ment that he should have an enemy in the world', while he had been doing nothing but good to his neighbours, I used to make him recollect these circumstances: Why child (said he), what harm could that do the fellow 2? I always thought very well of Mn for a Cambridge man; he is, I believe, a mighty blameless character.' Such tricks were, however, the more unpardonable in Mr. Johnson, because no one could harangue like him about the difficulty always found in forgiving petty injuries, or in provoking by needless offence.] Mr. Jordan, his tutor, had much of his affection, though he despised his want of scholastic learning. 'That creature would (said he) defend his pupils to the last: no young lad under his care should suffer for committing slight improprieties, while he had breath to defend, or power to protect them. If I had had sons to send to college (added he), Jordan should have been their tutor 3.'

Sir William Browne the physician, who lived to a very extraordinary age, and was in other respects an odd mortal, with more genius than understanding, and more self-sufficiency than wit, was the only person who ventured to oppose Mr. Johnson, when he had a mind to shine by exalting his favourite university, and to express his contempt of the whiggish notions which prevail at Cambridge. He did it once, however, with surprising felicity:

Caractacus and Elfrida, often wondered at Johnson's low estimation of his writings.' Life, ii. 335. Mason was a Cambridge man.

Johnson in his Dictionary calls fun 'a low cant [slang] word.' In Sir Charles Grandison, ed. 1754, i. 96-7, it is used by an illiterate gentle

man.

1 From a sick room he wrote to Mrs. Thrale in the last year but one of his life :-'I have in this still scene of life great comfort in reflecting that I have given very few reason to hate me.' Letters, ii. 314.

2 See Life, iv. 280, where he asks, 'What harm does it do to any man to be contradicted?'

3 When Johnson visited Oxford in 1754, 'he much regretted that his first tutor [Jorden] was dead, for whom he seemed to retain the greatest regard.' Ib. i. 272.

Miss Burney records in May, 1772: 'I have just left the famous Sir William Browne in the parlour, a most extraordinary old man, who lives in the Square [Queen Square], and is here on a visit. He has been a very renowned physician; whether for saving or killing I cannot say. He is near eighty, and enjoys prodigious health and spirits, and is gallant to the ladies to a most ridiculous degree. He never comes without repeating some of his verses.'

his antagonist having repeated with an air of triumph the famous epigram written by Dr. Trapp',

Our royal master saw, with heedful eyes,

The wants of his two universities:

Troops he to Oxford sent, as knowing why
That learned body wanted loyalty:

But books to Cambridge gave, as, well discerning,
That that right loyal body wanted learning.

Which, says Sir William, might well be answered thus:

The king to Oxford sent his troop of horse,
For Tories own no argument but force;
With equal care to Cambridge books he sent,
For Whigs allow no force but argument 2.

Early Diary of Frances Burney, i. 177. He died on March 10, 1774, aged 82. Gentleman's Magazine, 1774, p. 142. See ib. 1775, p. 44 for the prizes of three gold medals which he founded at Cambridge for Greek and Latin verse.

For a memoir of Dr. Joseph Trapp (1679-1747) see Gentleman's Magazine, 1786, pp. 381, 660. He was the first Professor of Poetry at Oxford. It is said that he was the original of Swift's 'little parson Dapper, who is the common relief to all the lazy pulpits in town. This smart youth has a very good memory, a quick eye, and a clean handkerchief. Thus equipped, he opens his text, shuts his book fairly, shows he has no notes in his Bible, opens both palms and shews all is fair there too.' The Tatler, No. 66. Swift's Works, viii. 163. I cannot find any evidence besides Mrs. Piozzi's that he wrote this epigram.

2 In Nichols's Lit. Anec. iii. 330 the following versions are given :—

I.

'The King. observing with judicious eyes,

The state of his two universities;

To Oxford sent a troop of horse; and why?

That learned body wanted loyalty; To Cambridge books, as very well discerning

How much that loyal body wanted learning.'

II.

'The King to Oxford sent a troop of horse,

For Tories own no argument but

force;

With equal skill to Cambridge books he sent,

For Whigs admit no force but argument.'

George I, in September, 1715, gave 6,000 guineas for the library (30,000 volumes) of John Moore, Bishop of Ely, who had died the previous year, and presented it to the University of Cambridge. Willis and Clark's Architectural History of Cambridge, iii. 29. A little later 'an intercepted letter from an Oxford undergraduate to his friend in London boasts that "Here we fear nothing, but drink James's health every day." Colonel Owen and several other broken officers had taken shelter at the University, and were concerting measures Mr.

Mr. Johnson did him the justice to say, it was one of the happiest extemporaneous productions he ever met with; though he once comically confessed, that he hated to repeat the wit of a whig urged in support of whiggism. Says Garrick to him one day, Why did not you make me a tory, when we lived so much together, you love to make people tories? Why (says Johnson, pulling a heap of halfpence from his pocket) did not the king make these guineas?'

Of Mr. Johnson's toryism the world has long been witness, and the political pamphlets written by him in defence of his party, are vigorous and elegant. He often delighted his imagination with the thoughts of having destroyed Junius, an anonymous writer who flourished in the years 1769, and 1770, and who kept himself so ingeniously concealed from every endeavour to detect him, that no probable guess was, I believe, ever formed concerning the author's name, though at that time the subject of general conversation.

with the Heads of Houses, and projecting an insurrection . . .; but Stanhope sent thither General Pepper with a squadron of dragoons. Marching all night, Pepper entered Oxford at day-break on the 6th of October, 1715. Mahon's History of England, ed. 1839, i. 235.

''True to his King and the Constitution Garrick declined all disputes about Whig and Tory. Mr. Pelham was the minister whom he admired, as may be seen in his Ode on the death of that great man.' Murphy's Garrick, p. 379. For this Ode see Life, i. 269.

2

Johnson attacked Junius in his pamphlet on Falkland's Islands, published in the early spring of 1771. Life, ii. 134; Works, vi. 198. The signature 'Junius' first appeared on Nov. 21, 1768. The first Junius of the collected edition appeared on Jan. 21, 1769; the last on Jan. 21, 1772. Dict. Nat. Biog., xx. 173.

Mr. Johnson made us all

'Three men,' writes Horace Walpole, 'were especially suspected, Wilkes, Edmund Burke and W. G. Hamilton. Hamilton was most generally suspected.' Memoirs of George III, iii. 401. Johnson said, 'I should have believed Burke to be Junius, because I know no man but Burke who is capable of writing these letters, but Burke spontaneously denied it to me.' Life, iii. 376. Burke, writing on this subject to Charles Townshend on Oct. 17, 1771, says :- My friends I have satisfied; my enemies shall never have any direct satisfaction from me.' Burke's Correspondence, i. 268. When Wilkes was charged with being the author ‘Utinam scripsissem!' he replied, 'Would to Heaven I could have written them.' Wraxall's Memoirs, ed. 1815, i. 460. Mrs. Piozzi, in a marginal note on Wraxall, says :-'I well remember when they [Junius's Letters] were most talked of-and N. [W] Seward laugh

laugh one day, because I had received a remarkably fine Stilton cheese as a present from some person who had packed and directed it carefully, but without mentioning whence it came. Mr. Thrale, desirous to know who we were obliged to, asked every friend as they came in, but no body owned it: 'Depend upon it, Sir (says Johnson), it was sent by Junius.'

The False Alarm, his first and favourite pamphlet, was written at our house between eight o'clock on Wednesday night and twelve o'clock on Thursday night; we read it to Mr. Thrale when he came very late home from the House of Commons 2: the other political tracts followed in their order. I have forgotten which contains the stroke at Junius; but shall for ever remember the pleasure it gave him to have written it. It was' however in the year 1775 that Mr. Edmund Burke made the famous speech in parliament, that struck even foes with admiration, and friends with delight 3. Among the nameless thousands who are contented to echo those praises they have not skill to invent, I ventured, before Dr. Johnson himself, to applaud, with rapture, the beautiful passage in it concerning Lord Bathurst and the Angel; which, said our Doctor, had I been in the house, I would have answered thus:

said, "How the arrows of Junius were sure to wound and likely to stick." "Yes, sir," replied Dr. Johnson; "yet let us distinguish between the venom of the shaft and the vigour of the bow." At which expression Mr. Hamilton's countenance fell in a manner that to me betrayed the author. Johnson repeated the expression in his next pamphlet-and Junius wrote no more.' Hayward's Piozzi, 2nd ed., ii. 106. For Johnson's repetition of this expression see Works, vi. 205. Junius, however, continued to write.

'We talked of his two political pamphlets, The False Alarm, and Thoughts concerning Falkland's Islands. JOHNSON. "Well, Sir, which

of them did you think the best?' BOSWELL. "I liked the second best." JOHNSON. "Why, Sir, I liked the first best; and Beattie liked the first best. Sir, there is a subtlety of disquisition in the first, that is worth all the fire of the second." Life, ii. 147.

2 He was member for Southwark from December, 1765, till the dissolution in 1780. Parl. Hist. xv. 1089; Life, iii. 442.

3 On Conciliation with America, March 22, 1775.

4

Burke, describing 'the growth of our national prosperity' through our trade with America, continues :-' It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. 'Suppose

'Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to Wharton, or to Marlborough, or to any of the eminent whigs of the last age, the devil1 had, not with any great impropriety, consented to appear; he would perhaps in somewhat like these words have commenced the conversation:

'You seem, my Lord, to be concerned at the judicious apprehension, that while you are sapping the foundations of royalty at home, and propagating here the dangerous doctrine of resistance; the distance of America may secure its inhabitants from your arts, though active: but I will unfold to you the gay prospects of futurity. This people, now so innocent and harmless, shall draw the sword against their mother country, and bathe its point in the blood of their benefactors; this people, now contented with a little, shall then refuse to spare what they themselves confess they could not miss2; and these men, now so honest and so grateful, shall, in return for peace and for protection, see3 their vile agents in the house of parliament, there to sow the seeds of sedition, and propagate confusion, perplexity, and pain. Be not dispirited then at the contemplation of their present happy state: I promise you that anarchy, poverty, and death shall, by my care, be carried even

For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress.... Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth ... If amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the Genius should point out to him a little speck scarcely visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him-"Young man, there is America-which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and un

couth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world," ' &c. Payne's Burke, i. 172.

W. W. Pepys wrote to Hannah More:-'I once heard a man say of Burke, while he was pouring forth torrents of eloquence in the House of Commons, "How closely that fellow reasons in metaphor!"' More's Memoirs, iii. 377.

''I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.' Life, iii. 326. 2 What they refused to spare was a contribution towards the expenses of the last French war.

3 See I have little doubt is a misprint for fee.

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