention Dryden and Lee in conjunction, from

to what was said by others, till he the works of Sophocles, Seneca and

had satisfied his appetite.' Life, Corneille. Dryden planned the

i. 468. scenes and composed the first and

2 Ib. i. 391, n. 2, 484. third acts.' Johnson's Works, vii.
 * I am strongly affected by Mrs. 269.

Davies's tenderness/ Johnson wrote 5 Addison quotes Aristotle's obser-

to her husband. Ib. iv. 231. vation 'if we see a man of virtue,

3 ' I introduced ' (writes Boswell) mixt with infirmities, fall into any ' Aristotle's doctrine in his Art of misfortune, it does not only raise our Poetry, of " the KaOapats T&V iraOr)- pity, but our terror ; because we are fidroav, the purging of the passions," afraid that the like misfortune may as the purpose of tragedy. " But happen to ourselves, who resemble how are the passions to be purged the character of the suffering person.' by terrour and pity ? said I, with an The Spectator, No. 273. See also assumed air of ignorance, to incite ib. No. 297.

and

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